Merch of the Penguins

 

     At this point, it's as if Donald Trump is daring us to call him out on his obvious dementia. His laughable Independence Day was him unveiling his sweeping 10% tariff on every nation on earth, including the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are populated solely by penguins. It's resulted in China imposing a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods starting this Tuesday. (Trump hit China with a 54% tariff). 

     Yes, Trump and his idiot advisors have declared a trade war on penguins.

     As if that isn't a rationale for putting Trump's pudgy limbs in four point restraints, there's the not-so-funny effect of how this is affecting not just our economy but the global economy. First off, Wall Street, again, went into a free fall, losing 1400 points in one day, or 3.5% of its value. If that doesn't sound like much of a drop to you, just consider the palmier days of last month when the Dow Jones lost just 1000 points and lost two trillion dollars.

     This is happening because either the morons surrounding him are either True Believers in this Heaven's Gate style of economics or are too afraid to call him out as the financially illiterate shit for brains he truly is.

     There are precious few people on the Beltway who are willing to take him aside and make him understand that tariffs on other countries result in higher prices for the American consumer, of whom Trump simply doesn't give a shit. It will result in revenge tariffs and some of these countries will simply choose not to trade with us in order to avoid the unnecessary tariffs being imposed on them.

     Donne Dumbo has never realized you can't use tariffs as a mob boss tactic because when you unfairly raise them on other countries, they will retaliate, they will restrict or terminate any trade agreements with us and, on a large enough scale, it will result in a recession or even a depression. You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that international trade, as with everything else on the world stage, is a delicate balancing act that has to be handled by trained professionals, policy makers and competent statesmen.

     Donald Trump, obviously, is none of those things. In fact, we're talking about a guy who'd filed for bankruptcy six times, including bankrupting all of his Jersey casinos, a business model that's predicated on getting people to give you vast sums of money and expecting little to nothing in return.

     And putting Trump in charge of anything is like being strapped to a chair while being in the same room as a chimp with a machine gun.

I can't believe that I've had to do this...

 

     But earlier today, I had to set up a GoFundMe campaign for the first time.

     I almost feel like a selfish prick for doing it. I'm very well aware that there are many people who are much worse off than I am. Over the years, Go Fund Me has helped out countless people who have been hit with crushing medical bills after a sudden illness or an accident. Families devastated by a sudden death. People who have been evicted by their slumlords when they couldn't pay rental increases and were forced to live in their cars. It's also been used to support people who had been the victims of insufferable injustices.

     And I know many of us are feeling the pinch, especially since January 20th when a certain orange psychopath got shoehorned back in the White House. But, as I said in my GFM campaign, when times like these descend upon us out of the blue, we have to necessarily turn our attention to more parochial concerns and see to our own affairs. 

     The fact is, I have nothing but ice cubes in my freezer. I have little food in the fridge or the cupboards. Old Mother Hubbard had nothing on me these days. I literally have $4 in the bank and nothing in Paypal. Just yesterday, I had to use the Kennedy half dollars that Barbara and I had collected over the years that were mailed to us by charity organizations and it broke my heart to spend them because half of them belonged to her.

     I have very little confidence that I'll get my SSI benefits tomorrow. They've never made me wait until the 31st to send my disbursement and when that voice in my head tells me something is amiss, it's never, ever wrong. So, in the likelihood that I wake up tomorrow disappointed, I'm prepared to take to my phone and start waging war against my own government. I'm still desperately trying to play catch up because I didn't know this would be an issue until a couple of days ago.

      Here's what I did: Two nights ago, I went to Grok 3, the AI created by Twitter and explained the situation to it. It immediately gave me phone numbers to a multitude of resources ranging from legal aid, food banks, the local SNAP office, how to reach my Congressman and so forth. Trust me, the irony hasn't been lost on me that the only help I'm getting from anyone is an AI chatbot in a domain owned by the same fucking asshole who's doing this to me in the first place.

     Now I'm reading people may have to wait months to get back their benefits they should've been getting all along due to glitches and people bolting for the exits, which just further lowers my confidence that I'll finally get my money tomorrow.

     I do not like going on public relief any more than I like to set up a GoFundMe pubically begging for money. But I'm under the gun in a variety of ways. #1, I have to top up my cell phone minutes by April 6th. If I don't, they'll shut off my service. After six weeks, they'll give my number to someone else. Like many of us, I heavily rely on my cell phone to keep me in touch with the outside world. And if I lose that, nobody in a position to help me will be able to call or text me.

     Another, more serious, consideration: I got shunted to Medicare on January 1st last year, more than two weeks before I turned 65. I immediately started getting hit with bloated $175 monthly premiums that came right out of my Social Security benefits. If those premiums don't get paid after several months, those bloated premiums will snowball until the debt reaches hundreds of dollars. Then, if I do get my benefits back, will Medicare start clawing back 100% of my payments until the debt is satisfied, putting me right back where I am now? I'm afraid so. That's what they're doing to people they've decided were overpaid. They're clawing back 100% of their benefits until the alleged overpayment is paid. (During the Biden administration, the clawback was 10%).

