Priorities

 

     God knows there's a lot of shit going on out there. Our government, starting with Musk and his vice president, Trump, are robbing America blind in real time and removing any regulatory and enforcement mechanisms that before, in a slightly more law-abiding age, could've stopped them. 

     And over the last two and a half weeks or so, I've tried to keep up a steady output for my fiction as well as adding to this blog every day that I can. And, don't worry, I'm not going anywhere on either front. But sometimes I have to prioritize one over the other. Up until 17 days ago, I was prioritizing this forum more out of a sense of alarm and outrage over what's been going on. Then I decided to step back from that a bit.

     It was as much a mental health break as anything else, if not moreso. But I've been plugging away on a short novel since last spring then, after making good progress on it, I got stuck on a plot point on chapter 18. For months, I added not a single punctuation mark to the book. It made me feel more guilty with each passing day. It was also frustrating because I'd doped out the ending not long after I began the book.

     So I somewhat staved off my incipient sense of guilt by pouring all my literary energies into this blog in the run-up to the election because I felt I had something of a patriotic duty to do so. The existential threat facing this country was real and serious and, since the inauguration of a 34 time convicted felon, we've come to find out that the reality was actually worse than the gloomiest of the doomsayers were predicting.

     Then, 17 days ago, I decided to finish this book in one last, mad push. Since then, I've added exactly 30,000 words to it. If you want a synopsis of this book, click on the image and maximize it. The blurb is on the back cover.

     It's a Scott Carson spinoff featuring just Kelley (whom you might have met in The Doll Maker and Hollywoodland). Virtually the entire book is told from her point of view, which is something I'd always wanted to do since I wrote Hollywoodland in 2020. 

     Except for fairly regular blog posts and dabbing away at one novel or another that would remain unfinished, I hadn't completed and published a new book since Hollywoodland first launched in December 2020. Barbara's condition and then her death paralyzed me and I couldn't concentrate on anything. And between the emergence of her dementia in 2019 and her death in 2023, I'd transitioned my identity from that of being a writer to being her caretaker. And even after her death, it was damned near impossible to fight and reclaim my writer's identity.

     So that's when I decided enough was enough. Barbara, always my #1 fan, would've wanted me to keep writing. Paralysis was useless, needless and illogical.

     Nearly a year ago, I was on Facebook and I saw a post that someone had written about the murder of Joseph Bowne Elwell, a Bridge expert and Wall Street investor who was shot and killed in his home on June 11, 1920. The Elwell murder was something out of Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan-Doyle because it was a real-life locked room murder mystery. The doors were locked from the inside and the windows were barred. In other words, the killer had no means of escape let escape they did.

      Now, to a historical psychological thriller author like yours truly, that's like catnip, especially when I find real-life cases within the timeline of my work's chronology for my characters to investigate. Elwell's murder on June 11th 1920 dovetails perfectly with the timeline in Hollywoodland when Scott and Kelley get married in LA that month. But she has to solve Elwell's murder while preparing for her departure from the New York Times.

      So, in my mind, this is the spinoff I always wanted to write plus it had to be written for several reasons. Number one, I had to get my writer identity back. Number two, like many writers, I like being prolific and coming out with at least one new title a year. I've never gone for anywhere near four plus years without a new book launch. And lastly. the timeline of Elwell's murder dovetails perfectly with part of the timeline in Hollywoodland.

     Plus, as stated earlier, I'm at the point where I desperately need a distraction from the madness billowing from the Beltway like a sewer gas leak.

      I'm up to well over 66,000 words and I haven't taken a day off in those 17 days. Since I'd set a word limit of 80,000 words, which would make it my shortest novel by far, that means I should have this book's first draft knocked out in a week or so. Then there will be revision, copyediting and reformatting and I should definitely have this out on the market by this spring.

     In the meantime, if you're able, please make a Paypal donation to help get me to my next check later this month. $25 or more will get you a free Kindle copy and $50 or more will get you an autographed paperback that I'll mail to your house at my expense.

     So, as Rachel Maddow says, "Watch this space."

We Need to Prepare for a Reckoning

 

     Over the last 26 days since Trump has been fraudulently shoehorned back in the Oval Office, there has literally been not one day without some horrible news. Tens of thousands of civil servants have either been summarily fired or were stupid enough to voluntarily quit after being seduced by a buyout that likely will never materialize. 

     An unelected, self-interested sociopath whose name isn't Donald Trump has brought in a gang of juvenile delinquents into our most important and vital institutions and have been acting like conquering Vikings, getting their hands on our private data and threatening those who resist them with arrest by the US Marshal's Service.

     Immigrants and American citizens alike are being rounded up by masked ICE agents as if it's Orwell's 1984 and many are getting sent to Cuba.

     Aid organizations, including USAID, our biggest agency that disburses aid to over 60,000,000 needy people all over the world, has seen its workforce slashed from 10,000 to fewer than 300. Trump is threatening needless trade wars with allies that will result in an economic crash that will make 2008 look like a slight blip.

     He's given away all his bargaining chips regarding Ukraine before negotiations even start. NATO is now fast tracking Ukraine's membership, meaning, with the Russian occupation, all the other 33 member nations will be forced by Article 5 to jump into the fray against a nuclear nation run by a madman. Essentially, Trump is teeing up WW III.

     Nations are turning on us left and right and imposing retaliatory tariffs on us. Many of them are preparing to help lead a planet without a United States. It's only a matter of time before Trump pulls us out of NATO, which would seriously damage if not outright destroy NATO.

     Virtually all mentions of female and minority contributions have been erased and craven corporations like Google have been following suit, even to the point of renaming the Gulf of Mexico  the Gulf of America. Others have axed DEI programs. Obey in advance, or else.

     The government is built to withstand change but incremental change through lawful executive action and deliberately ponderous legislation. It was not built for sudden, reckless change for its own sake. The government, our democratic republic, is being treated like a passenger in a car crash and whip-lashed into paralysis. It's only a matter of time before our nation course-corrects or breaks down entirely. One or the other will happen. It's only a matter of time. The only question is what the final outcome will be.

