Bleak Monday Reads: Wherefore art thou Democracy?

“For once, I have to agree with JD” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Morning, Sky Dancers!

I’m trying to get this posted early since the Poland Avenue Rooster and the thunder have me awake, and I have another doctor’s appointment today.  The weather is not good here. We have flash flood warnings. My first look at the headlines this morning made me want to go back to sleep. My first two suggested reads come from two of my favorite writers.  The articles are both horrifying, but these are the times we live in. We cannot look away.  Marcy Wheeler and Anne Applebaum tell it like it is.This first one is by independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, whom I have not since our days at the long-gone Fire Dog Lake, my first stop in blogdom.  She writes this at her home at emptywheel. This is about how the press has been instrumental in trying to normalize a regime that is other than normal with their “hypothetical discussions” about the U.S. Constitution. I know I have a new term to add to our tags today: instrumental language.  I will use Google’s AI function to give you a brief definition before Marcy applies the term.

In the context of language, “instrumental” refers to language used as a tool or means to fulfill a need or achieve a goal, such as obtaining something or expressing a desire

Here’s the application from a phone conversation between FARTUS and Kristin Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press. Sit down and put the cup of coffee down.  You may need a deep breath. “Trump’s Threats to the Constitution Are Happening in Real Time, Not (Just) in a Third Term.”

There is no doubt in my mind that the intent of the Trump team is to retain power indefinitely, via whatever means.To fight that effectively, you should focus your action and words on the most pressing issues before us — elections on Tuesday, legal cases before appeals courts, legal US residents in detention — rather than trying to discern the means by which Trump will codify all the actions he is taking today, yesterday, last week. The actions he is taking in real time, and their goals, are utterly transparent.Which is why I think it a colossal waste of time that the punditocracy spent much of Sunday talking about Kristen Welker’s “report” that Trump says he wants a third term.You don’t say?Rather than spending the day discussing Trump’s Executive Order presuming to dictate to states how they — with the involvement of DOGE!! — must start suppressing the vote over the next months, we talked about something that might happen in 2028. Rather than spending the day talking about how Trump is already using federal funding and immigration law to silence speech protected by the First Amendment, we discussed what gimmick Trump might use in the future to evade the 22nd Amendment.Almost no one even tried to use Trump’s comments about a third term as a way to explain the end goal of assaults on civil society, speech, and voting — to connect the actions Trump took in the last week to what he says he’ll do in 2028 — something that would at least make use of Trump’s own rhetoric to educate low-information voters. Instead, they talked about Trump’s assault on democracy in the way Trump wanted it framed — distant, allegedly constitutional, and uncertain, rather than an imminent unconstitutional assault on democracy.What the fuck are we doing here, folks?

Indeed. Please go read this.

“The fact that Welker brought up this plot for a third term herself, mentioning Steve Bannon (who was presenting it on another channel), suggests that was the entire point: Trump called her, she dutifully brought it up, she got video but used almost none of it, leaving only Markwayne Mullin on camera (who should never be invited as a credible interlocutor in any case) to answer for the Administration on MTP itself. Not that it mattered; Welker was even more solicitous than usual yesterday.Trump’s genius is in managing attention: both keeping it, and directing it away and towards topics of his choosing. He has long integrated assertions about a third term into his political spiel. This is nothing new (indeed, NBC linked an earlier instance in the story). And yet NBC — along with a pack of credulous pundits — chose to focus on Trump’s third term comments all day Sunday rather on the things he did in the last week, covering up disappearances on Monday, tampering in elections on Tuesday, assaulting the independence of another law firm on Wednesday, attacking unions and whitewashing history on Thursday, compromising DC self-rule on Friday, that are obviously about a third term and beyond.How can you have lived through that week, or any of the last nine, and have doubts about the intent here? Why do you think hypothetical discussions about assaults on the Constitution will better serve fighting back than concrete discussion and organizing about specific assaults on it?This seems to be yet another instance where journalists and liberals, both of whom institutionally presume that language is transparent, misunderstand how authoritarians use language instrumentally and therefore forgo the most effective response to instrumental language.”

Human guardrails are not present in this administration. I’m not even certain you may call anyone in the administration fully human. Constitutional Guardrails are questionable even as we are not even in the first 100 days of this surreal mess. It’s no wonder former Yale History Professor  Timothy Snyder and his wife have taken off for the Great White North.  It appears Fascism scholars can read the writing on the wall from the capitulation of major universities on the attacks they’ve received.Here’s The Guardian‘s take on yesterday’s advance notice on the march to dictatorship. “Donald Trump criticized for suggesting there are ‘methods’ for a third term – US politics live. President attracting criticism from some in both parties after telling NBC ‘there are methods’ in securing a third term despite constitutional barriers.”

Republican John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon as president, who was jailed for his involvement in the cover-up of Watergate and later testified to Congress as a witness for the investigation into the scandal, criticized Trump’s apparent aspiration for a third term, in an interview with CNN.

“He likes constitutional end-runs … and that’s what seems to be on his mind is how he can get around the very clear language of the 22nd amendment [to the US constitution], which precludes getting elected to more than two terms,” Dean said.

CNN asked, if there are ways to get around the law, constitutionally what could those be?

Dean said: “They would have to be written by the supreme court, that would redefine the constitution. I just describe it as a constitutional end run.”

An end run is an American football term for the ball-carrier running around the end of the defensive line in their attempt to reach the line to score a touchdown.

The key line from the 22nd amendment, forbidding anyone who has been elected president twice from being elected again. reads:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

The US Congress approved the amendment in 1947, and submitted it to the state legislatures, where it was then ratified in 1951.

It’s the end-runs that worry me. He’s already got a history of back-to-back self-coups. I really don’t think most people realize how serious this is.  FARTUS also has two Supreme Court justices in the tank for him; the rest of the right-wing majority is wobbly at best.The other must-read article today comes from The Atlantic. It’s written by Anne Applebaum. “America’s Future Is Hungary. MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.” This is a bleak picture of our economic future, given the fascination with Orbán by this administration and its crazy White Nationalist Christian wing.

Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom—which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025—puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.

Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. For although he has no critical mineral wealth to give away and not much of an army, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, plays an outsize role in the American political debate. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Orbán held multiple meetings with Donald Trump. In May 2022, a pro-Orbán think tank hosted CPAC, the right-wing conference, in Budapest, and three months later, Orbán went to Texas to speak at the CPAC Dallas conference. Last year, at the third edition of CPAC Hungary, a Republican congressman described the country as “one of the most successful models as a leader for conservative principles and governance.” In a video message, Steve Bannon called Hungary “an inspiration to the world.” Notwithstanding his own institution’s analysis of Hungarian governance, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation has also described modern Hungary “not just as a model for modern statecraft, but the model.”

What is this Hungarian model they so admire? Mostly, it has nothing to do with modern statecraft. Instead it’s a very old, very familiar blueprint for autocratic takeover, one that has been deployed by right-wing and left-wing leaders alike, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Hugo Chávez. After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system; and repeatedly changed the constitution to give himself electoral advantages. During the coronavirus pandemic he gave himself emergency powers, which he has kept ever since. He has aligned himself openly with Russia and China, serving as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy at EU meetings and allowing opaque Chinese investments in his country.

This autocratic takeover is precisely what Bannon, Roberts, and others admire, and are indeed seeking to carry out in the U.S. right now. The destruction of the civil service is already under way, pressure on the press and universities has begun, and thoughts of changing the Constitution are in the air. But proponents of these ideas rarely talk about what happened to the Hungarian economy, and to ordinary Hungarians, after they were implemented there. Nor do they explore the contradictions between Orbán’s rhetoric and the reality of his policies. Orbán talks a lot about blocking immigration, for example, but at one point his government issued visas to any non-EU citizen who bought 300,000 euros’ worth of government bonds from mysterious and mostly offshore companies.He rhapsodizes about family values, even though his government spends among the lowest amounts per capita on health care in the EU, controls access to IVF, and notoriously decided to pardon a man who covered up sexual abuse in children’s homes.

Remember the idea of visas for $5 million dollars?  Well, now we know where that scatterbrained idea came from.  Politico‘s Jack Blanchard warns us we are in for another mind-blowing week.

Get ready: We’ve got special and state-level elections happening Tuesday; Donald Trump’s latest tariff bonanza unveiled Wednesday; a budget vote-a-rama expected in the Senate Thursday and the TikTok ban deadline looming Friday night. On top of that, we’re expecting another big Trump phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and potentially the first Supreme Court ruling on the president’s efforts to deport migrants using an 18th-century wartime law. And that’s just the stuff we know about.

I really do not get anyone who can’t see FARTUS and his cronies as a clear and present danger to our country. This is from CNBC’s Jeff Cox. “Goldman Sachs sees Trump tariffs spiking inflation, stunting growth and raising recession risks.” Well, can’t say I didn’t tell you this would happen back in mid-November when the real agenda became evident.

With decision day looming this week for President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, Goldman Sachs expects aggressive duties from the White House to raise inflation and unemployment and drag economic growth to a near-standstill.The investment bank now expects that tariff rates will jump 15 percentage points, its previous “risk-case” scenario that now appears more likely when Trump announces reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday. However, Goldman did note that product and country exclusions eventually will pull that increase down to 9 percentage points.When the new trade moves are enacted, the Goldman economic team led by head of global investment research Jan Hatzius sees a broad, negative impact on the economy.In a note published on Sunday, the firm said “we continue to believe the risk from April 2 tariffs is greater than many market participants have previously assumed.”On inflation, the firm sees its preferred core measure, excluding food and energy prices, hitting 3.5% in 2025, a 0.5 percentage point increase from the prior forecast and well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal.That in turn will come with weak economic growth: Just a 0.2% annualized growth rate in the first quarter and 1% for the full year when measured from the fourth quarter of 2024 to Q4 of 2025, down 0.5 percentage point from the prior forecast. In addition, the Wall Street firm now sees unemployment reaching 4.5%, a 0.3 percentage point raise from the previous forecast.Taken together, Goldman now expects a 35% chance of recession in the next 12 months, up from 20% in the prior outlook.The forecast paints a growing chance of a stagflation economy, with low growth and high inflation. The last time the U.S. saw stagflation was in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Back then, the Paul Volcker-led Fed dramatically raised interest rates, sending the economy into recession as the central bank chose fighting inflation over supporting economic growth.

One more read from me, and it’s off to the shower. This is from Salon. It’s a commentary from Chauncey DeVega.  “Sadopolitics: Why MAGA clings tighter to Trump the more his policies hurt them.  Psychology helps to explain why Trump’s followers will not abandon him”  H/T to BeadBear.   The explanation that I like best is this one. “Donald Trump is an expert at sadopolitics “

In a 2018 conversation with historian Timothy Snyder here at Salon, he elaborated on the meaning of sadopolitics (what he terms as “sadopopulism”) and its implications for the Age of Trump and the larger democracy crisis:

“Sadopopulism” is the notion that you’re doing half of populism. You promise people things, but then when you get power you have no intention of even trying to implement any policy on behalf of the people. Instead, you deliberately make the suffering worse for your critical constituency. The people who got Trump into office, for example, are traditional Republican voters plus people in counties who are doing badly in terms of health care and other measures, and who need help.

Under Trump, of course, things will just get worse in terms of both the opioid addictions and in terms of wealth inequality. But that’s OK, because the logic of sadopopulism is that pain is a resource. Sadopopulist leaders like Trump use that pain to create a story about who’s actually at fault. The way politics works in that model is that government doesn’t solve your problems, it blames your problems on other people — and it creates the cycle that goes around over and over and over again. I started talking about sadopopulism because I got tired of people talking about populism.

In such a toxic relationship between the leader, the followers and the larger public, the abuse and misery actually bond them all closer together. The most loyal followers see their leader as simultaneously a source of protection and safety, even as he or she hurts them. To that point, the more Trump’s policies hurt his followers, the more likely they are to cling to him. Trump’s followers are also going to misdirect their rage, anger, blame, and other negative emotions and behavior at some “enemy.” In the Age of Trump, that enemy is Black and brown people and other nonwhites, “Woke” and “DEI, “illegal immigrants” and migrant “invaders,” the LGBTQ community and specifically transgender people, social “parasites” and “takers,” government employees, those not deemed sufficiently “patriotic” and therefore disloyal to MAGA and Trump (which here is synonymous with “Real America”), Muslims and other non-“Christians,” the Democrats, “liberals,” the news media (“fake news” and “lugenpresse”) and other targeted groups and individuals.

Hold on to the family silver.  It might be more valuable than the dollar and more useful than cryptocurrency. Hold on to anything gold.  That’s about to go way up.  It ain’t that pretty at all out there.  Remember stagflation?  We really don’t need to see that again, but then, we have an incompetent Dotard with insane ideas in charge of the country. He’s got equally incompetent Dotards out there wrecking the government.Well, that’s enough of what looks like a Debbie Downer Day for me, and it’s just started.  At least the thunder is letting up.What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwpagb-_Zk0

#JohnbussBskySocial #AnneApplebaum #JohnBussRepeat1968 #MarcyWheeler #sadopopulism

Mostly Monday Reads: What Fresh Hell?

“His nose is already growing!” John (repeat1968) Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Today is the anniversary of the shameful January 6th treason and violence. It may seem quiet today, but the worst is yet to come. Not only is our new FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, and Traitor of the United States with total credit given to JJ) about to take the oath of office, but all these other traitors are about to be granted Presidential Pardons. My only solace is that I may eat King Cake now because today is also 12th night, the official start of the Mardi Gras Season.

These are degenerate times. That has a specific meaning in Buddhism. Lama Yeshe describes it like this. “It has five characteristics: short life spans, scarce means of subsistence, mental afflictions, strong wrong views, and weak sentient beings.” That’s a good enough explanation for me when thinking about what’s been going on lately.

I will rely on the columnists I read today because they make sense.  Our media legacy has failed us.  First up is Amanda Marcotte writing for Salon. I wrote something along these lines on Friday, but Amanda has thought more deeply. “Toxic masculinity links the New Orleans attacker and the Las Vegas bomber. Whether MAGA or ISIS, troubled men are getting sucked in by hateful online propaganda.”

As I noted in passing last week, the striking thing about the life of Shamsud-Din Jabbar is how much it reads like the boilerplate biography of any random Jan. 6 defendant or MAGA-inspired criminal. The 42-year-old who allegedly murdered 15 people at the New Year’s festivities in New Orleans appeared, on paper, to be relatively successful in his career: 8 years in the Army, a degree from Georgia State, and a $125,000 a year job for an accounting firm. But his personal life was a mess. He was thrice divorced in 10 years, and at least two of the divorces were acrimonious and required repeat court interference. His divorce lawyer even fired him. His financial mismanagement meant his healthy salary didn’t go far enough, and he had to be forced to make back payments on child support.

Like so many men facing personal troubles, Jabbar didn’t get the help he needed. Instead, he turned to radicalizing voices online, which led him to believe that he needed to double down on toxic masculinity. It’s a story we hear over and over, from so-called incels who commit mass shootings to Donald Trump fans who attack government buildings to terrorists imbibing ISIS propaganda. Rather than taking responsibility for their personal failures and striving to do better, men of all stripes turn to the internet where they’re greeted by a sea of influencers, ready to tell them that it’s other people — women, people of different races or religions, the “woke mob” — that is to blame. In some cases, as happened here, they go far enough down the rabbit hole that they talk themselves into violence.

Thankfully, no one but the bomber was badly hurt in the Las Vegas suicide bombing that happened the same night as the Bourbon St. attack, but the parallels between Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger aren’t hard to spot. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger was a troubled man who picked a highly symbolic location, blowing up a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel. Both men had checkered romantic histories, and Livelsberger appears to have told multiple people he feared he suffered from PTSD. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger seems to have acted on a belief that he was going out like a hero, standing up for his far-right ideology and using his death to call on fellow MAGA believers to commit acts of terrorism.

“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary,” he wrote in his final manifesto. He declared the U.S. is “terminally ill and headed toward collapse,” complained that people don’t believe “[m]asculinity is good and men must be leaders” and made tired Twitter jokes calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “DEI candidate” and President Joe Biden “Weekend at Bernie’s.” He concluded, “Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”

Livelsberger defensively insisted the bombing “was not a terrorist attack.” This sentiment is belied not just by the violence of the act itself and his calls for MAGA men to use violence because “a hard reset must occur for our country.”

It’s the 12th night, which means the members of Skull and Bones Krewes get up early to remind us of our mortality.

When Cis men fall apart, they can’t just go silently into the night, get help, or do something productive. They have to injure or kill innocents while killing themselves. They destroy more than their own lives. They have to leave some formal Mansplaining document that lets us know why it’s all our fault. These are generally misogynistic, at the very least.  Most of them spew more bullshit and bile than the waste from slaughterhouses.

John Pavlovitz wrote this on December 12th in his Substack, The Beautiful Mess. “America Chose the Monster.”

To have cast a vote for him with all that we have seen is to declare war on decency, on equality, on any semblance of forthrightness or goodness. It is to double-down on the bigotry which was dismissed as hyperbole during his campaign but which has already been ratified hundredfold as he assembles his Cabinet picks and broadcasts his agenda.

To witness his absolute disregard for the Constitution, his violent allergic reaction to facts, his complete lack of empathy and to not condemn it all becomes an indictment of one’s own heart. It becomes an act of aggression against humanity.

The are truths that are self-evident in the light of these days:

A viable healthcare alternative is not coming.
Taxes for the middle class are not coming down.
Project 2025 is going to be implemented.
Mexico is still not paying for the wall.
Immigrants are going to being persecuted.
Protections for those with special needs are evaporating.
The poor are getting thrown to the lions.
Public schools are being thrown under the bus.
The elderly are being left to fend for themselves.
The environment is being willfully set on fire.
The economy is going to be compromised.
The whole system is being intentionally blown-up.
The rule of Law in our Government is being trod upon.

Aside from the smallest percentage of the wealthiest in this nation, no one is going to be healthier, safer, or more financially secure.

This is a nonpartisan tragedy.

We all do impulsive things when we are terrified, when it’s dark and we’re convinced there’s a monster under the bed. But eventually the light comes on and we have reality at our disposal and we get to choose to see things as they are. I can’t fathom those presently determined to stay in the dark, to pretend they’re not seeing what they’re seeing—when what they’re seeing is a danger to them too.

It’s morning here in America, friends. The brilliant light of day is illuminating every dark corner and exposing every unsavory decision from the night before.

For a myriad of reasons, America chose the monster. It chose the hatred, the fear, the nihilism, the separation. The question of why is too sprawling and nebulous to answer.

And with the coming of this Monster comes more monsters. Former Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone reminds us about the kind of people that will be put back on the street when the mass pardon of traitors begins.  This is from HuffPo. “Cowards, Liars And Jan. 6: Former Officer Michael Fanone Speaks Out As Trump’s Return Looms.

“I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore,” says Michael Fanone, who was nearly killed by Trump supporters four years ago.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that he got away with inciting an insurrection as well as defrauding the American people and attempting to subvert democracy,” Fanone told HuffPost during a phone interview just ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot.

“I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore,” Fanone said. “I believe democracy in this country is dead, and it died when the Supreme Court granted the president of the United States immunity for official acts and then failed to define what the fuck official acts are.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States in July found that as long as something could be shaded as an “official” act, prosecution was off the table.

The ruling obliterated key parts of the criminal indictment brought against Trump in the Jan. 6 case by then-special counsel Jack Smith. And Trump’s victory in November means he’ll likely never face federal charges.

Shortly after the presidential election, Smith dismissed the case without prejudice ― meaning it could theoretically come back to life one day ― but Fanone’s faith in the justice system is already shattered. He called Attorney General Merrick Garland an “absolute coward.”

“Listen, people say I’m naive or I don’t know how these things work, but I was a cop for 20 years. Not only was I a cop, I was a cop in Washington, D.C. Our prosecutors were federal prosecutors. I worked with the [Department of Justice] every single day for 20 years. I know exactly how that institution and organization works. The decision not to pursue an investigation into Trump was all political,” Fanone said. “The investigation should have been launched on Jan. 7, 2021.”

Fanone was Trump-friendly before the J6 Insurrection and voted for him in 2016.

Senator John Thune from South Dakota is the new bad guy in charge of the Senate.   We’re already getting some idea of how bad it’s going to be since he appears to be whipping the caucus for the gross number of idiots Trump wants in his cabinet.  This is from The Hill. “Thune says it’s unclear whether all Trump Cabinet picks will be confirmed.”  Some of the most worrying of them have to deal with National Security.

John Thune on Trump possibly pardoning J6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers: "That's ultimately gonna be a decision that President Trump is gonna have to make. What I'm focused on is the future."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-05T15:37:25.150Z

Thune joined NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for an interview that aired Sunday, as he took the lead of the upper chamber at the start of the 119th Congress.

“What I’ve promised them is a fair process,” Thune said of Trump’s picks. “And so, these nominees are going to go through a committee where they’re going to have to answer questions. There will be some hard questions posed.”

Thune highlighted the desire to provide Trump with the Cabinet he wants but noted that the Senate has a role to “advise and consent,” particularly regarding his national security choices.

“We have a lot of our senators who take that role very seriously,” he said. “And so, we will make sure that these nominees have a process, a fair process, in which they have an opportunity to make their cases not only to the members of the committee and ultimately to the full Senate but also to the American people.”

Thune wouldn’t confirm whether he would vote for or against any of Trump’s nominees, including some particularly controversial choices like Kash Patel to lead the FBI, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth for Department of Defense.

Thune said he’s met with some of Trump’s nominees, and there are “some” that he has been “really, really impressed” by.

This bit popped up over the weekend and is disturbing.  This was reported by CBS. “Thune has privately told Trump that Hegseth has the votes to be confirmed as Defense Secretary, sources say.” Thune has so many toxic male issues combined with a lack of experience and knowledge of the job that anyone connected to the military has spoken out against him.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has privately told President-elect Donald Trump that he believes Pete Hegseth will have the votes to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense, according to three sources.

When asked for comment, a spokesman for Thune would only tell CBS News, “Two things we don’t discuss publicly: Whip counts and private conversations with the president.”

The new Senate Majority Leader in an interview with “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” promised a fair process but expressed more caution.

“I think these are nominees who are new enough, they’ve been going around and conducting their meetings, which I think, frankly, have gone very well, but they still have to make their case in front of the committee. And, you know, we don’t know all the information about some of these nominees.”

Hegseth’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 14, according to Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker.

Just so you know, future FBI Director Kash Patel is still making the rounds in the Senate Building. “Kash Patel Believes the FBI Planned Jan. 6th. His embrace of this wild conspiracy theory should disqualify him from leading the bureau.” This is from The Bulwark.

“WHAT WAS THE FBI DOING PLANNING January 6th for a year?”

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as FBI director, asked that question during a November 25, 2022 episode of his Kash’s Corner podcast for the Epoch Times. It was no slip of the tongue. As the title of that episode suggested—“What Did the FBI Know Before Jan. 6?”—Patel spent considerable time trying to cast the FBI as a villain responsible for January 6th. Patel noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray had “testified that the FBI never instigated or helped the January 6th protesters commit crimes.” But citing a report that the FBI had confidential human sources in the crowd, Patel asserted: “Okay, well, that was in planning for at least a year.”

Our review of Patel’s public appearances over the past four years reveals that he has repeatedly insinuated or argued that the FBI used its confidential human sources or employees to instigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and entrap Trump’s supporters. Patel has claimed (as in the podcast episode above) that what he calls the “FBI’s Confidential Human Source Corruption Coverup Network” was somehow involved with January 6th. That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.

During the September 30, 2022 episode of Kash’s Corner, for instance, Patel said: “The question that has to be answered is, when did the FBI put those guys in, and where? And did those confidential human sources engage people who are not going to conduct criminal activity and convince them to do so?” Patel claimed that “is the definition of entrapment, which is illegal, and you can’t charge someone who’s been entrapped.” And he wondered who “was running this confidential human source network” and reporting it to FBI Director Chris Wray.

Patel added he would “venture a guess” that “once we see the documentation from January 6th, you will see the FBI’s confidential human source corruption coverup network on blast.” And he accused the FBI of inserting these human sources “into these matters.” Patel asked rhetorically: “Why? Why would you say January 6th? Because they wanted a political target, a political prosecution, not one based on law and fact.”

The man who could lead Trump’s FBI has failed to substantiate these wild accusations, which are contradicted by other evidence and by common sense. Regardless, he has frequently advanced this conspiracy theory, using his background as a former federal prosecutor and public defender—key credentials used to buttress his nomination—to provide it with a veneer of credibility.

An extensive amount of documentation is provided in the article.  It’s not a fun read.

ProPublica has published another astounding piece of journalism.  This is long and shocking.  It gets to the heart of Trump’s rabid base. Again, this is the heart of Toxic Masculinity.  “The Militia and the MoleOutraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.”

So I pored over his files, tens of thousands of them. They included dozens of hours of conversations he secretly recorded and years of private militia chatlogs and videos. I was able to authenticate those through other sources, in and out of the movement. I also talked to dozens of people, from Williams’ friends to other members of his militias. I dug into his tumultuous past and discovered records online he hadn’t pointed me to that supported his account.

The files give a unique window, at once expansive and intimate, into one of the most consequential and volatile social movements of our time. Williams penetrated a new generation of paramilitary leaders, which included doctors, career cops and government attorneys. Sometimes they were frightening, sometimes bumbling, always heavily armed. It was a world where a man would propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a debate about logistics.

Federal prosecutors have convicted more than 1,000 people for their role in Jan. 6. Key militia captains were sent to prison for a decade or more. But that did not quash the allure that militias hold for a broad swath of Americans.

Now President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters when he returns to the White House. Experts warn that such a move could trigger a renaissance for militant extremists, sending them an unprecedented message of protection and support — and making it all the more urgent to understand them.

(Unless otherwise noted, none of the militia members mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment.)

Williams is part of a larger cold war, radical vs. radical, that’s stayed mostly in the shadows. A left-wing activist told me he personally knows about 30 people who’ve gone undercover in militias or white supremacist groups. They did not coordinate with law enforcement, instead taking the surveillance of one of the most intractable features of American politics into their own hands.

Skeptical of authorities, militias have sought to reshape the country through armed action. Williams sought to do it through betrayals and lies, which sat with him uneasily. “I couldn’t have been as successful at this if I wasn’t one of them in some respects,” he once told me. “I couldn’t have done it so long unless they recognized something in me.”

The last thing I want to post about is the Washington Post.  The newspaper is hemorrhaging reporters, and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Political Cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit because Bezos axed her submission.  The raw sketch is featured on the right. It’s also begun layoffs. This happens when greedy Tech Bros take over things they know nothing about.  This is from Oliver Darcy’s Status. “Paper Cuts. The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned.”

Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.

The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.

A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.

I’ve been a bit on the gratuitous Buddhism-sharing thing today, which I try not to overdo, but this quote from Chamtral Rinpoche hit me hard last night.

The biggest threat to our world are not human beings per se. The biggest threat is each individual person’s level of greed. One extremely greedy person can harm our world more than a million people who practice contentment.

Drinking salt water will never quench your thirst. The more you drink, the thirstier you will become. Likewise, greed will never bring you satisfaction, as it will cause an endless pursuit of material wealth to the detriment of our world and all of the beings who inhabit it.

Always remember that the greedier you are, the more you and others will suffer, and the poorer you will become inside. But the more contentment that you have, the more you and others will benefit, and the richer you will become inside.

We will have to cultivate inner peace to get through all of this.  I’ve already cut down on my TV News viewing.  I have a mature meditation practice (since the 1970s), so I have that.  Of course, the furbabies and the Zoom calls from the Granddaughters put a smile on my face.  I’m just trying to stay in the moment.  I hope you can find a way to cope with this all. I’ve been listening to a lot of modern classic piano. This piece by Lambert comes from an album called  “Sweet Apocalypse.” It’s beautiful and relaxing, and the name is appropriate for the times; it was recorded in 2017 during this first stint of anguish.

Talk to me about how you’re coping with this blast of kleptocracy, kakistocracy, and idiocracy?

What’s on your reading and blogging list?  

#JohnbussBskySocial #AdjuctatedRapist #andTraitorOfTheUnitedStatesWithTotalCreditGivenToJJ_ #FARTUSFelon #idiocracy #JohnRepeat1968Buss #kakistocracy #kleptocracy #Lambert #SenateMajorityLeaderJohnThune #SweetApocalypse #ToxicMasculinity

Finally Friday Reads: MAGA-Extended Boxing Day

On this Boxing Day, let’s call it for what it is. Elder Abuse. John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated in the United Kingdom and some of the commonwealth nations.  Boxing Day used to be a day to donate items and food to the needy, but like everything Decemberish, it has been melded into the Crassmas season and has become a shopping event. It was never a literal “boxing day,” although other sports events often coincide with the holiday.  It was also a day to share the haul with employees and tradespeople.  It’s been around since the 1740s but has morphed into just another day to go shopping for deals, much like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The original holiday dates back to the 1660s. It was generally a day that the aristocracy gave their servants a break to visit family and bring home a few leftovers and bestowed gifts.  Funny how those things morph the more that Corporations take things over.

I liked John’s cartoon take, and today, it seems more literal than usual since there is much unhappiness in the MAGA house as the rank and file learn more of the plans the Tech Dudes have for the country. I’ve always wondered how Kash and Vivek, with their swarthy complexions, sat with the obviously xenophobic and angry wipipo that make up the MAGA base. Maybe the base thought they were just an extension of the old Memsahib days of Colonial India.  After all, Memsahib Incontinentia Buttocks certainly needs an entourage since he’s incapable of doing much of anything these days.

It appears, however, that Memsahib Laura Loomer recognized some boundary overstepping from Vivek even though it all popped up on Boxing Day when giving the help a break was in order.  Any job that takes more tha basic math and a lot of technological training does not have a large pool of Americans able to do the work. I experienced this first hand getting quite mathy degrees in Finance and Economics, which require the same kind of math that astrophysics, rocket science, engineering, and climatology require.  Grad school degree programs with heavy math are full of students from the Middle East and Asia. Most Americans wind up with an MBA where the courses really don’t even go beyond the early undergrad level. One of my grad school colleagues from Punjab was a great gift to me during my grad school year.  He lived with me after Katrina for a while and helped me get through the mathy parts of my qualifiers.  His first calculus class came in the 5th grade.  Imagine that!

So, given that the Tech Bros need math geeks there was bound to be an issue inventually.  And this year’s Boxing Day has proven to be a MAGA match-up between the base and Memsahib Incontinentia Buttocks and her entourage of Tech Bros.  With all things MAGA,  one’s race and nationality eventually become the screaming points.

I have to use The Times of London as my first source.  It just seems so fit for a replay of Victorian Colonial Politics and nativism.  I just hope they don’t take it out on the Indian Diaspora and their children, which includes my colleagues and family. “Maga’s uncivil war: Musk and Ramaswamy under fire in ‘culture war.’ Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, blamed American ‘culture of mediocrity’ for a lack of talented specialist workers.”  Ouch.  We may have put a man on the moon back in the day, but you may also remember that was due to many black women doing the math for the dudes.  We’re not what we used to be because of the long-term war on education by Republicans and their Fundamentalist crusaders who like those low educational attainment voters.

Elon Musk’s tech bros have clashed with the Maga rank and file over immigration for Silicon Valley workers, exposing the fragile alliance forged to put Donald Trump in the White House.

The chief executive of Tesla — who spent $277 million backing Trump and other Republicans during November’s election — believes America must attract top engineering talent to secure technological dominance over China.

Musk, 53, who has been put in charge of cutting government waste in Trump’s incoming administration, joined other prominent Silicon Valley figures in criticising a lack of highly-skilled workers to meet the industry’s demands at a time of intense competition over artificial intelligence.

Trump’s base — energised by the president-elect’s harsh rhetoric — is broadly opposed to immigration, however, whether skilled or unskilled, and argues that Americans should be prioritised over foreign workers.

Much of the debate is over H-1B visas, which Silicon Valley relies upon to bring in specialist workers with technical skills. Critics say that the visas have been exploited to allow in mediocre talent at the expense of Americans who demand higher wages.

Vivek Ramaswamy, 39, a biotech entrepreneur who ran for the Republican presidential nomination before dropping out to back Trump, ignited a furious response on X by sharing a lengthy post outlining why he thought America lacked the necessary technical talent.

Ramaswamy, who will lead the Department of Government Efficiency with Musk, blamed culture for the perceived shortfall.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long — at least since the Nineties, and likely longer. That doesn’t start in college, it starts young,” he said.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Ramaswamy referenced the television shows Boy Meets World, Saved by the Bell and Family Matters as examples where a bookish character played second fiddle to a cool kid to bolster his point.