     And most people in this country, particularly what passes for our free press, seem unable or unwilling to grasp the fact that a major Reckoning is coming and may even be overdue. Whether it's brought about through violent, bloody Civil War or impeachments and trials remains to be seen. But we all share a hideous debt for what we'd allowed and every debt has a reckoning, a due date.

     What remains to be seen is how exactly we confront that debt, that reckoning.

     The rule of law, thanks to right wing activist judges and justices and corrupt officials who'd appointed and confirmed them, has been turned into a bitter joke. It seemed we had the most corrupt one of them all on the ropes. Jack Smith was going after him on two fronts, for inciting a riot at the Capitol that ended nine lives and for stealing classified files.

     Now. all those prosecutors, investigators and law clerks are on the run as if being chased by a pack of rabid hounds.

     So, it doesn't look as if we'll be getting any relief or justice from our federal criminal justice system any time soon.

     We are all responsible for this chaos whether we contributed to it or not. Saying, "I didn't vote for him" then turning away is not an option. What is an option (actually, it's a patriotic duty) is rebellion and disobedience by any means necessary.

     The nation was not founded 251 years ago by obedient men ready to bend a knee to a tyrant. Granted, roughly half the Continental Congress were Loyalists who still thought of themselves as British subjects and were shaken by the idea of armed conflict against the Crown. In fact, it was so dangerous to be in the Congress at that no time were all the members together. In 1774, at least in the eyes of the British government, the members of the first Congress were little better than dissidents and traitors. In fact, many were unsure if there would be a second Congress.

     The rest is history. What started with attempts at reconciliation with the British eventually turned into blockades then outright revolution. The Founding Fathers hardly knew what they were doing because they were trying to build a democracy like the world had never seen, a republic modeled after others that, without exception, had already fallen to the wayside. (Remember what Ben Franklin said: "We have a republic... if we can keep it.") They quarreled, they debated yet somehow found compromise, consensus over what should be done.

     To anyone who knows even the rudiments of our nation's history, such a rape on our institutions, spitting in the faces of our oldest allies, should be intolerable. My God, people, isn't it? Aren't you horrified by what you see?

     How comfortable are you that the greatest experiment in democracy that the world has ever seen is in danger of ending because of one aging, demented sociopath who can't even hold a glass with one hand?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

 

     A few days ago, we were treated to an unprecedented spectacle. The closest we'd come to seeing anything like it (Typically, also in a Trump White House) was when Trump had Sergei Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Oval Office on May 10, 2017. It was the day after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey via Twitter. The only documentation we have of that meeting, in which Trump spilled secrets to the Russians regarding Israel's intelligence gathering, was a single photographer from Russian state media, Tass. Trump had kicked all western journalists out of the Oval Office. There's even a picture of Lavrov standing right behind the Resolute Desk

    Then three days ago, Trump seemed bound and determined to confirm the fears, suspicions and beliefs of many watching this co-opted administration by letting Elon Musk hold court in the Oval Office and standing more or less in Lavrov's footprints.

      It was obviously a power move on Musk's part. He was there to literally put a happy face on his ongoing sabotage and espionage of the US government. Being the world's richest man and the most protected terrorist in world history, Musk could've had his presser literally anywhere on earth. He could've held it in the WH press briefing room. Yet, he chose the Oval Office, standing beside and behind Trump. With his four year-old kid.

     As if to say, "I own this, you peasants."

 

     As if the optics weren't horrifying enough, it was also partly about what Musk was saying. He actually admitted to lying by saying not everything he says is going to be accurate (in response to a question about the $50,000,000 USAID spent on condoms to Gaza, which was Gaza, Mozambique to help prevent the spread of HIV, not the Gaza strip in Palestine like Musk alleged). Then he inveighed (Yes, he actually said this) against "unelected bureaucrats".

     You know, like him.

     He spoke about how transparent DOGE really is and announced a new website even though at that moment the website was nothing more than a black page containing nothing (more on www.doge.gov later.) 

     Meanwhile, while he wasn't wearing him around his neck like a thick cardigan, the kid began yelling and even picked his nose and wiped his booger on the Resolute desk that was given to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 as a gift from Queen Victoria.

     At some point, the kid ambled over to Trump who immediately turned away from him as if he had lice because we all know how much he hates kids. For one of the few times during that travesty of a presser, Trump opened his mouth and the kid told him to shut up. Yes, Musk's four year-old son told the "president of the United States" to shut up. And Trump sat there and took it like an umber eunuch.

     The kid knows. Even this preschooler knew who was really in charge, who the real billionaire, the real power was behind the Resolute Desk. Daddy speaks freely in front of him when the cameras and microphones aren't around. "Who's the orange guy, dada?" "Oh, nobody. Just some clown who thinks he's in charge." A four year-old child knew the real power dynamic that only a very few members of our so-called media will even dare speculate aloud, however timidly and timorously.

     You think I'm making this up? Check out this clip on Bluesky where "Little X" tells Trump, "You're not the president and you need to go away."

     Seriously, all that was needed to be done was to have Trump forcibly removed from that leather chair and for Musk to take his place behind the Resolute Desk, boogers and all.

     Meanwhile, Trump sat there, trying desperately to look as if he was still in charge, instead looking like a bored kid in church. Rachel Maddow asked on her show that night, "What, they couldn't find crayons for him, maybe a little map you get at Denny's?"

    Something else the press glossed over. Way back on Election Day. Tucker Carlson asked the little kid with the unpronounceable name if he thought Trump would win the election (Because God knows we should be informed by kids who aren't old enough to go to Kindergarten). And the kid said, "Yes," before adding, "They'll never know."

     People sometimes yell at me both in real life and on social media when I say I will never believe that Trump won the 2024 election and that Harris lost. This is one of the things to which I'm referring. That and Musk saying he could prove with an app that Trump won on November 5th a full four hours before the election was called for him. And any computer programmer worth their weight in Cheetos dust can tell you that any voting machine, anything electronic, can be hacked. An 11 year-old girl did it at a hacker conference back in 2018.

     But just like in 2000 and 2004, it was just a lot easier to accept fraudulent election results than to publicly say both elections were stolen. "We need a peaceful transfer of power," they all say, even if that power is obtained through nakedly fraudulent means on behalf of those least suited or qualified to wield it.

     2024 was no different. No guy that spends a quarter of a billion dollars backing one guy in a presidential election is going to do so unless he can personally guarantee the results he wants. 

      But Trump's cowed demeanor while President Musk was holding court that day was eerily similar to the look on his beet-red face in Helsinki after Trump met with a loosey goosey Vladimir Putin for two hours. All he needed that day was a spike collar around his wattled neck. At the rate things are going, Trump by this summer will be sitting behind a Playskool desk signing fake executive orders with a black crayon right next to the Resolute Desk. Trump has been so thoroughly emasculated by the likes of Putin and Musk that he doesn't care if he's really the one with his hands on the levers of power. It's only important if people think he is.

     And regarding DOGE's website, just hours after the spectacle in the Oval Office, hackers broke into the still-empty website and did this. The little boys of DOGE have since taken taken back control (for now) but one has to ask themself this: Why does a legitimate government organization need two websites? Yes, this is the other website that went up about a month ago.

     By now, it's become screamingly obvious that the fictional DOGE exists solely to serve Elon Musk, not the American people. They're being allowed to illegally slash multibillion dollar programs to free up money for Elon Musk's companies, like the tens of billions in SpaceX contracts that Musk has been happily collecting since last December.

      Which is why Musk is about to collect a $400,000,000 contract from the State Department for armored Teslas. And this is the entire Republican agenda in a nutshell. Free up billions if not trillions for Musk and as a giveaway to their billionaire buddies (Keep in mind the $4.5 trillion corporate welfare blueprint that was just seriously advanced by Republicans). It's the usual Republican agenda only on anabolic steroids under Musk.

     Trump is obviously a bloated Trojan horse that Musk wheeled into the White House. Just a couple of days ago, Rep. Eric Swalwell exposed Republicans for laughing at Donald Trump in private and calling him a child. This is part of what Swalwell said:

     "And yes, censorship is occurring, but it's self-censorship, and it's by you all. Because I hear you in our private conversations when you agree that Trump is a child. I hear the people you tell that Trump is a child, whether it's lobbyists or reporters. But you shrink in this room, and you shrink in the chamber, and you self-censor yourselves from speaking out because you're afraid."

     They don't respect him but they fear him because he's a big baby, yes, but a big baby who's also very dangerous, the giant Trump baby blimp come to life. But no one with working synapses thinks Trump will suddenly turn into a brilliant, transformative president in a way that actually benefits America and not Russia. He's just the empty Trojan horse that contained Elon Musk and we're the latter-day Troy getting hollowed out from the inside.

     So why doesn't Trump do anything about Musk? When will he finally muster some outrage and say, "Enough is enough"? I'd say the 12th of Never. And you know why?

     Because all Musk has to do is go back to the Oval Office, hold a presser and say, "Yes, I stole the presidency for Donald Trump." And it won't be Musk going to prison. It won't be Musk getting impeached. He's only a "special government employee," remember? It'll be Trump. He'll be finished. And he knows it.

RAGE Against the Machine

 

(Hat tip to Salon's Amanda Marcotte)

     Calling Curtis Yarvin the most dangerous man you've never heard of would be quite a stretch. Indeed, Yarvin, one of Peter Thiel's butt boys, used to be fringe. However, his 2012 manifesto delineating a philosophy called RAGE (Retire All Government Employees) is getting reexamined. Not only that, it seems that tech billionaires, corporations and right wing think tanks are taking it much more seriously.

     When Yarvin put out the first version of his manifesto, three years before Trump came down the escalator, no one really (except for his sugar daddy Thiel) took him seriously, it was so fringe. What Yarvin called for was for the destruction of the federal government and the president of the United States to be reduced to a mere figurehead while the country was to be run by a CEO.

     Prior to Yarvin's once-laughable screed that called for "parachute ninjas" to land on the roofs of government buildings, the closest analog we have to this in American history was the attempted fascist takeover in the early days of FDR's administration. I've written about this a couple of times over the years but in case your history is a little rusty, let me bring you up to speed:

     Right after FDR was elected in 1932, horrified right wing oligarchs, terrified of Roosevelt's promised left wing agenda, engineered an attempted coup of our government. Remington was supposed to supply the rifles, Prescott Bush the financing and their undoing was to approach Marine General Smedley Butler to recruit an army of WWI holdovers to lead the revolt.

     Smedley Butler, of course, turned out to be the ultimate whistleblower and exposed their scheme before it even got off the ground. Still. despite Butler's revelations before a Congressional committee about the Business Plot, not a single one of the corporate scumbags ever saw the inside of a Congressional hearing room, much less a courtroom much less a prison cell. In fact, less than 20 years later, Prescott Bush got himself elected a US Senator out of Connecticut.

     Yarvin's roots are odd but not unheard of. His parents were liberal and secular. Yarvin's father, ironically, worked for the State Department as a diplomat. In fact, his parents were avowed Communists. It's tempting to see Yarvin instinctively rejecting his parents' values and turned to the dark side. Yarvin is an unabashed neoNazi and white nationalist who canoodles with virulent neoNazi and racist Nick Land.

     But Yarvin's so-called philosophy involves a takeover of government to the point of hollowing it out and replacing them with ideologues that nonetheless have some experience in government. The major difference between this and Elon Musk's current sabotage of the government is to bring in a bunch of punks who have no experience whatsoever in government.

     And Yarvin's dim worldview of American democracy, one that he views as a failed experiment, requires that the US government be replaced by a series of shell agencies subservient to an accountable monarchy, in other words, like a corporation run by a CEO.