Ramaswamy is not wrong about the culture here, but he really is not the best messenger for the MAGA crowd.  As I said, those of us in techy Grad School areas have known this since the 70s, although a huge number of my colleagues were from Iran or Hong Kong back then. That’s changed, obviously. However, if you really want to get down with the American brainiacs at University these day,s you need to speak with the women.  Black women are excelling in these areas. This Talking Points Memo article is a bit more explicit. “Who Got Duped? MAGA Activists Worry That Nativism And Tech Oligarchy May Not Go Hand In Hand.” Josh Kovensky has the analysis.

Over the past few days, a fight has erupted within the MAGA right over legal immigration, specifically about whether the country should admit more high-skilled immigrants.

On the one side, you have opportunistic tech oligarchs like Elon Musk and David Sacks. These are incredibly wealthy figures who are open about using their newfound influence in government to serve both their ideological and their private business interests. On the other are figures like Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, and other nativist (and often openly racist) online personalities who had been vocal Trump supporters long before the Silicon Valley right joined the coalition.

The two sides began to argue on Sunday, after Donald Trump appointed Sriram Krishan, a partner at Andreesen Horowitz, as a White House policy adviser on Artificial Intelligence to work with Sacks, the Trump administration’s crypto and AI czar.

This may seem like a relatively minor White House appointment. However, Krishan has also been a proponent of removing country caps on green cards and H1-B visas, which allow American companies to hire foreign workers for certain specializations.

To the far-right, nativist influencers that have from the start glommed onto Trumpian scapegoating of immigrants, Krishan’s position crossed a line. Loomer, an anti-immigrant provocateur who traveled with Trump during his campaign, called it “deeply disturbing.” Sacks replied, perhaps not fully understanding his audience, by noting that Indian immigrants face an 11-year wait for green cards.

This was catnip for Loomer, who replied by suggesting that Sacks was in on a new version of the great replacement theory, and spent the next several days making vile statements about immigrants, accusing those who disagree with her on H1-B visas of hating Americans, and demanding that senior Trump officials denounce their Silicon Valley allies. Sacks, whose recent political positions have included strident opposition to American support for Ukraine, denounced the “crude” attacks.

Soon, other Trump-involved tech oligarchs, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, jumped into the fray. Musk wrote that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

Ramaswamy swooped in on Thursday to explain his view that American companies were forced to hire foreign skilled labor due to a deficit in homegrown American culture itself.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote, adding later: “More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers.”

As you might imagine, MAGA nativists of various stripes regard this Silicon Valley defense of skilled immigration with a paranoid and often racist eye. Fuentes, the groyper leader, described Ramaswamy’s position as an attempt to get “500 million indians to move here.” Others reacted to Ramaswamy’s premise that there may be something wrong with America. Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the nativist Claremont Institute, pushed back in a gentler fashion while still suggesting that Ramaswamy’s vision would “destroy the things that actually make America great.”

Ah, the fury of a mediocre white male! Never fear!   MAGA Super Karen Laura Lurid to the rescue! “‘Should MAGA stay home in 2026?’ Laura Loomer wages ‘racist’ war against ‘tech bros’ over Indian migrants. The far-right provocateur is taking aim at Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over their support of highly skilled workers from India, claiming that the country’s residents have a low IQ and describing Indians as “third-world invaders.”  This is from The Independent and was written by Justin Baragona.

Trump acolyte and self-proclaimed “proud Islamophobe”Laura Loomer is threatening to tell MAGA to “stay home” during the next midterm elections amid an escalating feud with “tech bros” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over Silicon Valley’s reliance on foreign-born workers.

Loomer has engaged in a multi-day social media tirade over President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointment of Indian-American entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as a senior policy adviser for AI, prompting the loyal MAGA supporter to rage about Krishnan’s support of H-1B visas for Indian immigrants.

With the Trump administration promising an immediate crackdown on immigration, Loomer has launched a series of attacks on Indians described as “racist” following Krishnan’s appointment, which she called “deeply disturbing.” Describing workers from India as “third-world invaders,” Loomer also took issue with Musk and Ramaswamy defending the tech industry importing “super talented engineers” from overseas.

“The average IQ in India is 76,” Loomer tweeted at one point, along with several other posts disparaging Indians and their home country.

Loomer, who previously sparked backlash for making bigoted remarks about Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage, has found supportamong what some have described as “OG MAGA” in her civil war against Trump-supporting tech entrepreneurs. In particular, she has received quite a bit of backing from “groypers,” the followers of notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Musk and other Tech Dudes actually joined the fray.  The Hill has this headline today. “Musk, Ramaswamy defend Silicon Valley’s foreign-born hires.”  Julia Shapero reports the story. Sorry this is taking me so long to write. I’m either spewing tea at the screen or peeing myself laughing so hard.  It’s making things complicated.  Someone forgot to tell them you can’t say that quiet part out loud.  The mediocre white guys get very angry.

Conservative tech leaders quickly jumped to Krishnan’s defense. David Sacks, who Trump has tapped to serve as White House AI and crypto czar, said the Andreessen Horowitz partner was arguing for the elimination of per-country caps on green cards.

“Sriram still supports skills-based criteria for receiving a green card, not making the program unlimited,” Sacks wrote on X. “In fact, he wants to make the program entirely merit-based. Supporting a limited number of highly skilled immigrants is still a prevalent view on the right. Sriram is definitely not a ‘career leftist’!”

Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, also argued that Krishnan is “America First.”

“For USA to have the highest standard of living, generous govt services, and strongest military, we need to recruit the best and brightest and build the best companies,” Lonsdale said. “I’m against more low-end H1B immigrants; but let’s win at the talent game.”

The discussion of Silicon Valley’s hiring practices comes as Trump prepares to implement an ambitious and controversial immigration strategy, promising mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and potentially naturalized citizens. Musk and Ramaswamy have both voiced support for Trump’s immigration plans.

This just makes me go all Kipling with the thoughts of The White Man’s Burden.  You could also read Mark Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” It’s actually a good Christmas reading.  I can’t believe we’re having these discussions again.   This headline is good for shits and giggles.   The Rolling Stone may be the guiding light this year in such a dark season. “Trump Ally Laura Loomer Says Elon Musk Is ‘Silencing’ Her Amid Immigration Spat.  As Loomer railed at Musk for backing legal immigration for skilled tech workers, his X platform took away Loomer’s blue-check verification badge.” Musk actually deactivated her account!   Here’s the story from Mediaiate. “Elon Musk’s Critics Stripped of Verification Badge After Publicly Challenging Billionaire: ‘The Beginning Stages of Censorship’.”  Charlie Nash has the lede.

Several conservative critics of billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk were stripped of their verification badges on X after publicly challenging Musk’s stance on immigration.

Trump ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and the pro-Trump ConservativePAC were all stripped of their verification badges after criticizing Musk’s controversial remarks about American workers and foreign H-1B visa holders.

“[Musk] has removed my blue check mark on X because I dared to question his support for H1B visas, the replacement of American tech workers by Indian immigrants, and I questioned his relationship with China,” wrote Loomer in a post on Musk’s social network X, formerly known as Twitter.

She continued:

Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies.

I have always been America First and a die hard supporter of President Trump and I believe that promises made should be promises kept. Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy. Now, as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, I’m having my free speech silenced by a tech billionaire for simply questioning the tech oligarchy.

Elon has decided to retaliate by removing my blue check and demonetizing me.

I guess he doesn’t really believe in Free speech after all.

Loomer ended her post with a link to Truth Social – President-elect Donald Trump’s own social network.

While several Musk allies claimed Loomer had been stripped of her verification for changing her photo, Loomer dismissed those claims and called the move “retaliation.”

Responding to the suggestion that her verification check was removed for an unrelated reason, Loomer wrote, “I mean right after @elonmusk called me a troll today, my account verification was taken away, my subscriptions were deactivated and I was banned from being able to buy premium even though I was already paying for premium. Clearly retaliation.”

Where has she been that this is actually news to her? I’m going to finish with this analysis from The Daily Beast.  This comes under the heading of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to MEN. “All-Out MAGA Civil War Engulfs Trump Already. TECH BROS UNDER FIRE.  Trump’s winning electoral coalition couldn’t quite make it through the season of goodwill.”  Nico Hines has the analysis.  It’s a Skunk Fight!!!!  Even Matt Gaetz got into the rift!

Well, that didn’t take long.

The logic-twisting alliance between Silicon Valley’s new oligarchs and the home-spun patriotism at the heart of the Republican grassroots movement is shattering before our very eyes.

MAGA stalwarts like Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz are already turning their fire on the tech bros who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s comeback bid for the White House before he is even sworn in as president for a second time.

It was always going to end in tears, but few observers predicted that an all-out MAGA civil war would erupt before we even reach the New Year.

Overnight, Trump cheerleaders have used Elon Musk’s platform to attack the world’s richest man—and many now claim Musk is using his social media omnipotence to shut them down.

“Never insult the monarch,” MAGA chronicler Mike Cernovic warned his 1.3 million followers. Musk replied: “I am constantly insulted on this platform.”

That was the final straw for Laura Loomer, a failed Republican congressional candidate who got so close to Trump during the campaign that she accompanied him on the plane to the presidential debate with Kamala Harris.

“This is America. We don’t have a monarchy. This is outrageous,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after claiming that she was being censored on the platform by Musk.

Loomer waded into the Boxing Day culture war sparked by Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial post claiming that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” A debate over H1B visas has quickly descended into a bitter feud between those—led by the tech crowd—who believe importing highly skilled workers from abroad will boost the American economy and those—like Trump himself—who have long argued that the visas are being abused by companies seeking cheaper foreign labor to the detriment of American workers.

The traditional white working-class bedrock of the MAGA movement, which sprang from the Tea Party, has always been intensely focused on reducing immigration, something Trump championed during his first term, symbolized by his promised wall along the border with Mexico.

Musk tried to steer a path between the two sides, with a “clarification” of his DOGE partner’s comments by saying that H1Bs should only be used for the very top talents, but the MAGA majority appeared not to be placated.

Loomer claimed Musk and Ramaswamy infiltrated the movement for their own ends. “I have been more loyal to President Trump and his agenda than ANYONE. And I have only been punished for it. Pay attention MAGA. This is how you will all be treated now that Big Tech has infiltrated MAGA. “President Musk” is starting to look real,” she said.

I can only imagine what watching this soap opera evolve as we get farther into January. Goddesses Bless us, Everyone!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968 #EloniaMusk #JohnBush #LauraLoomer #LauraLurid #MAGAInnerFighting #mediocreWhiteMen #NativismInTheGildedAge #TechBros #TechVISAs #VivekRamaswamy #Weirdo

Finally Friday Reads: The Turn of the Screw

“Meanwhile, at Mars-a-Lago… Donold’s training pays off..” John Buss, @repeat1968,@johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

With its tumultuous and ineffective leadership, the aptly named chaos caucus again plays a game of brinkmanship that risks American lives and the economy.  I’m getting way too old for this kind of torment. The Republican-led Congress has completely forgotten its role in governance and its duties, ensuring the stability required for all the entities that rely on that and the rule of law to function. They only seem to air grievances and feed their raging ids.  This year’s version comes with a dangerous twist.  The prime chaos factor is the richest man on earth who was not elected or officially appointed to anything.  His claim to fame is funding the Trump campaign and those of other Republican elected officials, and he has no clue about our system of government, our institutions, our Constitution, or, for that matter, anything.  He’s also bugfuck crazy.

President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks is huddled down in Florida doing God knows what, and J Dank has gone missing.  Milk cartons will soon have to show his picture and ask, “Have you seen this vice president?”  Bayou Moses looks to be the next biggest loser of the House Speaker’s Gavel. The country looks like some twisted version of The Mouse That Roared. How are we to deal with a Cabal of Billionaires empowered by an angry crew of religious nuts, bigots, and know-nothings?  They appear to own the house and the Supreme Court at the moment.

Meanwhile, back in the world of the same old shit, we get Mitch McConnell suddenly lecturing everyone and seemingly trying to protect the old magic ways of the US Senate. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions.   I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.

So, how on earth did Elon Musk blow up a bipartisan deal on the budget?  This is from Sam Stein writing at The Bulwark. “Elon Killed the Budget Deal. Cancer Research for Kids Was Collateral Damage.  Advocates were celebrating the inclusion of money and provisions to help fund pediatric research. And then the tweets started.”

THE DECISION BY REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP to scuttle a bipartisan funding deal on Thursday night has left lawmakers scrambling and others anxiously bracing for a government shutdown.

For a host of issue advocates, however, the prevailing mood in Washington, D.C. was one not of chaos but utter devastation.

The initial deal that congressional leaders had agreed to included a number of key priorities that, in the course of hours, were jettisoned by GOP leaders looking to calm Elon Musk’s pique and satisfy Donald Trump’s demands. And though the slimmed-down bill that Trump endorsed in its place failed to pass the House, few people expected that the initial deal would make a comeback—meaning that many of its components were likely gone for good.

The list of provisions left in the dust heap was lengthy. The initial compromise bill included language to ensure that providers of internet service to rural areas weren’t ripping off customers, to protect consumers from hidden hotel fees, to secure semiconductor supply chains, to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China, even to prohibit deepfake pornography. All those were all gone in the successor bill.

But some of the hardest cuts to swallow involved medical research. In particular, advocates say, the revised funding bill delivered a devastating blow to the fight against pediatric cancer.

The slimmed-down version was stripped of language that would have allowed children with relapsed cancer to undergo treatments with a combination of cancer drugs and therapies. (Currently the Food and Drug Administration is only authorized to direct pediatric cancer trials of single drugs.) The bill also didn’t include an extension of a program that gave financial lifelines, in the form of vouchers, to small pharmaceutical companies working on rare pediatric diseases. It was also missing earlier provisions that would have allowed for kids on Medicaid or CHIP—that is, poor children—to access medically complex care across state lines.

And, of course, Trump wants to ensure that there’s a two-year extension of the Debt Ceiling so that he can give away the Treasury to his Cabal and grift off the nation without having to take on the burden of once again landing the Federal Budget into record-setting red zones.  He seriously believes that the voters will blame all these shenanigans on Biden, who is trying to Trump-proof things and get Federal judges appointed to the bench.  Musk is on a rampage to replace the governments that once fought NAZIs with NAZIs all over the world and evidently has the money to attempt it.  This is from New York Magazine. “Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists.”  Nia Prater has the analysis.

Elon Musk has spent the better part of this week working to derail Congress’s attempt to fund the government, but he found time early Friday morning to express support for the politics of Alternative für Deutschland or Alternative for Germany, the country’s most prominent far-right political party.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X early Friday morning.

The comment was in response to a video posted by Naomi Seibt, a German far-right activist, that criticized Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative party Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Recently, Merz has been leading in the polls to become the nation’s next chancellor next year. The caption for Seibt’s video read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example. He staunchly rejects a pro-freedom approach and refuses any discussion with the AfD.”

The AfD is a nationalist and anti-immigration party that has seen its popularity steadily grow over the last several years. In September, the party won its first state election, becoming the first far-right party to win an election in Germany since the Nazis, per CNN. AfD’s candidate in that race, Björn Höcke, is a controversial figure who has been fined for using a Nazi slogan and criticized for a speech many denounced as antisemitic.

Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, was dismissive of Musk’s words when asked about them during an unrelated press conference with Estonian prime minister Kristen Michal on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said, per Bloomberg. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”

This is not the first time that Musk has indicated support for AfD. Last year, The Guardian reported that Musk shared a pro-AfD post that criticized Germany funding charity groups that operate ships that rescued migrants, referring to the migrants as “illegal immigrants.”

“Let’s hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide,” the post read.

Musk, who intends to play an starring role in Donald Trump’s second term, has similarly shown an affinity for other conservative leaders in Europe. He’s been pictured with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Nigel Farage, a British politician who leads the right-wing populist party Reform UK. In recent days, there’s been speculation that Musk might be considering a massive multimillion-dollar donation to Farage’s party, prompting worries among watchdog groups.

Musk has such a manic schedule, given he’s also trying to give parts of Ukraine to Putin, threatening to oust the Canadian PM, and blowing up the US economy today.  Canadian TV had this headline last week. “Elon Musk calls Justin Trudeau ‘insufferable tool’ in new social media post.”  Musk is channeling his inner Lex Luther!

Billionaire Elon Musk is calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “an insufferable tool” in a new social media post on Wednesday.

“Won’t be in power for much longer,” Musk also wrote about the prime minister on “X.”