     His plan would be considered laughable today if it wasn't eerily prescient of the Project 2025 we're seeing unfolding in real time before our horrified eyes. He's attracted the attention of tech billionaires, the Heritage Foundation that midwifed Project 2025, and even "Vice President" JD Vance. Part Star Trek, part Matrix, part fascist, dystopian nightmare, all it needs is gas chambers and ovens.

     It's not very much of a stretch to see Yarvin's plans for a Nazi takeover of the government  providing a foundation for what would become Project 2025, a 900+ page agenda that hates America and its democratic republic with the fury of 1000 suns. It's a bloated love song to white male Christian hegemony and it's easy to see Yarvin being the godfather of the insanity we're seeing today.

     But instead of ninjas on roofs, we're seeing juvenile delinquents running loose in the halls and offices of some of our most important institutions, with Elon Musk playing the part of some Silicon Valley version of Fagin. Yarvin's plan to take over the fourth and fifth estates we'd begun seeing long before the 2024 election. If you want to know why the major newspapers in this country aren't reporting on this ongoing espionage, consider that the Washington Post and LA Times are run by right wing billionaire psychopaths that refused to endorse Kamala Harris or say anything unflattering about Trump under the risible guise of political neutrality.

     And it's hardly surprising that Republicans in Congress are falling behind this fascist agenda since the Republican Party, for at least a century going back the days of Harding, have loathed democracy with all their black little hearts. They're sailing on a ship, meaning Congress, they're too stupid to realize is under fire from the very man they lionize. The Republican Party for the last century has always been evil, is evil now and always will be evil until it finally collapses under the sheer tonnage of its own corruption.

So Much Winning!

 

     OK, Trump had another weekend infested with unending failure and we made merry over it. He spent the weekend banning the penny, pretending to rename the Gulf of Mexico, imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum regardless of where they come from, getting booed at the Super Bowl and picking the wrong team to win. Ha ha. Look at the tilting, sad, fat man at the twilight of his shit-stained, semen-flecked life.

     But it's Monday now and Trump's back in DC continuing to turn the government, and our lives, into a bad, diaper-filling acid flashback of post-Weimar 1930s Germany, only far to the right of the autism spectrum. But just because it's Monday, it doesn't mean the failure ends. Failure billows from Trump like dust clouds from Pigpen. Trump's genius is that he's still able to fool tens of millions of post evolutionary humans into believing the dust clouds are his personally-branded fragrances.

     Trump's already lost several times in court today. Let's start with Hampton Dellinger.

     Now. you might be asking, "Who is Hampton Dellinger?" Well, Dellinger is a special counsel who's the head of the Office of Special Counsel to the DOJ. To put a finer point on it, the Office of Special Counsel, ironically, is described thusly by the AP:

     "The Office of Special Counsel investigates whistleblower claims of reprisal, can pursue disciplinary action against employees who punish whistleblowers and provides a channel for employees to disclose government wrongdoing."

     Dellinger was fired by Trump in a terse one line email until Judge Amy Berman Jackson got involved.

     Meanwhile in Boston, two more challenges were successfully made blocking Trump's attempt to idiotically choke off funding of the NIH to 15%. Three lawsuits were already filed on behalf of hospitals and research facilities and two of them overturned this with injunctions that are almost as common as Trump's moronic Executive Orders.

     Of course, if you're JD Vance, Trump can get away with that pesky illegal mumbo jumbo by simply ignoring court orders and judges.

     Which, as George Conway recently said, will tee up a civil war like we've never seen before.

It's Not a Fifth Column- It's Worse

 

     A fifth column is defined as an attempt to destroy a government from within. In fact this is how Wikipedia defines a Fifth Column:

     "A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack. The term is also applied to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, espionage or terrorism executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force."

     Let me know if any of that sounds familiar.

     I've been saying for the two decades I've been a political blogger that the Republican Party is nothing less than an unacknowledged, unaccused Fifth Column. God knows we've seen countless examples of Trump undermining the country and its interests, all of them, seemingly, benefiting Russia and other adversaries. And anyone who's been paying the slightest fucking amount of attention  can see that Trump 2.0 is far worse than Trump 1.0 ever was.

     And the reason why the second iteration of a Trump junta is far worse is because this takeover and hollowing out of the government is technically not even a Fifth Column because this unprecedented sabotage is spearheaded by a South African Nazi named Elon Musk who's not even a legitimate government official. Elon Musk was elected by no one, and the tiny fig leaf that Trump gave him (a "special government employee"?!) still should not allow him access to the agencies that he and his Clearasil cavalry have essentially taken over.

     It's an administrative Blitzkrieg, to borrow a favorite phrase from Trump's lexicon, "the likes of which have never been seen". Under the rickety justification of DEI and wokeness, paper and garbage bags have been placed over walls and windows in government agencies in the sloppiest, pettiest censorship in US history. 

     USAID's signage was pried off the building, with a black garbage bag placed over the agency's logo on the front window. The names of women who'd worked for the NSA have been papered over, NASA's website has been purged of any mention of female leadership and contributions by indigenous people. The FBI training academy at Quantico had a wall containing words like "Leadership, "Fairness" and "Equity" covered with gray paint. A wall at a VA hospital dedicated to pictures of LGBT people who'd been in the military? Gone.

     The White House's Spanish language page disappeared, USAID's website also disappeared. The list goes on. And this is just the censorship of history. What Elon Musk is doing is far, far worse.

     They essentially took over the Treasury Department, the EPA, gutted USAID and attached what's left of it to the State Department. He and his little goons have access to all or most of the government's databases, including that of the 70,000,000+ people who are on Social Security. Several courts have weighed in, some of them Republican appointees, and have put a temporary stop to this ransacking of the government's databases.

     But just because a judge places an injunction on Musk to stop accessing sensitive information and orders him to destroy whatever information he's illegally obtained doesn't mean he'll obey the courts. And anyone who thinks Musk will needs to get their heads examined.

     USAID, created by JFK and Congress in 1961, once employed 10,000 people. They now have fewer than 300. It once provided $60 billion a year in aid to poor people in 60 nations. They provided food, medicine and medical care to some of the most disadvantaged people on earth. Food pallets that were loaded with food just prior to this purge are still on loading docks waiting to get shipped and now, they never will.