Musk was responding to a video posted of Trudeau, in which the prime minister described Kamala Harris’ U.S. presidential loss as a setback for women’s progress.

“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau said during a speech at the Equal Voice Foundation Gala in Ottawa on Tuesday night.

Trudeau also said women’s rights and women’s progress are “under attack overtly and subtly,” and that he “always will be a proud feminist.”

Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and founder of space company SpaceX, has been tasked to co-chair U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. He was also a prominent figure in Trump’s election campaign.

Wednesday’s post is Musk’s latest swipe at the prime minister since Trump was re-elected in November. Responding to a user on “X” on Nov. 7 asking for Musk’s help to get rid of Trudeau, Musk wrote “He will be gone in the upcoming election.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he let Trudeau know his comments were “not helpful.”

Ford, who with the rest of Canada’s premiers, met with the prime minister and several of his cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss how Canada would respond to Trump’s tariff threats.

“Donald Trump was elected democratically,” Ford said, adding that the premiers made sure Trudeau “got the message loud and clear.”

Musk’s post also comes during a tense time in Canada-U.S. relations.

Trudeau has been facing social media jabs from Trump following the prime minister’s visit to Mar-a-Lago nearly two weeks ago to discuss Trump’s tariff threat. Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports on his first day in office unless Canada addresses his border security concerns.

Following that meeting, U.S. network Fox News reported Trump joked during the dinner in Florida that if the potential tariffs would harm the Canadian economy — as the prime minister conveyed to him — perhaps Canada should become America’s 51st state(opens in a new tab).

Days later, Trump posted an A.I.-generated image to social media that depicted him standing next to a Canadian flag(opens in a new tab) and overlooking a mountain range with the caption “Oh Canada!”

Evidently, since he managed to buy the US Presidency and dupe enough dolts into voting for the Dotard, he thinks he can do it with Canada and a good portion of Europe.   He’s also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage.  The AP characterizes all these shenanigans thusly. “Musk ascends as a political force beyond his wealth by tanking budget deal.”  Is the legacy media going to sleep through all of this and cover it like mundane news?   Thomas Beaumont has the analysis.

In the first major flex of his influence since Donald Trump was elected, Elon Musk brought to a sudden halt a bipartisan budget proposal by posting constantly on his X megaphone and threatening Republicans with primary challenges.

The social media warnings from the world’s wealthiest man preceded Trump’s condemnation of a measure negotiated by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, which effectively killed the stopgap measure that was designed to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.

Washington was scrambled a day after Musk’s public pressure campaign. Trump on Thursday first declined to say whether he had confidence in Johnson. But later in the day, Trump praised him and House leaders for producing “a very good Deal,” after they announced a new plan to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling.

Before the new deal was reached, Congressional Democrats mocked their GOP counterparts, with several suggesting Trump had been relegated to vice president.

“Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on X.

What was clear, though, is Musk’s ascendance as a political force, a level of influence enabled by his great wealth. In addition to owning X, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and Space X.

Since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, unelected billionaires have bought Supreme Court Decisions and Justices. That’s taken a while to ferret out because the crooked Supreme Court Justices haven’t reported their spoils, and they have no ethics standards. We know they’ve got lobbyists that hand out checks, but most of them do not want to be caught in the act of kleptocracy. Musk has the audacity of a Bond villain.  It’s just out there for all to see and the press to cover.

House Speaker Bayou Moses has yet another agreement to put forward as the clock ticks to midnight EST. This is from The Hill. “Johnson says he has plan C to avert shutdown, vote expected.” I’ll believe it when I see it, frankly.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he has a plan C to avert a shutdown and the House will vote Friday morning on the legislation — but Republicans indicated there is not yet widespread agreement.

“Yeah, yeah, we have a plan,” Johnson said Friday morning as he entered the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning, so you all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan.”

He did not say what it entails. And lawmakers leaving meetings in Johnson’s office Friday morning indicated that there was not yet an agreement on a path forward.

“Anybody who’s telling you there’s an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, said as he left the Speaker’s office later Friday morning.

Lawmakers have little time to avoid a shutdown: Government funding runs out when the clock strikes midnight late Friday.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said on CNBC on shortly after Johnson’s comments Friday morning that he thinks Washington will probably avoid a shutdown since “we’re pushed up against Christmas here,” saying a “clean” funding extension is likely.

“There’s a chance today a clean CR [continuing resolution], short-term clean CR — it may be for two, three weeks,” Mullin said. “That was something that was discussed, you know, late last night, you know, even some discussions this morning. I’m not going to say that’s going to happen, but you know, that’s really the option that’s on the table.”

This is the usual way for them to avoid the problems.  Just keep kicking that can.  This just prolongs things.  This process has historically been messy and difficult. We may see a technical shutdown tonight, and that does not bode well, given the current antics and players.  This is from The Hill. “NY Democrat: ‘Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise.”  Joanne Haner has the lede.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Thursday suggested Elon Musk is the one directing the Trump administration, not President-elect Trump, pointing to the tech entrepreneur’s leading position in opposing the government funding stopgap measure.

“Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise,” Goldman said on MSNBC on Thursday. “And it is very clear that Elon Musk is now calling the shots.”

Musk made several social media posts Wednesday criticizing the spending measure deal unveiled by House Republicans this week. He called the more than 1,500-page measure a big “piece of pork” while calling on GOP lawmakers to oppose it.

Trump later in the day also called for the bill to be dismissed, suggesting instead that Congress pass a clean continuing resolution with a debt hike increase. That proposal was rejected Thursday night, and Congress is now working on a plan C with less than 24 hours to go before the deadline.

“We need to face the reality: Right now, we have President Elon Musk. And Trump? Maybe he’s vice president, I guess,” Goldman said. “Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he is not calling the shots.”

Goldman is not the only Democrat saying Musk is the one calling the shots in the administration; a number of Democrats have made similar arguments, while the White House has said Trump and the GOP are doing the bidding of billionaires.

 Meanwhile, the government is making plans for a shutdown.  This is from the Washington Post.

House Republicans are discussing the latest plan from leadership to fund the government and avoid a shutdown before a midnight deadline. Several Republicans said the Rules Committee will meet to send two separate bills to the floor, which would need a simple majority to pass. They are: A clean extension of current fiscal levels until mid-March that includes an extension of a farm bill that requires reauthorization, and a $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers. Republicans had no plans for an immediate vote on suspending the debt limit, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated demands. At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.” The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.

The budget fiasco isn’t the only thing threatening the US and the Global Economies.  Trump is just not giving up on his ignorant view of tariffs. This is from CNBC. Trade negotiations are not subject to the art of the Deal.  They are gamesmanship on an entirely different level. “‘Tariffs all the way’: Trump says European Union must buy U.S. oil and gas in trade ultimatum.” He thinks he looks like a tough guy, but anyone who knows about economic policy knows he just looks like an idiot.

Trump has made threats of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners including China, Mexico and Canada a signature part of his presidential campaign — and he’s continued the narrative as he prepares to enter office, despite economists warning of risks to domestic inflation.

Analysts say there is high uncertainty over the extent of the tariffs Trump will be willing — or able — to follow through with, and how much of his rhetoric is a starting point for striking deals.

His latest comment comes after EU heads of state held their final meeting of the year on Thursday, during which the topic of Europe-U.S. relations was discussed.

“The message is clear: the European Union is committed to continue working with the United States, pragmatically, to strengthen transatlantic ties,” European Council President António Costa said following the meeting.

Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy and dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that the EU needed to be prepared to retaliate to Trump’s threat.

“I think it is a transactional approach, we have to respond to this transactional approach. [Trump] mixes together energy and tariffs on goods, manufacturing and so on. I think it’s incorrect because the two topics are completely different,” Letta said.

“If the deal is proposed by Trump — such an asymmetric deal on topics that are not linked one to the other — I think we have to do the same.”

“Considering that the most asymmetric part is the relationship on the financial side, we have to start considering that maybe replying on the financial side could be a solution,” he said.

Ahead of the U.S. election in November, EU officials spent months preparing for a lurch toward U.S. protectionism and for a more confrontational relationship with the White House, in the event of a Trump victory. The EU has also made moves toward strengthening its relationship with the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, as a guard against potential clashes over trade and defense.

It’s disturbing that many folks and the media are acting like Joe Biden is already out of the picture. However, Republican dysfunction could also deal the final blow to the Republican Party.  Jeffries has control over his congress critters.  It’s obvious Johnson doesn’t.  You may remember that John Boehner threw up his arms and retired over the many chaotic factions. It hasn’t improved since then. Digby has an interesting view in her Salon column. “Elon Musk just killed Donald Trump’s honeymoon. We are seeing is an emerging crack in the GOP coalition.”

The activist base that had recently fashioned itself as the Tea Party after Obama’s election in 2008, quietly reinvented itself as the MAGA movement and lost all interest in fiscal austerity the minute Trump came on the scene. But there has always been some restiveness among the right-wing ideologues in the House and Senate who really want to massively cut discretionary spending and the so-called entitlements to the bone. They’re true believers in the idea that government should not help people, period. They were relegated to the back bench during Trump’s first term and spent most of their time tilting at windmills because Trump was happily spending like the treasury was his own credit line at Deutsche Bank.

He had no appetite for big spending cuts that might hurt his chances for re-election. After all, he didn’t run as a budget-cutting deficit hawk. He always claimed that he didn’t need to drastically cut spending because the debt would disappear with tariffs and unprecedented growth. He said the same thing during the 2024 campaign, insisting that it would even pay for government-funded child care, the worst of all possible worlds.

He pays lip service to cutting spending but he doesn’t really care about it. He’s told people he’s not worried about a U.S. debt crisis as he’ll be out of office by then. And he’s got stuff he wants to spend a lot of money on, like deporting millions of immigrants!

That’s never been clearer than this week when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., presented the bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government until March and all hell broke loose in the House. Those rascally, backbench Tea Party/Freedom Caucus ideologues finally got the leader they’ve been waiting for and his name is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.

It was a given that the Freedom Caucus gang would not vote for the bill. They vote no on everything. It had been negotiated by the bipartisan negotiators in both chambers with the knowledge that the Senate was still in Democratic hands and the tiny GOP majority in the House required a bipartisan compromise. Everyone knew that the screamers in the House would have a fit and call for Mike Johnson’s head (which is why they changed the rule raising the threshold from one member to nine.) And since the speaker knows better than to go to the john without getting Trump’s permission, you can be sure that Trump was kept informed of all of this. They all agreed that they would get rid of this hot potato, adjourn quickly and go home for the holidays.

That didn’t work out the way they planned it. Trump thought he had cleverly boxed Musk out of real power by creating a powerless “commission” for him and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy to come up with enormous spending cuts to reduce the federal government by as much as a third, which he knows won’t happen. However, Trump has essentially empowered Musk to speak for him by having him by his side every minute for the last three months. And seeing as he’s the richest man in the world who owns a major social media platform, he has plenty of power all on his own.

I have actually heard several talking heads think that Trump’s disinterest in the actual work for the job is worse this time around.  The suggestions that he just ran for office to stay out of jail and that he would just be a figurehead may come to fruition.  His dementia has worsened. He disappears from the public a lot.  He doesn’t appear to have a craving for attention or energy. It may be that Doddering Don will be happy for everyone else to do his work as long as he can cuddle up to foreign dictators. I’m surprised Musk got this much press coverage and went rogue on the budget negotiations.  The Donald that stalked Hillary wouldn’t have liked that.

But, who am I but a mostly retired economics professor who sometimes would just rather play the piano or guitar all day than think about this and have to unravel it for students.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BayouMoses #ElonMuskIsANAZI #FederalBudgetAndDeficit #HouseSpeakerMikeJohnson #PresidentEjectIncontinentiaButtocks

Mostly Monday Reads: The Press Bends the Knee

“So I’m guessing reducing everyone’s electric bill by half isn’t gonna happen either..” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancing!

I wanted to start this morning with something very normal, American, and positive. Today, President Biden will designate a National Monument in Maine for the late great Secretary of Labor under FDR Francis Perkins. She was the first woman to serve as a Secretary in a President’s Cabinet. She inspired me since she played a major role in economic and labor policy during the Great Depression.  She was appointed in 1933 and served 12 years. She should be known as the Mother of Social Security.  Her role in implementing and determining policy during the New Deal programs cannot be underestimated. She has touched the lives of all of us even though she left office in 1945.

The Hill has an article up today about her tenure and the memorial today.

During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.

Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, arrives for a special meeting, September 16, 1938 Image: Library of Congress ID hec.25045

She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.

The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.

The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.

You may read the Biden announcement at this link to the White House.  I found this journal article written about her by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D. at VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. “Perkins, Frances, Change Agent in: Eras in Social Welfare History, Great Depression, People, Recollections. Frances Perkins: She Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before.”  A wealthy daughter of a wealthy Boston family, she had the type of education that generally sent a woman to ‘spinsterhood.’ Her upbringing prepared her for her role, shaping some of the most strategic and important policies of the time.  Fannie Perkins persisted. She eventually landed in Greenwich Village, where she became a mediator. Her friends included Sinclair Lewis and Robert Moses.

A transforming event occurred while she was having tea with a wealthy friend who lived in Washington Square. Word came that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire. They rushed to it. The horror they saw there helped forge in Frances a lifelong commitment to worker’s safety and rights. That she was with a wealthy friend is significant. Though not wealthy she knew this life style and associated with wealthy people. Good friends from this group provided a place for her to live at key points in her career when her earnings were not enough to meet her needs.

After the fire there was increasing activity in campaigning for worker’s rights and safety while the social work job continued. Once a social worker who lived in the settlement house with Frances asked for help in getting a teenage boy out of jail because he was supporting his family. Frances went to the Charity Organization Society which after a long investigation deemed him “unworthy.” A friend suggested she try the Tammany Hall in the client’s district. The problem was helped within 24 hours. Her lobbying activities also put her in contact with other machine politicians. She met and struck up a close relationship with Al Smith. Working together they succeeded in getting a bill passed that limited women to a 54 hour work week. It was a compromise and liberals attacked her for giving up too much to get it passed. She knew that without the compromise there would have been no bill and not even the limited protection this bill offered. The lessons in becoming a skilled politician were piling up. In the past she had looked down on politicians but now concluded, “…that venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers (Downey, 2009,p. 39).” Understanding and accepting the value of working within the political order was one of the secrets of her success.

Her experiences in these activities taught her another valuable lesson. A politician told her that men trusted women who were motherly and not seductive sirens. Downey says, “She began to see her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do which is making themselves more physically attractive to men (Downey, 2009, p. 45). At this time she was 33 years old. Up to then the papers had characterized her as “perky” “pretty” “dimpled.” They now began to label her as “Mother Perkins” a name she disliked only a little less than being called “Ma Perkins.” Such was the price for shaping herself into a highly effective politician. In these activities Frances was aware of her limitations as a woman and avoided places where women did not usually go. She did her lobbying in hallways and not bars. This too became a lifelong skill. When people were brought together to work out differences she stayed in the background. Others often got credit for her greatest accomplishments. Who today identifies her as the moving force behind achieving Social Security?

Well, me.  I know what it took to get that kind of great change written into law and policy. You may read more at the link.

And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog Stop the Presses. “Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over. We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up.”  This is necessary since we have learned yet another big Media outlet has caved to President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks.  The brilliant suggestions continue past this bit.

As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:

We won’t shut up.

We won’t retreat from the news.

We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.

We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.

We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.

We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.

We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.

We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.

We won’t forget to be kind.

We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.

We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.

The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me.  Not backing down.  Nope.  Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture.  This is from Lisa Needham at Public Notice. ABC was never a station we watched much as my Dad was a big fan of Huntley-Brinkley. Also, George Stephanopoulos has never been on my list to receive any news or advice.  This disappoints me but doesn’t surprise me at all. “ABC bends the knee. Corporate media is surrendering already.”  That’s exactly what a stumbling despot wants on his way to power. He wants control of the media.  Wouldn’t want the truth sneaking out while you’ve got that propaganda thing going.

Since the election, plenty of the richest among us have rushed to curry favor with Donald Trump by showering him with cash.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg is giving Trump $1 million for his inauguration, as is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon, which will also stream the ceremony on Prime. But perhaps even more galling is ABC’s move to settle an absurd defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s completely defensible on-air statement that Trump had been found liable for rape.

ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library — a thing that has not yet been built and currently exists only as a website maintained by the National Archives. The network also agreed to pay $1 million toward Trump’s lawyer fees, continuing Trump’s streak of never paying for his own legal bills. And ABC and Stephanopoulos pledged to make a statement saying they “regret” the remarks.