     Musk and Trump are exactly what Hannah Arendt once called "desk murderers".

     Meals on Wheels? Gone. Head Start (another part of the Kennedy legacy)? Gone. Our nation's entire health infrastructure? Gone. NIH indirect research funding? Cut to a ridiculous 15%. 

     A thinking and perspicacious person cannot help but come to the conclusion that Trump and Musk are trying to kill as many people as possible not just in this country but all over the world. And what makes this truly evil is that it's not a mere misguided attempt to root out fraud and corruption in the government but petty revenge.

     At least five Inspectors General that had been fired by Trump had one thing in common: They were investigating Musk and his various companies. Musk is going after these watchdogs and the agencies for whom they'd once worked out of petty revenge. This is exactly why Trump is trying to purge the DOJ and the FBI of anyone who ever investigated him. It's white male petulance at its very worst because this is how Nazi authoritarians think. They honestly have an inflexible righteousness about everything they do and how dare anyone even investigate much less convict them?

     Don't look for the courts to save us. All they're doing is slowing down the inevitable and, in the absence of any actual enforcement mechanism, don't assume that Musk and his minions will obey the various injunctions placed on them. We're on our own and it's up to us to stop this madness. It's our patriotic duty, plain and simple.Because authoritarianism feeds on silence, inaction and consent.

Gotham City Digest

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     Yes, Trump put Republicans in for a time out.

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     Now I know why JD Vance went missing.

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     Hm... So, that's why he's going after USAID.

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    Yesterday, one of my senators was blocked from entering the EPA by a goon from Triple Canopy wearing a cap suspiciously like an SA cap. Can we all now finally agree this is a coup?

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     A must see segment of Rachel Maddow's show last night.

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    Elon Musk hires racists?! Why, I'm shocked, SHOCKED that there's racism going on in this establishment!

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     I think Gov. Walz is being a little hard on President Musk.

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     We all need to start calling her Baghdad Barbie.

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      Meme intermission.

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     Typical wet-legged corporate douchebags.

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     No, that was exactly as intended. NASA just erased all mentions on its website of female leadership (which is ironic, as NASA is run by a woman) and contributions by Indigenous people. So this fascist censorship at the NSA doesn't surprise me. I suppose the next move is to burn the flag sewed by Betsy Ross.

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     Arizona universities have to send out letters advising students and faculty what to do in case Trump's stormtroopers start asking, "Papers, please?"

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   More primate poo-flinging from the Democrats. But, really, what else can they do? We let Republicans gerrymander their districts, allowed them to steal elections and insisted on handing complete control of Congress to exactly the wrong party at the worst possible time. We can't force votes to the floor, don't have subpoena power and Senate filibusters just delay the inevitable.

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     Oh, this kid's got a bright future. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

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     This is right after Trump ordered them back to work. So, when they can't get in the buildings any more, they get fired for not showing up. Fuck these psychopaths and their Catch-22 bullshit.

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     I don't feel a bit sorry for these people or  these people. They voted for this scorpion so they don't have the right to express shock when he stings them.

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     "I mean, we don't have very good security in this country and they get it very easily." No shit, Donnie Dumbo! And finally...

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     Spoken like a true South African hillbilly.

It's Not a "Restructuring". It's a Pillage.

 

     By now, most us know how the Vikings conducted their business 1000 years ago. They'd sail to a country, invade it, rape and pillage. Like all barbarian societies, they'd kill most of not all the populace then take what was left behind. Much of Viking culture contains errors and misconceptions (They didn't, for instance, wear horns). But that's what it comes down to.

     This is pretty much the same mindset we're seeing today with the destruction of the federal government. Trump is using a foreign-born invader under a fake DOGE banner who then brings in a street gang of nerds who then start bossing the grownups around. It's like Lord of the Flies with asthma inhalers and Clearasil.

     What Trump and Musk are obviously doing is to purge as many federal workers as (in)humanly possible regardless of how important their function is. This involved a bullshit "buyout offer" sent to employees of the CIA, the Treasury Department and other agencies. The deadline to accept the offer was today.

     But today, a federal judge in Boston, George O'Toole, a Clinton appointee, put an injunction on the terms and the whole buyout offer, kicking the can down the road until at least Monday. Then oral arguments will commence that day.

     To date, about 60,000 federal workers have already accepted the terms of this "buyout" and are now eagerly awaiting their eight months of pay and benefits. Uh, reality check:

     Buried in the fine print is a caveat that the Treasury Secretary reserves the right to rescind the terms of the agreement after it's been signed.

     If any of this sounds familiar, that's because this is exactly the same dick move that Musk pulled on Twitter employees when he took over the place in October 2022. He offered them a buyout under the threat of termination or a pledge to work essentially 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Those who took the buyout wound up getting nothing.

     And something else the DOGE of Menace never explained was how the government could afford an eight month buyout when funding for most federal agencies stops on March 14th when the current stopgap spending bill expires.

The Improbable Victory Of Musk's Children's Crusade

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari) 

America, the world, can't take 206 more weeks of this shit.

    For instance, look at Elon Musk's children's crusade. Vittoria Elliot of Wired reported that Musk has taken over vital government offices and has employed children, teenagers, college students and dropouts, and given them administration access to source code. We're hearing that he's even moved in couches and sleep pods so these stupid kids can live in these offices and work 'round the clock. They're all between the ages of 19-24. In other words, some of these punks weren't old enough to vote back when Biden was running for president. (Here's an interview that came out today with Elliot conducted by The Texas Standard).

     We know for a fact that the revelation of the names and likenesses of these six high tech vandals has already been addressed by Ed Martin, Trump's stooge at the DC office of the DoJ. He's already threatened those who reveal their names with investigations and even prosecutions and told Musk directly on Twitter that he can count on the full resources of his office to that end.