It’s a bad omen for mainstream media coverage of Trump 2.0 and speaks to the importance of independent outlets that won’t be so easily intimidated.

Trump’s lawsuit rested on the incredibly flimsy argument that it defamed him to say he was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll when he was actually found liable for forced digital penetration. But Stephanopoulos’s comments were consistent with how the presiding judge described the case.

So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack.  I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time.  Here’s today’s offering at Krugman Wonks Out. “Crypto is for Criming. It’s not digital gold — it’s digital Benjamins.” You can write me down as a crypto hater.  I will never know how this Ponzi scheme took root, but then I can’t explain the appeal of President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks to me either. I have decided that some folks just want to be lied to if it feeds their raging ID and be told lies and sold a bill of goods just to think they may have something going for themselves and take a breather from their anger and resentment.

‘The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.

The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts.

What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.

You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link.  I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all.  He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC.  I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed.  This is my bailiwick.  My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! This is from Reuters. “Trump’s floated idea to shutter FDIC would be political heavy lift, say analysts.”  Fannie Perkins would really be in the fray on this one. How could they forget the Great Recession?  It started with financial overreach in the banking industry too.  CEOs and their marketing execs are more interested in becoming bigger than running an effective business.

U.S. bank stocks were unfazed on Friday after a report that President-elect Donald Trump’s team had floated the idea of shrinking or eliminating a top banking regulator, with analysts saying such a plan would not win the necessary political backing.

In recent interviews with bank regulator candidates, Trump advisers have asked whether the incoming president could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and move its deposit insurance function into the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Officials from the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with finding major government savings, participated in the interviews, the WSJ said.
However, while the current system comprising three federal and multiple state bank regulators is complex, a major restructure would struggle to garner the political support needed to get through Congress, which is also expected to be tied up on tax reform and crypto legislation next year, analysts and academics said.

“It would require congressional action and despite the Republican party majority in both the Senate and the House, it would require support from the Democrats which remains very unlikely,” ING sector strategist Marine Leleux wrote in a note.

Bank stocks were little changed on Friday.

The Trump transition team has been interviewing candidates for financial agency roles, including the bank regulators, in recent days, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. DOGE officials have been involved in some of those interviews, one said

I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this.  However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess.  Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher.  Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still!   Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!.  But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does.   This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen, which means I assume Rachel saw this, too. “Why Mitch McConnell’s latest clashes with Trump matter. Despite his recent partisan history, Mitch McConnell has thrown a lot of brushback pitches in Donald Trump’s direction lately.”  WTAF?

It was hard not to wonder how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, would respond to the news. As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

In a statement to NBC News, the Kentucky Republican — who’ll soon step down from his GOP leadership post — didn’t mention Kennedy by name, but the longtime senator said anyone seeking a confirmation vote must be specific about their intentions related to the polio vaccine.

“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell wrote. He added that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”

It was a notable brushback pitch from a key GOP official, but it was also part of a recent pattern: McConnell has thrown a lot of these pitches at Trump and his team lately.

• In an interview with the Financial Times, published last week, McConnell warned about the dangers of isolationism, which he seemed to tie directly to his party’s incoming president. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” the senator said, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First’ — that was what they said in the ’30s.”
• McConnell has a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, warning against the “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.” Referencing a signature phrase from Trump, the Kentucky Republican added, “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”
• The senator’s written piece echoed a speech he delivered earlier this month, rejecting his party’s isolationist wing.
• In Congress last month, Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP senators. While there was no official tally on the scope of the Republican opposition to the former Florida congressman, The New York Times reported that McConnell was among those staunchly opposed to his prospective nomination.

When political observers take stock on Capitol Hill, looking for Republicans who might be a thorn in the president-elect’s side, they tend to focus on members such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But what if McConnell — who’s expected to retire at the end of his term, and who doesn’t appear to have anything to lose by standing up to Trump — unexpectedly joins the faction of Trump skeptics?

To be sure, it’d be a mistake to get one’s hopes up.

These folks are the heirs of Edward R. Murrow?  Seriously?   Let me just leave you with a quote from the guy that covered the NAZIs running rampant over Europe and didn’t mince words.  Extra points if you know this was his sign-off!

Good Night and Good Luck!

“Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communications to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities that must be faced if we are to survive”

Edward R. Murrow

So here I am at the keyboard, your nerdy friend. We don’t have the same number of folks reading us that we used to back in the day when we were one of the top 25 Political Blogs.  But we’re here, and we’re still fearless. It is actually nice to see the country’s public intellectuals doing the Old School Blog thing these days on Substack. Throw them some bling if you can!  I started out on Fire Dog Lake way back in the day. I know BB was at The Daily Kos until the anti-Hillary stuff flared.  We’re here because we don’t like one-sided stories. We like to find the facts.

We’ve had terrible technical trouble with WordPress since they seem to have turned something that can’t figure out how to let people comment.  Half the time, I can’t even comment on my posts here.  I have to dive behind the front page to the dashboard. But, you know what … there’s a lot of stuff here from many people, and it’s still in the files. It’s been very close to 20 years now, too.  I’m unsure how to get it to any place safer now.  So, we’re here. We won’t shut up.  We’re a Refuge.

I have one more thing to share with you.  It’s important.  Please read it.  This is the Methodist church I want to remember. It’s also a story I’m familiar with.  Our neighbors from south of our border were here helping us clean up after Katrina when everyone else wasn’t.  I still want a taco truck on every corner, and we’re a lot closer to that down here in New Orleans than we used to be.  It just occurred to me that I likely wrote a lesson plan for my high school students when I was in my 20s, and my heart was an open book. I actually taught civics then.  Can you believe it?   This story is important.

In a world full of Kari Lakes, be a Francis Perkins. In a world full of George Stephanopoulos, be an Edward Murrow.

My church kept ICE from deporting our neighbor Jose. The Bible told us so.President-elect Donald Trump has plans to end a policy that generally restricts ICE from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations. http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb…

— Democracy Skies in Blueness – Resist (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2024-12-15T14:10:26.674Z

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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Finally Friday Reads: Let’s talk Kleptocracy!!

“Felon of the Year!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The Golden Age of Self-Dealing is about upon us! This year, we’ve had all kinds of new descriptions to assign the type of government the dumbest among us will usher in on Jan 20th. We’re in a polycrisis that will be managed by the least qualified and skilled among us; a kakistocracy.  We will be governed by the least fit, the most incompetent, and the proven corrupt. I spent a lot of time in my doctoral program studying Corporate Governance. However, we, the People, are much more than mere stockholders in our government. The powers invested in our Federal Government could lead to more serious crimes than even the worst things committed by companies like Enron.  Corporations can not print that universally accepted thing called government-backed currency. They cannot declare war and make and break treaties and alliances.  That’s probably the biggest responsibility. But our health, happiness, justice, and liberty are at stake. Are we really that expendable to them?

Much of what’s being discussed right now is dismantling agencies that have been vested with the responsibility to ensure many things businesses do won’t kill us or bilk us. So, what will likely happen if we are left to the wolves of Wall Street with no oversight? What about putting the conspiracy crowd in charge of guarding our public health or our safety when we fly, drive, or use any form of transportation? What about letting anyone with the financial ability to set up shop call themselves a university, a daycare, or any other form of school? Should we leave children to the likes of the folks who tell pollsters they don’t think Arabic numbers should be taught in school? The overlords will ship off their kids to the top boarding schools in the country while everyone else gets stuck with whatever the undereducated in their community will scream about. It’s a pretty depressing future.

So, I’m not even sure where to start, but how about with RFK Jr, the one with the worm that ate his brain, and the television and web-based Snake Oil Salesman, Mehmet Oz.  A USA Today headline blares this bit of happy news. “Dr. Mehmet Oz had up to $33 million in companies doing business with agency he’d run.” I don’t care if it’s in a blind trust; he knows if he owns it. Erin Mansfield has the analysis.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top health insurance regulator in the country, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has invested in companies that do business with the agency he would run.

Oz, Trump’s choice to run Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act, owned up to $33.7 million stock in these companies when he filed a financial disclosure during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania.

The TV talk show host owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group and between $50,000 and $100,000 in CVS Health, which both provide health insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.

He also owned between $5.8 million and $26.7 million in Amazon and between $1.6 million and $6.3 million in Microsoft, two major technology providers for the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, the agency he would run.

Accountable.US, a left-leaning group that compiled some of the research, said it reviewed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was unable to find evidence that Oz sold stocks in Amazon or Microsoft since the 2022 filing.

“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said in a statement to USA TODAY when asked if Oz still owns these stocks.

Oz will be required to fill out the same form after his official nomination as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz in 2020 said the federal government should allow all Americans to purchase coverage through Medicare Advantage, a program in which private insurance sell Medicare-regulated plans to seniors and people with disabilities.

In 2022, Oz owned stock in the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which covered 29% of Medicare Advantage patients in 2024, according to the health care organization KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. CVS Health covers another 12%.

I won’t give you my usual microeconomics lectures on monopoly, but for all that shouting about free markets these billionaires do, they sure love themselves markets that are so concentrated that you can count the number of providers with one hand.  This year’s study from this 2024 report by the US Government Accountability Office will give you the willies. Oh, and DOGE is after that Federal Agency, along with others. Just to make it short, these markets are dysfunctional.  The producer side of the equation has too much power in the market.  In this case, it’s literally the power of life and death.  And, it’s made based on whether they hit their profit goals for their stockholders.  Businesses only make money by cutting costs because doing anything inventive is hard.  You know what that leads to. “Private Health Insurance: Market Concentration Generally Increased from 2011 through 2022.GAO-25-107194.”

Several companies may be selling health insurance in a given market, but, as we previously reported, most people usually enroll with one of a small number of insurers. Known as market concentration, this can result in fewer choices of insurers and higher premiums due to less competition in the market.

Market concentration generally increased from 2011 through 2022, with three or fewer insurers holding at least 80% of the market share for the individual and employer group markets in at least 35 states. However, the markets for individuals became slightly less concentrated from 2020 to 2022.

In November 2022, GAO reported that, from 2011 through 2020, enrollment in private health insurance plans was concentrated, meaning a small number of issuers of those plans enrolled most of the people in a given market (GAO-23-105672). Specifically, GAO considered a market concentrated in a state if three or fewer issuers held at least 80 percent of the market share of enrollment. For this report, GAO examined the individual (coverage primarily sold to individuals who lack access to group coverage), small-group (coverage offered by small employers), and large-group (coverage offered by large employers) health insurance markets from 2011 through 2022 and found that concentration generally increased. Specifically:

• The overall individual market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022. Concentration in this market peaked in 2019 and became slightly less concentrated through 2022.

• The small-group market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022, but the rate of increase slowed more recently.

• The large-group market remained concentrated with only slight increases from 2011 through 2022 (see figure).

Companies do not merge for the purpose of cost efficiencies.  They merge because they think they will own more of the market and have more market power. This concentration will lead to much higher profits and less for everyone else.  I can spend an entire semester showing how broken concentrated markets are and that they desperately need supervision. But that serves everyone but the guys at the top, so these studies are written, empirical evidence is provided by nerds like me and think tanks, and nothing gets done policy-wise.

In the case of this market, people die for the illusion that all markets set free of oversight magically function on their own.  That’s a philosophical hypothesis that tests wrong over and over. Few markets meet the critical structure that makes them efficient by leaving them alone.  Most of those are wholesale commodities markets and not complex markets like those that try to find a price for financial contracts that tend to be very specific and unique, involve middlemen and market confusion, and can’t find a price with just interaction between buyer and seller.

I ran across this Blue Sky thread by billionaire Mark Cuban.  He gets it.  There’s more of this thread here. I can tell you anecdotally what it took me to get out of the Mutual of Omaha provide providers, which was basically Catholic Management sending patients to Catholic hospitals when I had my high-risk pregnancy.  I basically told my ex, who was one of these ghoulish cost cutters for that company, that he better get them to pay for me delivering at Methodist or that I would go there to deliver, and he could fricking pay for it for the rest of his natural born days.

He got the person in charge to send me to Methodist since it was the only hospital with a neonatologist at the time. He was a nice Jewish OB/GYN who later was in charge of Doctor Daughter’s residency.  Methodist Hospital obviously cared if their patients lived while having a complicated pregnancy.  You might notice that the way I got this treatment was to send an AVP of the company to twist their arm.  I remember that one of my friends doing his rotation in OB/GYN watched a patient at Creighton Medical Center get a lecture from a Priest brought in by her doctor on why she should carry her pregnancy to term despite the condition the baby had was a brain undeveloped so badly that it was spilling out from a lack of skull. There was no chance of survival, but there was a lot of risk to the mother.  I was not about to go through that. I was a happy little Methodist then, and that’s where I wanted to deliver my youngest.  The C-section went fine, and we both went home, although I did drive myself to the emergency room 10 weeks before she was due to hemorrhaging.

All this leads to Mark Cuban.  Leave these decisions to Doctors. not cost-cutting paper pushers like my MBA ex-husband.

If you want to understand why healthcare pricing is horrific, the first thing to know is that our system puts 100% of the credit risk for deductibles, copays and co-insurance on hospitals and doctors. That's insane. We have turned them into Sub Prime Lenders 🧵

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.948Z

When they can't collect payment, they raise prices to make up that loss. Plus they need to have all the administration of a mortgage loan servicer to try to collect those amounts. Which of course also puts people who can't afford the cost, in medical debt, which often leads to bankruptcy

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.949Z

Then there are insurance companies. The crazy thing is that for more than 50m people,those covered by self insured entities,ins comps don't actually provide insurance. They act as Care Authorizers and payment processors. Can the care occur and how much will be paid.

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.950Z

Their primary role is to make sure that there is not fraud by providers (think overuse of operations to inflate revenue , or services not covered by the plan the user is covered by and/or determine if care is "medically necessary "

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.951Z

That authorization process is one we should not be asking ins comps to do. That role should be performed by INDEPENDENT TPAs. With zero economic incentive to approve or deny. The first step is for self insured entities to use 3rd party TPAs and move away from insurance companies for this service

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.952Z

If they do this, they can use the insurance companies for their networks and software. But better yet, I think direct contracting is the future. For my employees, we are direct contracting with providers. We are stipulating that there will be no pre authorizations. We will trust the provider

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.953Z

Imagine that!  He says to trust the Doctors, not the guys making money off the ill.

So, I am staying with the theme of Health Care because BB alerted me to this while preparing to write this post. JJ couldn’t believe they would actually do this to us.  This headline is horrifying!  It’s from Reuters. “Trump to discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with RFK Jr.”  This is what happens when idiots vote for supposed “businessmen.”  WTF do either of these men know about vaccines? 

• Trump says could get rid of some vaccinations “if I think it’s dangerous”

• Kennedy is known for anti-vaccine stance, linked to debunked autism claims

• Experts warn ending vaccine programs could lead to disease outbreaks, deaths

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview published on Thursday said he will be talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, about ending childhood vaccination programs.

When asked if he would sign off if Kennedy decided to end childhood vaccinations programs, Trump told Time magazine, “we’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”

When asked if the discussion could result in his administration getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump said: “It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.

Asked in the Nov. 25 interview if he thinks childhood autism is linked to vaccines, Trump said: “No, I’m going to be listening to Bobby,” referring to Kennedy. Trump said he had a lot of respect for Kennedy and his views on vaccinations.

Can you hear me screaming all the way from the Mississippi River way down yonder in New Orleans?  And this is the headline that did it to me from The Guardian. “RFK Jr key adviser petitioned regulators to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Aaron Siri is helping Trump’s health secretary pick to select top jobs despite long history of attacking vaccines.” I wonder what Mitch McConnell might say if he could.

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.

Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.

“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.

When you have a savior complex, you think nothing will get you. There are a lot of those types up for Cabinet jobs.  Kari Lake is about to become the Voice of America.  I’ve already dubbed her Lady Haw-Haw after an American NAZI sympathizer who was a propagandist on the radio during World War 2.  NPR has a lot to say about that.  “Trump says Kari Lake will lead Voice of America. He attacked it during his first term.”  Our taxes are funding MAGA propaganda here. 

President-elect Donald Trump says Kari Lake, a local television news anchor-turned-MAGA politician, will lead the federally funded broadcaster Voice of America.

If successful, the move would put a loyalist at the helm of a news outlet that Trump sought to bring to heel under his appointee during the final year of his first term. Trump officials sought to strip the network and its parent agency of their independence during his first term, including actions later found to be illegal and in one case, unconstitutional.

But Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally install Lake; the hire is dependent on a bipartisan board beneath the chief executive of its parent agency.

Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.

Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”

A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.

Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Lake and his as-yet-unnamed agency leader will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”

I’d say it’s highly likely that Tulsi Gabbard will be more than willing to provide material for those broadcasts.  I’m sure Putin will oblige.  The latest outrage, for me, anyway, is that all the Trump TechBros are funding his inauguration with millions of dollars, and  Presidential Reject Incontinentia Buttocks is inviting all the favorite despots from the world over.  This is from CNN. “Xi’s RSVP is a snub to Trump, but the inauguration invite is still a big deal.”

Getting Xi to fly across the world would be an enormous coup for the president-elect — a fact that would make it politically unfeasible for the Chinese leader. Such a visit would put the Chinese president in the position of paying homage to Trump and American might — which would conflict with his vision for China’s assumption of a rightful role as a preeminent global power. At the inaugural ceremony, Xi would be forced to sit and listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president might say while lacking a right of reply. Xi’s presence would also be seen as endorsing a democratic transfer of power — anathema for an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with crushing individual expression.

Still, even without a favorable response, Trump’s invitation to Xi marks a significant development that sheds light on the president-elect’s confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. CNN’s team covering Trump reported that he’s also been asking other world leaders if they want to come to the inauguration — in a break with convention.

This is a reminder of Trump’s fondness for foreign policy by grand gesture and his willingness to trample diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The Xi invitation also shows that Trump believes that the force of his personality alone can be a decisive factor in forging diplomatic breakthroughs. He’s far from the only president to pursue this approach — which rarely works since hostile US adversaries make hardnosed choices on national interest rather than vibes.

Then, when will his cult figure this one out about his lie about being able to bring prices down, which he just admitted he can’t do?

Wake me up when this is all over.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #antiVaccinationTwits #DrMehmetOzWeirdo #KarLakeWeirdo #RFKJrWeirdo #SelfDealingTrumpCabinet #Self_ #TrumpCabinetRapeGang #TrumpCabinetWeirdos #VoiceOfTrump

Finally Friday Reads: Another Fine Mess by the Butt-Wipers of Incontinentia Buttocks

“Updated version of an oldie. Probably will be doing a lot of that since it’s like deja vu all over again.” John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I still have this dreadful sinus infection.  Last night, the temperature dropped to what usually doesn’t appear until the end of January here. The last two years have been insane, climate-wise.  We’ve got many active candidates for the next probable pandemic.  We’ve got an economy that’s currently the envy of the world.  The number of ongoing hot wars is frightening, with one being labeled a genocide by the well-respected Amnesty International.  “Polycrisis” is the term now used by folks who form the intellectual community of Strategic Advisors.   That would imply “military, geopolitical, economic, political, climate, and other crises.”

The convergence of all these crises creates a situation where we need to work globally more than ever.  So, the country, usually seen as the leader on the global stage, has a voting populace that just sent a clown car. Tom Nichols has this analysis written in The Atlantic.  “Trump Voters Got What They Wanted. Those who expect Donald Trump will hurt others, and not them, are likely to be unpleasantly surprised.”  The pathology of Trump voters is clearly stated in the clip below from The Bulwark Podcast. “The American people made their choice, and the fight to preserve the global democratic coalition against the global authoritarian movement continues. But maybe letting those voters see unadulterated Trumpism in the White House, without the baby bumpers—at least for a little while—is how we save America. Plus, the price of eggs v fascism, and Trump is going to inherit a great economy and claim responsibility for it.”

What do we do now that the lemmings are plunging over the cliff while chanting, “We really owned the libs”?

I think we can sum it up with a simple quote by George Carlin. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

So, given that we’re firmly in a state of Polycrisis, what can be made of Trump’s ill-suited cabinet choices? For one, we know they’re there to throw out every specialist in each Federal Department to cripple that department and to lessen the number of folks that carry out the mandates (i.e., laws) established by Congress over the years over a few centuries. Are we really going to be stuck with Patel of the Crazy Eyes and crazier thoughts? RFK jr, who is responsible for killing children in Samoa with his bizarre, unschooled thoughts on vaccines?  Will he really yank all the passports of his so-called enemies, and how long will that list eventually be? The entire west wing will be filled with sociopaths, narcissists, and conspiracy nuts at this rate.

So here’s Pete again.  Is Trump still trying to inflict him on our military?  You know, the ones that President-Reject Incontinentia Buttocks called ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’? Here are some thoughts by writer Cathy Young. “In Pete Hegseth’s Totalitarian Vision, Opponents of Christian Nationalism Are Commies and Political Enemies. Trump’s defense pick will help him pave the way to an authoritarian America.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is in trouble. While initial reactions to his nomination focused on the absurdity of this former Fox News anchor being elevated to second in command of the military, the main obstacles to Hegseth’s confirmation remain his various problems with women: a sexual assault allegation from 2017, disparaging comments about women in the military, and a newly surfaced 2018 email from his mother berating him for habitual mistreatment of the opposite sex.

But even more alarmingly: Hegseth is an ideological extremist who views political opponents as “the enemy” and political differences as war by another name. Worse, he’s a Christian nationalist of the stridently militaristic kind, which raises disturbing questions about his potential willingness to misuse the U.S. military for political purposes. This is not a characterization pieced together from the odd soundbite or two—Hegseth himself tells us who he is in his books. The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold.

The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.

Amanda Marcotte also writes about his love affair with White Christian Nationalism, a truly perverse twist on the New Testament, at Salon.

The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.

In addition to treating a broadly defined “Left” as the enemy, American Crusade also heaps scorn on ostensibly patriotic but overly complacent “fifty-fifty Americans.” The term comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who is quoted in the epigraph to the first part of the book: “There is not room in the country for any fifty-fifty American, nor can there be but one loyalty—to the Stars and Stripes.” The quote appears to be a garbled amalgam of several passages in Roosevelt’s speeches and writings, all of them from a very specific context: divided loyalties among some German-Americans during World War I. Hegseth’s “fifty-fifty American,” by contrast, refers to a well-meaning non-combatant in the culture war: a “squish” who disapproves of the perceived excesses of the progressive left but shrugs them off in the hope that “common sense will prevail,” or who doesn’t want to be “overly political,” or who thinks his or her local public school is great. For all his talk of reverence for America’s founding ideals, Hegseth’s version of Americanism sounds at times more like proto-totalitarian French Jacobinism, whose ideologues asserted that not only “traitors” but the “indifferent” and the “passive” must be punished.

After reading these analyses and their supporting citations, you can only be left with the idea that this man will have no problem turning the military on Americans out of step with his bizarre beliefs. I focus on this because Incontinentia Buttocks’ most recent picks have to do with ICE and his planned massive deportations and establishment of Concentration Camps.  This is from Politico‘s Myah Ward.  “Trump names ICE chief and makes another round of immigration announcements. The president-elect is planning an ambitious immigration agenda during his first 100 days.”

Trump said he was nominating Rodney Scott as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Scott served for almost three decades in the Border Patrol, and as the chief of the agency during the last year of the Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration. He helped implement Trump’s Remain in Mexico Policy, Title 42 and Safe Third Country agreements.

Trump also announced he was tapping Caleb Vitello, who’s currently the assistant director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to serve as acting director of ICE.

And the president-elect picked Tony Salisbury, who serves as the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, to serve as the deputy homeland security adviser on the White House Homeland Security Council. Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff, was also announced as Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Chile.

Immigration was Trump’s top priority on the campaign trail, and in his first 100 days he plans to begin the process of deporting hundreds of thousands of people and to roll back President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Outside allies expect the administration’s immigration policy, similar to Trump’s first term, to be run out of the White House by incoming Border Czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.

So, what happens with those Concentration Camps once he starts outloading Hispanic Americans?  Also, will we ever rid ourselves of Biggest Dickus? More about his funding of the Trump campaign is coming out, and it’s horrifying!  This is from NBC. “Elon Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars electing Trump, including financing mysterious ‘RBG PAC’. The super PAC, which defended Trump on abortion, got its more than $20 million from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust.”  This guy’s the Make American Apartheid South Africa freak!

Billionaire Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of more than $250 million he spent overall to boost President-elect Donald Trump, new campaign finance reports show.

Musk financed RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads contending that Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.

All of the money the group pulled in — $20.5 million — came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.

Robert Reich believes that Trump might just bring on a Civil War.  That’s a frightening thought that was discussed during his first term. But that was before he figured out how to blow things up. “How Trump could bring on a second civil war. “With his plans to use the military to root out undocumented immigrants and to use the Justice Department and FBI to punish his political enemies.”

Trump may force a second civil war on America with his plan to use the military to round up at least 11 million undocumented people inside the United States — even if it means breaking up families — send them to detention camps, and then deport them.

As well as his plan to target his political enemies for prosecution — including Democrats, journalists, and other critics.

What happens when we, especially those of us in blue states and cities, resist these authoritarian moves — as we must, as we have a moral duty to?

What happens when we try to protect hardworking members of our communities who have been our neighbors and friends for years, from Trump’s federal troops?

What happens when we refuse to allow Trump’s lackeys to wreak revenge on his political enemies who live within our states and communities?

Will our resistance give Trump an excuse to use force against us?

This is not far-fetched. We need to answer these questions for ourselves. We should prepare.

Trump has said he’ll use the Insurrection Act — which grants a president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

He’s also said he’ll use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to end sanctuary cities. Such cities now limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”

Those are all very good questions.  Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are trying to get some changes made to the Insurrection Act right now.  The Brennan Center has this analysis. “The Insurrection Act: A Presidential Power That Threatens Democracy. Congress must reform the outdated law, which is ripe for abuse.”

When former President Trump says he would conduct mass deportations of millions of people if elected again, some of his advisers talk about deploying the states’ National Guard to help carry out the task, even in states that oppose this extreme immigration policy.

But would he have the legal authority to do that? The answer is yes, it is legally possible under the Insurrection Act, an outdated law that is in urgent need of reform to prevent abuses of power and adapt  to modern times.

The Insurrection Act is among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, who can use it to deploy the U.S. armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest or domestic violence, and enforce the law when it is being obstructed.

There are few constraints to this presidential power — neither Congress nor the courts play a role in deciding what constitutes an obstruction or rebellion — and the law does not limit what actions military forces may take once deployed.

The law, which was last amended in the 1870s, has been rarely invoked. But it has been both used and misused in the past. Past uses include enforcing civil rights laws, helping companies break strikes, and suppressing so-called “race riots.”

Currently, there are calls for President Biden to invoke it to gain control of the Texas National Guard and order it to stand down in the city of Eagle Pass, where National Guard soldiers have occupied a park along the southern border to militarize the border and deny federal border protection agents access.

And let’s not forget Trump’s supporters urged him to use it to impede the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election.

Although there is no question that Biden could turn to the Insurrection Act to respond to a deliberate obstruction that prevents the federal government from performing immigration duties, he should refrain from doing so and instead seek to assert federal authority through the courts. The act should be a tool of last resort, and any power of this magnitude requires robust checks and balances that it currently lacks.

That’s why the Brennan Center has proposed comprehensive reforms that would narrow the criteria for deployment, specify what actions are and are not authorized when the act is invoked, and give Congress and the courts approval and review authority to serve as checks against abuse or overreach.

The current changes asked for by Warren and Blumenthal are outlined here by the Washington Insider. “Democratic Senators Urge Biden to Restrict Military Deployment, Citing Concerns Over Trump’s Plans.” Stacy M. Brown reports the details.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have called on President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to issue a directive limiting the use of military personnel for domestic purposes, warning against potential misuse by President-elect Donald Trump after he takes office on Jan. 20.

The senators stressed the importance of clear guidelines to prevent the military from being deployed against American citizens without explicit constitutional or congressional authorization.

The request is rooted in the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using federal troops in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress.

While the Insurrection Act provides a narrow exception in cases of insurrection, rebellion, or extreme unrest, Warren and Blumenthal called for further restrictions to prevent abuse.

“Any deployment of federal forces must occur only when state or local authorities are overwhelmed and unable to ensure public safety,” the senators wrote.

They also emphasized the importance of consulting Congress before deploying troops and ensuring service members understand their obligations to reject unlawful orders.

The senators’ letter notes growing concerns over Trump’s rhetoric and past actions.

During his first term, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to respond to Black Lives Matter protests, and some allies urged him to declare martial law after his 2020 election defeat. More recently, Trump has suggested using the military to deport immigrants without permanent legal status and relocating troops from overseas to the southern border.

Trump has picked a deputy for Kristy Noem at Homeland Security. This is reported by South Florida’s Channel 6 News. “Trump picks Miami HSI special agent in charge for deputy homeland security advisor. Anthony Salisbury is currently a Miami Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge.”

In his current role, Anthony W. Salisbury “manages all of HSI’s complex Federal Law Enforcement investigative programs related to National Security and smuggling violations, including counter-proliferation, financial crimes, commercial fraud, human trafficking, human smuggling, narcotics smuggling, transnational,” the former president shared in a post on Truth Social.

He has previously served as the acting deputy executive associate director of HSI in Miami, and supervised the activities of HSI offices throughout the Republic of Mexico as the deputy attaché.

In his post, Trump wrote: “Tony will bring his vast Law Enforcement, counter-narcotics, and counter-cartel experience to the White House where he will serve under Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor.”

Miller is Trump’s pick for deputy chief of policy, longtime adviser and an immigration hard-liner, AP News reports.

The more deeply these picks get embedded and embed The True Believers, the more difficult it will be to find and remove them as needed.  Again, I see most of the action needed to stop this lies within the courts and Congress.  Fortunately and unfortunately, the House and Senate are quite close even though they will be controlled by Republicans.  Are there enough sane people to stand up to these MAGA terrorists? The courts will likely follow the law until we hit  SCOTUS.  There are obviously embedded MAGA nuts there who continue to rewrite the Constitution and precedent.

We’ve got less than a month to develop a strategy that lets them know that We, the People, are not interested in becoming MAGA-compliant serfs. This won’t be pretty, but I’m not gonna quietly take it.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

S0, this is for all of you butt-wipers for Incontinentia Buttocks …

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968 #andOtherCrises #AssWipersForIncontinentiaButtocks #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #climate #economic #geopolitical #IncontinentiaButtocks #JohnBuss #military #political #Polycrisis #PosseComitatusAct #TheInsurrectionAct #TrumpCabinetRapeGang #TrumpCabinetWeirdos

Mostly Monday Reads: A little too much Biggus Dickus Energy

“American Oligarchs parade to MAGAville to grovel before the newborn king.” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I feel like I’m spending far too much time in Spamalot and Life of Brian, where the President-Elect, Incontinia Buttocks, makes pronouncements with his First Lady, Biggus Dickus, watching over his shoulder.  It’s been weird watching all the Tech Bros and Nepo Babies running to Mara Lardo to bend the knee. They are undoubtedly trying to encourage tariffs to take out other American Businesses, not theirs. The next act of resistance will be flying my flag at half-mast on January 20th.  I have also heard a few folks are flying Pirate Flags, too. I’m already trying to envision a massive blizzard in the District.  Maybe I can get the local VooDoo Priestess to join in. Naughtiest Maximus (pictured up top)has already shown up to kiss Incontina Buttocks. Melania even showed up for a visit by Justin Trudeau, who was closely watched by his wife. I imagine there’s never been this much ass licked before ascension.

So, I agree with this headline from Public Notice.  Noah Berlesky speaks for us all.  “Kash Patel’s nomination signals how bad things can get. The worst timeline comes into view.”  I hope the Republican Senators find their balls before this one comes up for review. That is if he or any of them come up for Senate review, which would be close to following the Rule of Law for President-Elect Incontinia Buttocks.

Patel is considered unqualified for the post even by staunch Trump-supporting conservatives. He’s made it clear he intends to use his power to attack the “deep state,” which he frames as a needed populist purge of a corrupt establishment. But in reality, Patel is poised to use the resources of the FBI to target Trump’s political opponents and criminalize resistance.

Rather than reforming the FBI, Patel and Trump are promising to embrace the worst of the bureau’s legacy, extending its use as an authoritarian cudgel to pursue grudges and crush dissent. The FBI, with its often ugly history, is a blunt instrument that Trump is intent on weaponizing — a goal that mostly eluded him during his first term when he failed to completely bend the bureau to his will.

Patel’s primary qualification for running the FBI is a spotless record of doing whatever Trump wants him to do. He was an undistinguished Florida defense attorney and DOJ staffer until 2017, when he was hired to work for the House Permanent Select Committee, which at the time was led by MAGA flunky Devin Nunes.

Patel headed the committee’s investigation of Russian interference on behalf of Trump in the 2016 campaign. He was the main author of the “Nunes memo,” a partisan attack on the Justice Department intended to obscure links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump was delighted by Patel’s open hackery and declassified the document despite Justice Department objections.

…

Following Trump’s reluctant departure from office, Patel continued to serve as a willing and eager jack-of-all-lies.

Patel failed to show up for at least one deposition before the January 6 Committee, which wanted to talk to him about his role in Trump’s coup plotting. Trump gave Patel access to his presidential records, supposedly to write an account of his term that denied Russian collusion in the 2016 election. When it became clear that Trump had improperly removed some classified presidential records, Patel rushed to his defense, claiming in an interview with Breitbart that Trump had magically declassified everything. But other Trump administration officials disputed that, and Patel ended up testifying before a grand jury in return for immunity.

So, we will see more of Lickus Bottomus, Bottom for short.

Fortunately, the actual President still has power.  He gave his son, Hunter, a blanket pardon, so Trump has one less person to torment. Let’s hope First Dog Commander can get one, too.

He’s also giving ambassador positions to cronies, criminals, and children’s inlaws. This is from the BBC. “Trump chooses Jared Kushner’s father for ambassador to France.”  I guess he’ll be out there searching for the next Trump properties.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has selected Charles Kushner as his pick for ambassador to France.

Mr Kushner is a real-estate developer and the father of Jared Kushner, husband of his daughter Ivanka Trump. Trump pardoned Mr Kushner during his first term, waving away a federal conviction in 2020.

In a post to his social media site Truth Social, Trump said Mr Kushner is “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests”.

The nomination appears to be the first administration position that Trump has formally offered to a relative since his re-election.

Trump’s first real pardons will likely be all the felons and traitors on January 6.  They’ll be joining whatever form of the SS gets dreamed up by Tulsi Gabard and Pam Bondi.  These are the two Vestal Virgins that worship Incontina Buttocks.  It’s said the VVs are always chosen before puberty and guard the sacred hearth where all the evidence is burned. Matt Gaetz will likely be installed as a White House Satyr in charge of recruiting initiates.

Of course,  we’re discovering much more about the other Satyr still on the Cabinet list, Pete Hegseth.  This is from The New Yorker, as reported by Jane Mayer. “Pete Hegseth’s Secret History. A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.” Thanks to BB for following his Bacchanalian romps.

After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration,” Cheung maintained.

But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. Remember, Satyrs often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, usually with little success.  That’s why most of them rely on money to get the deeds done.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report of Hegseth’s drinking as alarming and disqualifying. In a phone interview, Blumenthal, who currently leads the Senate committee that will review Hegseth’s nomination, told me, “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” Blumenthal went on, “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He’s involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He’s the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take.”

Let’s go back to Pam Bondage for this analysis by Marci of Empty Wheel. “America Just Failed the Test of Responding to Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions.”  This really puts Biden’s Pardon of his son in place.  We know what’s coming next, and Well, it ain’t that pretty at all.

Let’s imagine that, two years from now, Pam Bondi rolls out charges against some onetime adversary of Donald Trump. To the extent that journalists will still be employed and reading court filings, to the extent that prosecutors under Emil Bove (who at SDNY oversaw a team sanctioned for discovery violations) comply with discovery requirements, the adversary in question learns the following about his prosecution:

• The case started when an investigator started looking into a transnational trafficking network
• The investigator discovered that the prominent adversary had paid one of the sex workers trafficked in the network
• Rather than pursuing the traffickers, the investigator used the payment for sex as cause to open an investigation
• Of course, no one is going to charge a John … so the investigator starts pulling divorce records and four year old tax returns to try to move from that payment for sex work to something that can be charged
• Then the investigator started incorporating oppo research from Peter Schweizer into his investigation
• Kash Patel’s FBI set up protected ways to accept tips from Trump supporters who’ve doctored documents to create a crime
• Trump called up Bondi and told her to take more aggressive steps
• Trump called up foreign leaders asking for help on this prosecution
• Bondi then set up a way to launder that information from foreign sources, including known spies, into the investigation of the adversary
• Patel’s FBI asked a partisan informant to fabricate claims against the adversary
• Trump publicly called out prosecutors — resulting in them and their children being followed — because they had not yet charged his adversary
• Ultimately, the adversary got charged on 5-year old dirt, and only then, after charging, did prosecutors quickly do the investigative work to win the case at trial

Now, as I’ve described it, you surely imagine you’d say, wow, that looks like a thoroughly corrupt prosecution, a clear case of Trump using DOJ to punish his adversaries.

Right?

It’s not so much that investigators didn’t, after the fact, find a crime to charge. They did. If you investigate most high profile people long enough, you’ll find something to charge, particularly if multiple people come to DOJ with doctored evidence to help create that crime.

It’s that someone found the name of an adversary in the digital records of crimes that were more important to investigate, and instead of pursuing that crime, used the electronic record as an excuse to keep looking until they found some evidence of a crime against Trump’s adversary.

Everyone would recognize that’s what happened, right?

Of course not. Of course no one would recognize that that was a political prosecution.

We need no further proof than the fact that none of those very same details showed up in any of the coverage of the Hunter Biden investigation. Not now that he has been pardoned. Not when all these details came out last year. Not in any of the retrospectives of the times Trump demanded investigations on his adversaries.

What will happen instead is that a bunch of self-important DC scribes will chase the most salacious allegations, provide endless headlines about sex workers and wild parties. The DC scribes will ignore every detail about the legal investigation — every one!! — and instead use the prosecution as an opportunity to sell political scandal. And also, they will point to their Tiger Beat coverage as proof, they say, they are not politically biased.

Rather than diligently rooting out the obviously politicized prosecution, the press will be complicit in it.

And rather than deciding that the adversary was the target of an obviously politicized prosecution, American public opinion would instead decide that the adversary was icky, and because he is icky, his statements about Trump cannot be credited.

That is what political prosecutions look like. That is, of course, precisely what the Hunter Biden prosecution was (ignoring the assurances from prosecutors who say no one with the fact set Hunter faced would be charged). Every single bullet has an analogue in the Hunter Biden case. That obviously political prosecution is what happened.

Once the GOP got the House majority, they did nothing else but platform these claims, which a different set of self-important scribes treated as an interesting process story, not an obvious case of a great abuse of government power.

And now that Biden has pardoned his son, the very same self important scribes who ignored all the signs this was a political prosecution, are giving non-stop coverage to a pardon that — unlike those of Trump’s Coffee Boy, National Security Adviser, campaign manager, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker — are not about self-protection, most with no mention of all the evidence Trump ordered up this prosecution to target Joe Biden.

The question is, what are we going to do about this, now that we have rock solid proof the press establishment is not only incapable, but wildly uninterested, in rooting out this kind of politicized prosecution — at least not when they can instead sell scandal?

In the face of seeing Pam Bondi and Kash Patel preparing to redouble efforts to find politicized prosecutions against Donald Trump’s adversaries, Joe Biden chose to end the process, with his son, at least.

I’m actually on the record opposing the pardon — but not for the reasons everyone else is. I don’t think pardoning Hunter in this circumstance is corrupt. I take Biden at his word that he changed his mind about pardoning Hunter. I’m far more interested in Trump admitting he was lying about his plans to implement Project 2025 than that Biden reneged on assurances no one much believed anyway.

I oppose the pardon because it eliminates Hunter’s standing to appeal and with those appeals to begin telling the story that the media chose to ignore. I oppose the pardon because if we don’t start laying out how Trump already politicized DOJ while there’s a good base of legitimate judges in place, it’ll be far too late.

I frankly will give Biden a pass on this, knowing that he’d never do it if Harris was on her way to inauguration.  I know the Rule of Law is important. But how do we know what will be left of that once Trump takes office?  Frankly, I hope he’s staying up nights Trump-proofing things.  All you have to do is go to the Memeorandum page to see how obsessed the legacy media is with this action.

• Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico: We haven’t seen a pardon as sweeping as Hunter Biden’s in generations
• Ivana Saric / Axios: What to know about presidents pardoning family members and allies …
• Rebecca Shabad / NBC News: White House press secretary defends Hunter Biden pardon: ‘Enough is enough’
• Alexander Burns / Politico: Joe Biden’s Parting Insult
• Alexander B. Howard / CIVIC TEXTS: On pardons, smartglasses, an authoritarian administration, and a case of the Cyber Mondays

Okay, let me address that last one.  Here are Alexander’s thoughts.

I understand why President Biden pardoned his son, even if I believe doing so set a terrible precedent at the exact wrong time in our history, along with breaking a promise he had repeatedly made for years.

It’s the icing on a rotten cake, in terms of allowing the appearance of corruption to fester and then issuing a sweeping pardon to encompass all acts for a decade, presumably to head off Trump persecuting Hunter Biden further.

I do not, however, buy arguments that Biden’s pardon someone now gives permission to Trump to abuse the pardon power or accelerates the shredding of constitutional and legal norms that the Trump administration began 8 years ago. Trump.

On his way out the door, Trump pardoned dozens of his supporters, including those convicted of far worse crimes that lying about substance abuse when buying a gun or tax offense. He’s been dangling pardons to people convicted of assaulting federal police or engaging in seditious conspiracy. There is no good faith from that quarter, so do not treat his claims about the abuse of the pardon power with any seriousness.

Yeah, what he said.  And also what he said on this.

As Tom Nichols observed in the Atlantic, commenting on Trump’s nomination of a conspiracy theorist who has promised to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies and the press to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, “If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.”

Republican Senators are now a final bulwark against tyranny, after failing to uphold their oath by removing a corrupt demagogue from power & banning Trump from office in his second impeachment trial. The initial signs are not promising, but enough lawmakers are expressing doubt about appointing a

Every institution has now failed to check and balance Trump’s corruption and criminal conspiracies, from the Justice Department to Congress.

Worse lies ahead, if Trump is successful in installing loyalists across the defense, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies.

A transition insider told Axios that Trump “no longer listens to people, usually Senators, who tell him ‘that’s not how it’s done’ or ‘it doesn’t work that way.’ He no longer accepts that rationale.”

Senators must choose between their oaths to our Constitution, or Trump.

Yes, don’t forget the Senate.

The Romans used the name senatus for their most important seat of government, which derives from senexmeaning ‘old’ and meant ‘assembly of old men’ with a connotation of wisdom and experience. Members were sometimes referred to as ‘fathers’ orpatres, and so this combination of ideas illustrates that the Senate was a body designed to provide reasoned and balanced guidance to the Roman state and its people.

And, originally, our Senate was designed to “protect the rights of individual states and safeguard minority opinion in a system of government designed to give greater power to the national government.”

The Senate has two important and specific duties. Senators are empowered to conduct impeachment proceedings of high federal officials, are tasked with exercising the power of advice and consent on treaties, and play an important role in the confirmation (or denial) of certain appointments including ambassadors and judicial court justices.

You can’t look at those two things; one from an explanation of historical Rome, and the bottom one is Senate.gov describing itself to realize the institution has morphed. But then we still have to look at the voters to determine how someone as nauseating as Ted Cruz continues to weasel his way back into office.  Those two important and specific duties of Senators have not been carried out very well in the times of Incontinia Buttocks. What happens in the Senate and what doesn’t happen in the Senate will materially impact our lives.  I’m not certain that my two Senators are reachable, although Cassidy has done the right thing several times, much to my surprise. I’m not sure it will help, but all I can think of right now is that we all need to hold their feet to the fire or be consumed by it.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BidenPardonsHunter #BiggusDickus #IncontiniaButtocks #MattGaetzWeirdo #montyPython #Nepobabies #Nepotism #PamBondiWeirdo #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #Satyrs

Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily

Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed.  I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class.  I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.”  I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.

I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again.  He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business.  Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted.  Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.

This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.”   Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America.  This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.

Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.

The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.

This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.

The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.

“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.

The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.

Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.

Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.

President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation.  This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.

Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”

Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”

Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.

This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.

Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.

“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.

Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”

Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.

Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.

China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders.  USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”

Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.

Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.

The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.

Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.

A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats.  This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.”  This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.

An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.

America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.

“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.

The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.

While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.

Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.

“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.

This is what happens when morons vote for a moron.  David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security.  “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”

Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.

It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.

Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.

But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.

Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.

It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.

Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.

But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.

Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC.  “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.”  It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.

The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.

Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.

However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.

“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.

The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel.  It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions.  It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.”  We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.

Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.

Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.

Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?

So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?

To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions.  For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization.  And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.

With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.

And they will.

The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”

The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.

And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)

The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.

We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way.  We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet.  It comes from the ultimate dotard.  The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie.  The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?”  Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.

• Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.

• In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.

• When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.

In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”

But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.

The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.

The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.

In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.

“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.

There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives.  There is no mandate radical change there.  This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.”  The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.

Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.

They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.

But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).

Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.

“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.

President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)

Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.

“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”

“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.

“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.

Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.

Have a good weekend!  Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang

Finally Friday Reads: The Chaos Kakistocracy

“Jobs, jobs, Jobs!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Regime changes haven’t happened yet, but businesses are already planning major layoffs, freezes, and price increases.  That signals a type of economy we haven’t seen for a while. It’s called stagflation.  For those of us who lived through that, you’ll remember the pain that went from the Nixon years to the Reagan years. It includes painful unemployment and rabid inflation. We just have to hope that the plans to take political control of the Fed don’t come to fruition. The current Fed Chair says he will not resign.  That doesn’t even include the conversation about the massive removal of Federal workers and the deportation of the migrants that would have a devastating impact on the farm and most service industries.

Did I use enough citations for you?   Let’s look at a few of them but I’ll get to the bottom line.  Pay off all your debt as much as possible. Don’t take on anything that requires financing. Interest rates will go up as inflation returns.  The entire thing is a vicious circle we learned much about in the 1970s. The 1980s taught us that tax cuts for the rich only drive up the deficit.  Get ready for a repeat of that on steroids.

Traditional Republicans have always been migrant-friendly.  However, that’s back when they were more focused on getting the business donors enriched and less worried about things like “poisoning the blood” and blaming them for statistically nonexistent problems, like crime and eating pets.  However, that was before the rise of the Christofascists and the NAZIs ushered in MAGA.

The Brookings Institute reviewed recent peer-reviewed research in economics in September that shows exactly how devastating the cost of these deportations will be.  That does not even cover the psychological and emotional trauma to communities forced to witness the round-up of their neighbors to massive concentration camps.  This is a must-read. Chloe East is the researcher.

Increased deportation is associated with poorer economic outcomes for US-born workers

Across multiple studies, economists have found that once SC is implemented, the number of foreign-born workers in that county declines and the employment rate among U.S.-born workers also declines. My research with Annie Hines, Philip Luck, Hani Mansour, and Andrea Velásquez finds that when half a million immigrants are removed from the labor market because of enforcement (due to deportations and indirectly due to chilling effects), this reduces the number of U.S.-born people working by 44,000.

Why do deportations hurt the economic outcomes of U.S.-born workers? The prevailing view used to be that foreign-born and U.S.-born workers are substitutes, meaning that when one foreign-born worker takes a job, there is one less job for a U.S.-born worker. But economists have now shown several reasons why the economy is not a zero-sum game: because unauthorized immigrants work in different occupations from the U.S.-born, because they create demand for goods and services, and because they contribute to the long-run fiscal health of the country.

First, unauthorized immigrant workers and U.S.-born workers work in different types of jobs. Figure 1 shows the percentage of unauthorized immigrant workers, authorized immigrant workers, and U.S.-born workers that are in each of the 15 most common occupations among unauthorized immigrants.

It is clear that unauthorized immigrants take low-paying, dangerous and otherwise less attractive jobs more frequently than both U.S.-born workers and authorized immigrant workers. For example, almost 6% of unauthorized immigrants work as housekeepers, construction laborers, or cooks, compared to about 2% of authorized immigrant workers and 1% of U.S.-born workers (See Figure 1).

Occupations common among unauthorized workers, such as construction laborers and cooks, are essential to keep businesses operating. Deporting workers in these jobs affects U.S.-born workers too. For example, when construction companies have a sudden reduction in available laborers, they must reduce the number of construction site managers they hire. Similarly, local restaurants need cooks to stay open and hire for other positions like waiters, which are more likely to be filled by U.S.-born workers.