     If bringing in people with no pubic hair or security clearances into the most sensitive areas of the government isn't bad enough, those who resist, including the former Acting Treasury Secretary, are threatened with arrest by the US Marshal's Service and are summarily suspended. It's impossible to see at this point how Musk is empowered to do this, much less his coterie of fist fuckers. Not only that, these children tasked with dismantling the government are waylaying career employees and demanding they explain their source code and even to justify their jobs.

     Explain to me how this is any different from the takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge engineered under terrorist Ammon Bundy?

     Said one federal employee, “One of Musk’s top lieutenants and wife and young child have shacked up on the sixth floor of our agency and are living there." Some hallways, they added, have been choked off thanks to "a special access list." It's like the Stanford Experiment only with hackers.

     Of course, this is all fine and dandy with Trump, Elon Musk's vice president, who recently said he was weeding out people who "were no good" despite not personally knowing any of them or what they did for a living. I can only speak for myself but I think the sentiment is shared by many other Americans that Trump Season 2 is not as bad as we thought it would be- It's much worse.

     And the reason it's immeasurably worse is because, prior to the election, we didn't know Elon Musk was going to essentially take over the entire government and bring in a bunch of pimply faced hackers to do his dirty work for him and give them an indefinite sleepover. We thought Trump would give him busy work with a fake DOGE agency, he'd make some stupid suggestions then go back to Texas to blow up rockets on the launch pad. Like the old saying goes, if you're not scared. you're not paying attention. No matter how cynical you are, you are not cynical enough. What we've seen over the last two weeks is a poorly-conceived sequel to Idiocracy.

"Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn."

I suppose that for the foreseeable future we'll often remember Alfred the butler's famous words to Bruce Wayne. Another of the most outrageous allowances granted to Musk has been to axe USAID, an organization that disburses $60 billion in aid to hungry people in 60 different nations. Granted, anyone who knows the first thing about USAID knows it's always been a front for the CIA to spread simoleons and the gospel of Democracy to poor nations around the globe so they don't, you know, get bought out by the Russians and Chinese before we have the chance to bribe them.

     But the good that USAID does around the world, however cynical their motivations, is undeniable and millions would die were it not for our largesse. Sixty billion dollars can do an awful lot of good around the world if it's targeted and used properly. But cutting off aid to those countries and making them more susceptible to the siren songs of Russia and China is part of the calculation.

     Trump's already sent out a mass email to over two million federal workers to either take a buyout and quit now or get fired and get nothing by February 6th. The carrot they're dangling on a stick is that Elon Musk will pay their severance package that will equate to eight months of pay and benefits. But our federal workers aren't stupid. Only a few thousand have quit and the rest don't trust Trump or Musk to pay them that severance even if they do quit. Many are staying at their jobs out of spite.

     Seeing this, Trump and Musk have issued a memo to the GAO to break all leases they currently have to rent office space. This is right after Trump ordered them back to work at the office. So, when they can't get in the buildings any more, they get fired for not showing up, which is exactly the kind of tactic you can expect of a glorified slumlord who once wouldn't rent to Black people.

     They've also reached out to the entire workforce of the CIA and asked them all to quit. Yes, Trump asked the entire 78 year-old CIA to quit. It's impossible to divine what his end game is in trying to get everyone at the nation's second-largest intelligence agency to quit except to make things easier for Moscow. It's no coincidence that virtually everything Trump does is guaranteed to benefit the Russians somehow.

      Everyone who's been paying attention since 1947 knows the CIA has done some seriously evil things, like toppling democracies, carrying out assassinations, etc. Look up Operation Phoenix, if you don't believe me. But one can only imagine the vast world of good the CIA has done for our country, such as stopping terrorist attacks, saving us from attempted coups, etc. It's impossible to imagine a world without the CIA but it's one that can be easily imagined by the likes of Trump and Putin.

DEI Is the New Juden

Make no mistake about it, people. DEI is the new Juden.

    Juden, of course, is the German word for Jew. And we knew a large part of Hitler consolidating power in just 52 days after getting elected Chancellor was to blame everything on the Jews. The faltering economy? Jewish bankers. Losing WWI? Blame the Jews. The Jews became Hitler's boogeyman and justification for everything that he did for 12 years.

     Trump is doing much the same thing in the name of DEI, which isn't even a name or a word but an acronym for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It is not a religion, not a nationality. Instead, it's a mindset, one mandating that correct past injustices toward marginalized and underserved communities and segments of the population are corrected. That includes women that make up over half the population.

     In short, DEI is a threat to white male dominance. In the immediate wake of the DC plane crash exactly a week ago, Trump couldn't wait to go on social media and blame DEI for it. (Like Rahm Emanuel once famously said, "Never let a crisis go to waste.") And an undisguised, unfiltered, obsessive and naked hatred for DEI is being used as the justification for virtually everything the Trump junta is doing to our government. Think of the right wing loathing for Affirmative Action and load it with anabolic steroids.

     NASA recently removed from its website any reference to female and indigenous contributions to the space program. This is really ironic, since NASA is currently run by a woman. And I'm sure many of you have seen the above picture of words such as Integrity, Fairness, Stability and Leadership being literally covered over with gray paint at the FBI Academy at Quantico. Because such qualities are antithetical to an administration completely predicated on venality, corruption, nastiness, hatred and bigotry.

   In short, any aspect, any mission, any remit that the government once had that isn't expressly supportive of white male hegemony is automatically smeared with a wide DEI tar brush and disappeared with the speed and industry of Josef Stalin.

    Yes, what Elon Musk and his children's crusade is doing is horrible enough. It's as if Musk is breaking into some of the toniest houses in America and unlocking the liquor cabinet for his high tech street gang like a Pied Piper with a fat wallet. And, yet, it still somewhat pales in comparison to what Trump is doing himself in his pouting, petty petulance, the biggest and most destructive child of all.

The Butt-Slamming of America, DOGE Style

      Imagine if, just a week or two after taking office in 2021, Joe Biden gave free rein over the government to Mark Cuban or Richard Branson. Imagine if they strong-armed their way into the USAID or OMB or Civil Service offices, began installing hard drives, installing servers and demanding personal data and threatening those who didn't comply with arrest by the US Marshal's Service and locking them out of their computers and even buildings.

     Republicans would have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for the 25th amendment. And rightly so.

     Up until two weeks ago, this would've been called espionage. And if Biden had done this, Republicans would have demanded his removal from office. They would've rightly called those acts espionage or, at the very least, a violation of the Pendleton Act of 1883.

     But Biden didn't do any of those things because Joe Biden was an institutionalist. Trump is largely doing these things through his ultimate Dollar a Year Man, Elon Musk, an unelected, unappointed psychopath with histrionic gifts. Biden didn't wage war on the Justice Department that charged and convicted his son on two bullshit charges because he believed in letting the legal system run its course.

     What we're seeing is not the destruction of our government but a transformation from a democratic republic into an instrument of vengeance that also seeks to enrich his billionaire cronies that, of course, enriches Elon Musk. Yet, Republicans' silence on the matter would put Trappist monks to shame. And, when they do pipe up about what Trump and Musk are doing, they cheer them on with open throats.

     It's a coup, plain and simple. The ultimate Fifth Column.

     Yes, two weeks ago, what we're seeing would've rightly been called espionage. The databases of our government, including that of the Office of Management and Budget, are being openly ransacked by a foreign-born tech bro who essentially bought the presidency with a quarter billion dollars.

 

     For any of you reading this who want to take a leisurely stroll down Memory Lane and look back fondly on what the OMB used to do, check out this screengrab from the Biden White House website.

     The OMB is, obviously, very important, to put it mildly.

 

     And it's literally being invaded by an autistic sociopath who, until not so long ago, was a prematurely balding, weak-chinned weasel who won the sperm lottery and bought his way to the top of the corporate dung hill, a tech "genius" who invented nothing, holds no patents and has deep business ties with two of our biggest adversaries (Russia and China, who are openly crowing on their media about what DOGE is doing).

     Oh, and he's openly supporting the neo Nazi movement in Germany.

     Now, if this Viking-like raid and pillage of our financial and Civil Service systems was done with the silent consent of the rest of our government, that alone would be a crime. But what about if I told you it was all being done with the full support of the Department of Justice? You don't believe me? Read the letter sent to Musk through Twitter, on DoJ stationary, by Edward R. Martin, Trump's stooge running the DC office.

     Martin literally invited Musk to make full use of his office so he could launch investigations and prosecutions against anyone who even tries to stand in his way.

     And as for Trump. Musk's junior president? Well, of course Trump knows what side his bread is buttered on (Plus, Elmo knows what he did to illegitimately shoehorn him back in the White House) and claims Musk is getting rid of the ones who are "no good". That's a supremely ironic thing for him to say considering the pack of assclowns he's nominated and largely gotten confirmed thanks to invertebrate Senate Republicans.

     The Night of Long Knives is now in its third week. The Nazis used guns. Musk is using pink slips despite having no authority and Trump lacking the authority to even give him that authority.

     Note the lead image. That's a digitized clipping taken from the New York Times from February 10, 1933, just 11 days after Hitler took over as Chancellor of Germany. One of the first things he did was to start a trade war with Sweden and Denmark by raising their tariffs and ignoring the favored nation clause.

     Tell me if anything in that lede from 92 years ago sounds familiar. Not only is Trump using Hitler's playbook, he's even moving at the same speed of Hitler's agenda. When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924 from his cushy prison cell, he told the German people exactly what he'd do if he ever took power then, when Hindenburg made him Chancellor on January 30, 1933, he set out to do exactly what he'd promised.

     Trump tried not to run on Project 2025 and even comically tried to claim ignorance of its very existence and its authors, even though over 140 of them used to work for him. Project 2025 shamelessly laid out its fascist, racist, homophobic agenda and now that Trump's been crammed back in the White House, this criminal enterprise successfully posing as a government is doing just what they said they'd do.

     Like Maya Angelou once famously said, when someone shows you what they really are, believe them.

All That's Missing is Dustin Hoffman

 

     Wag the dog, anyone?

     So, at 10:18 this morning, Donald Trump graciously stopped golfing on the front nine long enough to announce a military air strike without mentioning where it was. Then, with his usual restraint and complete lack of hyperbole, he ended with, "WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!"

     Naturally, MAGAts reveled in how decisive and hyper-masculine our new Commander in Chief is. He struck a blow against terrorism and hip hip hooray!

     The problem is, after an exhaustive internet search, I have seen no direct, irrefutable evidence that such an air strike ever took place either yesterday or today. USA Today comes closest to proving, without actually proving it, that such a military action took place in Somalia or anywhere else. The problem is, all the "proof" we have of such an air strike taking place is Trump's Truth Social account, Pete Hegseth and the office of the Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who's obviously in the tank for Trump.

     Now, since I don't deal in conspiracy theories, I'm not going to say that such a military action didn't occur. I'm just saying, in the aftermath of such an action, there's usually photos, videos, some actual evidence that such a military action did transpire. But we're not. All we're seeing are social media and press releases that claim it happened.

     Seriously, at this point, all that's missing is Dustin Hoffman with a blow dried hairdo and a sweater tied around his neck.

Where is America's Immune System?

 

     We all know what happens when you get a splinter in your finger. Your immune system recognizes a foreign body and mobilizes until it pushes out that splinter.

     Nations are like that, too, up to a point. As an invader invades the country or the body politic, especially if it's harmful, nations, often the grassroots, the vox populi, will mobilize to at least put up a good fight if not outright expel the invader. We saw this during the Arab Spring and, more recently, in Syria last month (although it could be said the overthrow of the Assad regime was just one terrorist organization replacing another).

     Yet in a political and social way, nations have an immune system of their own. And, often, when a head of state leads the nation to rack and ruin, corrective action is taken. Look at WWII Italy and 1989 Romania, for example.

     However, what we've been seeing over the last week and a half is a naked kleptocracy and kakistocracy successfully masquerading as a functional and functioning government. And yet, we're seeing little more than token resistance on the part of lawmakers, other nations, Big Business, the media and, most shockingly, the American people.