Caregiving and household service jobs are also common among unauthorized immigrants. The availability and cost of these services in the private market greatly impacts whether people can work outside the home. My research with Andrea Velásquez and new research by Umair Ali, Jessica Brown and Chris Herbst find that Secure Communities impacted the childcare market—the supply of childcare workers fell. This led to a reduction in the number of college-educated mothers with young children working in the formal labor market.

You’ll notice women bear the brunt of this policy, but it goes nicely into the plan to get women back into the kitchen.  Please read about the impact of the deportation in 2008 that happened in South Carolina, called the SC Act or Secure Communities Act.  The details are gruesome but here’s the bottom line in a move to deport 400,000 people in a limited area.

While only people who were arrested had their immigration status checked under SC, the policy nonetheless impacted a large portion of immigrants. There were broad “chilling effects” of the policy that meant even people not targeted for deportation became fearful of leaving their house to do routine things like go to work. This is partly because the program did not only target serious criminals—the most serious criminal conviction for 79% of those deported was non-violent, including traffic violations and immigration offenses, and another 17% were not convicted of any crime.

An article that appeared in Mother Jones, also last September, details the devastation that will come if mass deportation happens. Isabela Diaz provides the analysis. “How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America. It would be brutal, costly, and likely illegal.”

This time around, they plan to invoke an infamous 18th-century wartime law, deploy the National Guard, and build massive detention camps—and intend on reshaping the federal bureaucracy to ensure it happens, drafting executive orders and filling the administration with loyalists who will quickly implement the policies. “No one’s off the table,” said Tom Homan, the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump. “If you’re in the country illegally, you are a target.”

If Trump and his allies have it their way, armed troops and out-of-state law enforcement would likely blitz into communities—knocking on doors, searching workplaces and homes, and arbitrarily interrogating and arresting suspected undocumented immigrants. The dragnet would almost certainly ensnare US citizens, too.

The nation’s undocumented immigrants grow and harvest the food we eat, construct our homes, and care for our young and elderly. They pay billions in taxes, start businesses that employ Americans, and help rebuild in the wake of climate disasters.

Not only would Trump’s plan rip families and communities apart, but it also would have devastating effects for years to come, including on US citizens who perhaps have overlooked how integral undocumented immigrants are to their everyday life. Trump frames immigration as an existential threat to the United States. He has said immigrants are “taking our jobs,” are “not people,” and are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The reality is that if his plan were implemented, American life as we know it would be ruined—even for those cheering for mass deportation.

This will be in the hands of many of the folks who say they’re Christians but miss a major cultural value in both the Old and New Testaments. I was raised Presbyterian, attended my best friend’s Lutheran Church, baptized my girls in the Methodist church, and taught a large number of Sunday School classes. I’m not unfamiliar with the Bible.  Matthew was my favorite of all.  Whenever you ask me about my favorite verses, I’ll quote the Beatitudes and anything from Matthew or James. Trump is an actor, and his piety display is just an act.

Matthew 25:31-40 Jesus says, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” and “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

Numbers 15:16 The Bible says, “I am the Lord, and I consider all people the same, whether they are Israelites or foreigners living among you”.

Here’s a study cited in the Mother Jones article.

According to a 2016 report by the Center for American Progress, deporting 7 million workers would “reduce national employment by an amount similar to that experienced during the Great Recession.” GDP would immediately contract by 1.4 percent, and, eventually, by 2.6 percent. In 20 years, the US economy would shrink nearly 6 percent—or $1.6 trillion. Trump’s plan would lead to a dire shortage of low-wage workers, which would “bring on a recession while reigniting inflation,” predicts Robert J. Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration.

The costs of mass deportation will be devastating. Here is another study on the costs from The American Immigration Council.

“Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) along with publicly-available data about the current costs of immigration enforcement, this report aims to provide an estimation of what the fiscal and economic cost to the United States would be should the government deport a population of roughly 11 million people who as of 2022 lacked permanent legal status and faced the possibility of removal. We consider this both in terms of the direct budgetary costs—the expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing, and removal—that the federal government would have to pay, and in terms of the impact on the United States economy and tax base should these people be removed from the labor force and consumer market.

In terms of fiscal costs, we also include an estimate of the impact of deporting an additional 2.3 million people who have crossed the U.S. southern border without legal immigration status and were released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from January 2023 through April 2024. We consider these fiscal costs separately because we don’t have more recent ACS data necessary to estimate the total net changes in the undocumented population past 2022, or the larger impact on the economy and tax base of removing those people, an impact that is therefore not reflected in this report.

In total, we find that the cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both those populations—an estimated total of is at least $315 billion. We wish to emphasize that this figure is a highly conservative estimate. It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time—incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible. For one thing, there would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an interim step. To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people.

In order to estimate the costs of a longer-term mass deportation operation, we calculated the cost of a program aiming to arrest, detain, process, and deport one million people per year—paralleling the more conservative proposals made by mass-deportation proponents. Even assuming that 20 percent of the undocumented population would “self-deport” under a yearslong mass-deportation regime, we estimate the ultimate cost of such a longer operation would average out to $88 billion annually, for a total cost of $967.9 billion over the course of more than a decade. This is a much higher sum than the one-time estimate, given the long-term costs of establishing and maintaining detention facilities and temporary camps to eventually be able to detain one million people at a time—costs that could not be modeled in a short-term analysis. This would require the United States to build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists. The government would also be required to establish and maintain over 1,000 new immigration courtrooms to process people at such a rate.”

How’s that for dismantling the state and getting rid of Federal Workers?  It sounds like a bit of hypocrisy to me.

There’s that stagflation prognosis again.  That was the time of the economy in 1980 when I got my first house fixed rate loan at 16.7%, which was only one of three mortgage loans made that month at the largest Savings Loan in the heartland.  I worked there so they gave me a discount down to 12%.  Let’s see all those young people trying to buy their houses in that environment. My loan now is fixed at 3%.  Thank you, Obama!

One of the worst possible things that could happen is allowing politics back into Fed Policy.  This was a problem that was fixed by law because obvious presidential interference generally led to low interest rates that brought more inflation.  I have purposefully used a conservative-bent economist for this analysis. “The Economic Consequences of Political Pressure on the Federal Reserve.”  Elonia is hot for this pogrom. Tell me again, who thinks that Nepobaby is brainy?  Again, if you lived through the dread of Nixon’s years, you’ll remember the inflation he brought trying to get the Fed to loosen interest rates during a period of inflation.  It wasn’t pretty.

The data on personal interactions by themselves are at best a noisy measure of political interference with the Fed. For example, in a recession the president might be more likely to contact the Fed chair and ask them about their view on the economy. In this instance, personal interactions would increase, but not because they reflect political pressure.

To overcome this identification challenge, I exploit an increase in president–Fed interactions that plausibly took place purely for the purpose of influencing Fed policy and arguably had an impact on the stance of monetary policy. In his desire to be re-elected in 1972, Richard Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to ease monetary policy in 1971. Burns, a Republican and friend to Nixon, reportedly gave in to Nixon’s pressure.

A variety of external evidence corroborates this interpretation of the Nixon–Burns clash, including recordings from the “Nixon tapes” and entries in Arthur Burns’ personal diary. For example, Burns writes in his diary that Nixon urged him “start expanding the money supply and predicting disaster if this didn’t happen.” To support the interpretation that Burns eased policy in response to Nixon’s pressure, I show that Romer and Romer (2004) uncover easing shocks to monetary policy prior to Nixon’s re-election. I also present supporting evidence from the voting behavior of the FOMC.

I exploit the narrative around Nixon’s pressure in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) that contains the president–Fed interactions as well as standard macro data. I identify a shock to political pressure on the Fed based on narrative sign restrictions. Specifically, I define a political pressure shock as an increase in president-Fed interactions that eases policy in an inflationary way and constitutes the main contributor to the spike in president–Fed interactions in late 1971.

Yes. This is the kind of thing I do for my research.  Just go look at the graphs.  They speak volumes.

The number of president–Fed interactions displays persistence after the political pressure shock hits, with the IRF reversing to closes 0 after around two years. The shock induces a monetary easing, with a roughly 100 basis points lower interest rate after a few quarters. The price level response to the shock builds up gradually and persistently and reaches a 5% higher price level after four years. These estimates imply that exerting political pressure 50% as much as Nixon did, over a period of six months, permanently increases the US price level by more than 8%.

The responses of real GDP and fiscal variables are not distinguishable from zero. This finding indicates that political pressure primarily induces a price level effect. It turns out that in some subsamples (not shown here), it is possible to detect a significant response of real GDP, but this response is actually negative.

This cartoon is actually from the American Enterprise Institute. This shows you have far Republican Politicians have actually gotten from actual Economics.

That’s a dismal scientist telling you that all hell breaks loose whenever an American President tries to influence the Fed.  Nixon wanted to win the reelection and pressured the Fed to drop interest rates, which caused massive inflation. eventually, we got unemployment, and that’s stagflation.  That’s what poor Jimmy Carter inherited.  The Tax Cuts for the Rich narrative through the Reagan years was even worse. I was studying economics at the time and became an economic analyst for that Savings and Loan that went bankrupt because of that policy. (I surprised them with that data, the first of many times I was the brains of a clueless CEO.) When the Reagan administration pulled off the usury laws, we got a financial crisis in 1984, which later looked mild compared to the one Dubya brought on in 2008, also known as the SubPrime Crisis.

NPR unravels the plan that Trump has to control the Fed. “How Trump’s wish for more Federal Reserve control could impact economy if he’s reelected.”

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, first, let’s start with a bit of a reality check. How feasible is it for Donald Trump to fundamentally change the autonomy of the Fed and change the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the president if he is reelected?

• Krishna Guha:

  Well, it’s complicated.

  So, first off, for President Trump, if reelected, could certainly let his views on monetary policy be known loudly and including through social media and other nonconventional channels. He could try to do what’s called jawboning, leaning on the Fed in public to take certain actions on interest rates.

  Actually changing the institutional independence of the Fed, that’s more challenging. The Fed’s independence is enshrined in the act of Congress the Federal Reserve Act, and that makes the chairman, for instance, removable as generally understood, only for a cause, which would mean something pretty extreme to make him unfit for office.

  The president can’t simply appoint additional members to the Federal Reserve Board. He’d have to wait until vacancies became available and those only become available very slowly. So it would be tough. Now, there is one complication, and that is that it is somewhat unsettled as to what the exact legal status of the Fed chair is and whether the president might have some legal grounds for being able to dismiss a Fed chair.

  That’s not something that I think any mainstream lawyer or central banker believes is right, but it hasn’t been fully tested in the courts. And so there’s some outside possibility that the president could attempt to assert an authority over the Fed chair that has not been understood to be there.

• Geoff Bennett:

  If we look to other countries or look back in this country’s own history, what does it tell us? Does a Central Bank that remains independent from political influence, does that yield better monetary policy and better macroeconomic decision-making?

• Krishna Guha:

  There’s just very, very strong evidence from the U.S. itself and from countries around the world that independent central banks tend to achieve better economic outcomes.

  And that ultimately doesn’t just benefit society, doesn’t just benefit the economy. It, in the end, tends to benefit the president as well. And so I think there’s actually a lot of good reason why it would be not to try to assault the independence of the Central Bank.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Critics have blasted the Fed for being too slow to respond to inflation. And there will certainly be folks who say, why is it such a bad thing to have the Fed accountable to someone, accountable to the executive branch?

• Krishna Guha:

  So, you raise a really important issue there, Fed accountability.

  Now, Fed officials past and present will say, absolutely, the Fed must be accountable. But under our system of government, the Fed is accountable to Congress, not the executive branch. The Fed is a creature of Congress. The Fed chair goes to Congress to testify. He’s grilled by members of the Senate. He’s grilled by members of the House.

  That is the way that our system of accountability is set up. And it’s the way that it’s worked very well in recent decades. That doesn’t mean that the Fed is always going to get everything right. Of course not. The issue is simply, would you have more confidence that the Fed would get things about right most of the time if it was more insulated from short-term political pressures, or do you think that political pressures are going to make them do a better job?

  I think most people have a pretty intuitive grasp of what the answer to that question would be.

Again, Powell says he will not resign.  That gives us about another year where monetary policy can offset this craziness.  This is from CBS. “Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he won’t resign if Donald Trump asks him to step down.” 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he won’t step down if President-elect Donald Trump, who has previously criticized Powell’s performance, asks him to resign.

Speaking at a press conference Thursday to discuss the Fed’s move today to cut its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, Powell added that it is not permitted under the law for presidents to fire or demote the Fed chair.

When asked if he’d step down if Trump requested it, Powell responded with a one-word answer: “No.”

Powell’s insistence that he’ll remain in his role comes after Trump aired grievances about the Fed’s decision-making during his first presidency and, more recently, on the campaign trial. Trump, who has accused Powell of being “political,” also told Bloomberg Businessweek this summer he would let the economist serve out his term, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”

Yet Trump has also said he thinks the U.S. president should have more influence on Fed decisions.

Are you asleep yet or is your hair on fire like mine?   And again, here are the massive layoffs and hiring freezes now planned for 2025.  “A running list of companies preparing to raise prices if Trump’s trade plan is enacted.” This is from Business Insider. The analysis is provided by Ayelet Sheffey.  It’s from a few days ago.

• President-elect Donald Trump proposed broad tariffs on imports, including up to 60% on goods from China.

• Economists say his proposals could spike inflation as companies tend to pass costs on to shoppers.

• Some companies have already said increased tariffs would lead them to raise prices.

Some executives have warned that price hikes are on the way if President-elect Donald Trump’s trade plans go into effect.

On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a 60% tariff on goods imported from China coupled with a 10% to 20% tariff on goods imported from other countries. While the president-elect could choose not to enact tariffs at that scale once he assumes office, economists and the market have predicted that his proposals would spike inflation and cause the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Several companies have already begun responding to Trump’s election victory and the implications his tariff proposals would have on the costs of their goods. Executives have told analysts on earnings calls that it would be difficult to maintain current prices under Trump’s broad tariffs.

Other companies are still waiting for more information from the president-elect. Tarang Amin, the CEO of ELF Beauty, told Business Insider that the company must first see the policy Trump enacts before making any changes to its pricing and that a new policy wouldn’t affect the business until after its 2025 fiscal year.

“We don’t like tariffs because they are a tax on the American people,” Amin said, adding that the company had been subject to a 25% tariff since 2019 because of policies from Trump’s first term. “And at that time,” he said, “we pulled all the levers available to us to minimize the effects to our company and our community.”

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, told BI: “In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation.” She added that Trump will “work quickly” to lower taxes and create more American jobs.

Below are the companies that are warning of price increases if Trump’s tariff proposals are implemented.

Before I went completely into economics, I was a history major.  We’ve done this before. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised import duties on more than 20,000 goods and agricultural imports to protect U.S. businesses and farmers.  Hoover signed it into law.  It made the Great Depression worse.  Don’t these whackadoodle schools teach History and Civics anymore?

Before every major recession we’ve had since 1984, I’ve always found myself running around going what are these idiots smoking?  I’ve fled to safety and minimized my losses.  Ronald Reagan’s folly basically wiped out my first IRA and my Dad’s retirement portfolio. But, I always did better than everyone else because if you’re just an economics teacher living a normal life and not privy to all the insider muckety muck, you do that. I remember the manager for my Louisiana 403B was amazed I held my losses to a lower percentage than anyone else at the USL.  I was not amused.  A loss is a loss, and I’m definitely paying for those years now as I was then.

Just buckle up. This is going to be a very chaotic ride.  Prepare for the worst. Again, the best thing you can do is pay the debt off and not add any more, if possible.  I am also expanding my small food garden and orchard. I’m not sure if Congress is up to the test of its checks and balances, so this is not looking good.  Also, remember how long it took to get out of Nixon’s mess. We really didn’t recover completely until the Clinton years.

The two pieces of news we also have today is that Matt Gaetz quit the AG cabinet appointment.  He says he’s not going back to Congress.  Speculation is that he will still have a political appointment in the administration, just one that doesn’t take Senate approval.   Pam Bondi, who he once bribed to stop her from filing a suit against his phony university and who is basically one of his personal attorneys is now the nominee. 

The sentencing of the 34 times convicted felon has been put “indefinitely postponed.”  I cannot believe people voted for all of this.  I sure didn’t.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

#JohnbussBskySocial #chaos #ConvictedFelon #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TheEconomicImpactsOfDeportationAndTariffs #Trump #TrumpEconomyWrecker #TrumpStagflation