     Many of you reading this will easily remember the protests that clogged the streets of France years ago when the government even just suggested raising the retirement age. We've seen this all over the world since time immemorial- When governments enact incredibly unpopular policies or even suggest them, the people often show up to protest in the millions. Even in repressive Russia early in the Ukraine war, when Putin started forcibly rounding up Russian men in a ramped up conscription campaign, the people protested in over 160 Russian towns and cities, including Moscow.

     Yet, historically, we never see this here in America. Is it complacence, is it laziness, is it the losing end of a war of attrition? It could be all of those things or none of them.

     And this brings me to social media.

     Virtually every nation on earth has access to social media. Gigantic entities like Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and the rising Bluesky are used in most nations or, as in the case of China, alternatives such as Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter (although it's, of course, tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party). People in other countries use social media as a means to an end. They use it to coordinate and mobilize when they feel a mass protest is called for.

     The United States is virtually unique in that we see social media as an end, not a mere means. We've supplanted protest with impotently screaming in the wilderness on social media because we've been led to believe that social media is a legitimate and efficacious outlet to redress our grievances. It's little better than handing people an Etch-a-Sketch and telling them they're iPads through which they can reach the rest of the world.

     Yet right wing tech bro billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, oligarchs with right wing agendas, have been lying to you all these years. Chances are your voice will not be heard beyond a small coterie of followers because they employ repressive algorithms that artificially suppress content that conflicts with the political agenda of the 1% who own these social media entities. On Twitter, it's called shadow banning.

     The closest we've seen to any organized protests in the US was the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly 14 years ago before that, too, was systematically and brutally repressed by police departments all over the country. Yes, we used social media to coordinate and mobilize back then. But then, the outrage over Wall Street's excesses, which have hardly abated since then, dissolved under police truncheons and backhoes.

     If you take away enough things that they need for basic survival (The French Revolution in the 1780s, it could be said, was touched off by high bread prices, something we ought to keep in mind here and now), they will rebel and, in some cases, will overthrow a regime, a government or a monarchy. The French Revolution was so transformative, they haven't had a monarchy since and the same could be said for the American Revolution.

     And yet, since January 20th, we do have a king, one we'd installed, a despot right out of the Middle Ages. In some ways, Donald Trump is a stereotypical lying politician who has no problem breaking campaign promises. Yet, in other ways, he's unique in human history, or at least in American political history. In just a week and a half, with the pernicious assistance of stooges and fascist apparatchiks, Trump's second administration is already the worst ever, even discounting his first term that saw 400,000 dead Americans during the pandemic.

     He's gutted entire departments through Executive Orders, basically by royal fiat. Less than two days after the worst air disaster since 2009, we're just waking up to the fact that Trump could've teed up that disaster by gutting the FAA just two days into his term.

 

 

     We're not entitled to be surprised and be shocked, shocked, that there's gambling going on in this establishment because on January 22nd, the White House announced on its website that they were doing just that and even crowing they were ending "DEI madness".

      And, just a few days before that, the day before the inaugural, Trump announced his own cryptocurrency, the $Trump coin. With all the challenges facing the government and this nation, Trump's biggest concern, it seems, was cashing in on another grift. This coin, 80% of which is owned and controlled by the Trump Organization, quickly ballooned in value, eventually reaching an artificial valuation of $32 billion. If he hasn't already, you can count on Trump to dump his shares in a classic Pump and Dump Ponzi scheme that'll leave smaller investors holding the bag as the coin (as opposed to an NFT) plunges down to nothing in value.

     Trump is trying to fire the entire Civil Service so he can replace it with 300,000 more of his stooges and is just now realizing he's not legally empowered to do that. That precipitated the letter he'd sent to government employees offering them a buyout whereby they were promised seven months severance pay and benefits. But, knowing Trump's track record for keeping promises, stiffing people and pulling the rug out from under people, the Civil Service employees are smart enough not to take his "offer" and are even staying at their jobs out of spite.

     Like a true dictator, Trump's going after those who'd investigated or even just criticized him. He pulled Secret Service details from Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Dr. Anthony Fauci. He's preparing to fire at least 12 DoJ attorneys who'd worked for Jack Smith and assisted in his two investigations. He's already fired over a dozen Inspectors General whose job it was to investigate waste and corruption.

     Plus, let's not forget the purge at the FAA 48 hours into his administration.

     And, after largely running on inflation, the economy and lowering prices, his economic and foreign policy antics are resulting in higher prices for Americans. Presidents can't unilaterally lower prices but they can certainly make them go up through horrible and misguided decisions. National and international economics are always a tricky balancing act that ought to be handled by those who know what they're doing. Trump simply lacks the intellect, the temperament and subtlety to even grasp all that.

     In short, Trump has turned the government into a shambles that, up until a week and a half ago, was a real, respectable government. It's like what would happen if you rented out your beautiful Air B&B in a toney neighborhood to the Hell's Angels.

     So, where's the outrage? Haven't we seen enough? Just the threat of raising the retirement age was enough choke the streets of Paris with outraged citizens. Caracas, Venezuela recently staged mass protests over the perception their recent election wasn't legitimate. 

     Where's our immune system?

     And what will it take to finally get us off our couches, Laz-E-Boys and computer chairs and use that first amendment right to assemble? Or are we content to be a nation of 330,000,000 frogs in a pot of boiling water?

     I cannot think of any analog in US history in which our nation, our very government, was under threat and a state of siege. And we keep forgetting those chilling words by George Santayana when he wrote, "Those who do not heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." We've forgotten that fighting for and securing rights is only half the battle won, the much shorter half. Because each generation produces evil people like Trump and his enablers who will constantly seek to abridge or obliterate those rights entirely. The wolves have taken up permanent residence at the gate. Democracies weren't kept with complacence, compliance and obedience. They're maintained by constant vigilance and, when necessary rebellion.

     We need to remember that and act accordingly. Because, to quote Ben Franklin, we have a republic... if we can keep it.