     Again, I hate to do this. But out of all the emergencies I've gone through over the last 16 years, this is by far the worst. Those of us who are experiencing this shit are plainly not to blame for this. And my heart goes out to every one of them.

     We shouldn't be living in a country in which crowd sourcing is the answer to economic devastation, that we have to rely on our fellow citizens when one system or another fails us. But this is what it is. And I have to throw myself upon the mercy of others just to keep body and soul together. Again, I wish I didn't have to do this because I did not bring this about.

Will the Real Fraudster Please Stand Up?

     I think I was kicked off my Social Security, my sole revenue stream, this month. If I was, I'm assuming they think I'm posing as someone else in the interests of committing fraud and they're going to make me confirm my identity. Let's take stock:

      We have in the Oval Office a 34 time convicted fraudster who once called a journalist and posed as a fictional publicist named John Barron and we have a Vice President whose real name is John Donald Bowman.

      So remind me again who's misrepresenting themselves?

Nobody Should have to Live Like This

     Call it my American sense of entitlement, accuse me of white privilege. But no American who'd kicked into the Social Security fund for decades as I and tens of millions of others had should live in a state of siege, fear and uncertainty.

     Social Security, going back to FDR's administration, was one of the greatest compacts struck between the American labor force and the United States government. What the government was saying in essence was, "Go to work like you've been doing, pay your taxes and when you retire, you'll get that money back. It's yours and we'll manage it well for you."

     That, and the subsequent Medicaid and Medicare, because one of the greatest social safety nets in the industrialized world. While not perfect by any means, it nonetheless saved countless tens of millions of senior citizens from needing to work for the rest of their lives.

     The Republicans from 90 years ago, naturally, sneered at it and ever since the 30s have tirelessly worked to undermine it, to privatize it, doing everything in their power to destroy it. Republicans, then and now, saw it as an example of government that works for the bottom 90% and not just the elite and Republicans hate that. Social Security's aim, to allow elderly folks to retire with dignity, was intolerable to Republicans who saw Social Security as nothing more than an example of the welfare state, an entitlement system, one that poached workers from the work force. Who cares about that one big, pesky fact that we have been kicking into the fund our entire working lives?

     But for the longest time until Bush II, Republicans were just smart enough to know that going after SS full bore was a third rail. Yeah, Bush nibbled around the edges of it, trying his damnedest to privatize it on the craps tables of Wall Street (You know, the same psychopaths whose horrible behavior resulted in the 2008 Wall Street crash that resulted in a $700 billion bailout to reward such bad behavior?). He even said that not privatizing Social Security was the biggest failure of his administration.

     Then Trump came back, literally with a vengeance. And this time, he brought an army of psychopaths with him that makes the last pack of gators in that swamp look like otters. He brought with him a sociopath named Elon Musk, a guy who's every bit the fraud Trump is only he's vastly more successful at it.

     Musk and his 69 member DOGE of mostly juvenile delinquents, some of them as young as 19, have been allowed to barge their way into government office buildings, such as the SSA, even being supported by law enforcement. And now we're hearing that they're planning on closing 47 SSA regional offices by simply getting the GSA to revoke the leases. This is after they'd disabled the phone lines.

     And the ridiculous rationale is that they're combating fraud, waste and abuse, carefully sidestepping the fact this is our money, not theirs, and that, no, nobody claiming to 150 years-old are fraudulently drawing benefits. Then we started reading about poor Ned Johnson, whom Elon decided was dead (as usual, without evidence) and had $5201 stolen from his bank account.

     It's now Friday, March 28th and I still haven't gotten my Social Security. I've never gotten it this late before. I tried setting up an account on their website and the SSA is making it literally impossible to do so I can't get answers.

     So, I may have lost my sole revenue stream. I'm almost out of food and I have $4 in the bank. Why is this happening to me? To many of us? What did we do?

     How did we get to this point? How did this become acceptable, for some asshole from South Africa to just swoop in with gang of arrogant thugs and decide who gets benefits and who doesn't, who's dead or alive? 

      One of the greatest accomplishments of the SSA, one of its greatest legacies, was in never skipping a payment period. It was a sterling example of government that worked to the benefit of the most vulnerable among us - elderly retirees who faithfully kicked into the system through their payroll taxes without a second thought for decades, secure in the knowledge that it would be there waiting for us when it came time to retire.

      Why are we letting this happen? Why are police letting these vandals wreck our government through the most massive home invasion in US history? How do these psychopaths think this will have a happy ending? Do they really think that if they succeed in robbing 73,500,000 people out of their retirement fund that it won't result in serious blowback?

      Yes, they seriously believe this. Remember Howard Lutnick in that podcast when he said those who yell the loudest about losing their benefits are the fraudsters.

     It's classic sociopathic thinking. If you get mugged and have your money stolen from you and report it to the police, suddenly you're the criminal.

     People, I'm not looking for sympathy and this isn't another fundraising drive (although I certainly wouldn't turn down a donation). I'm just looking for answers from a decaying, crumbling system that isn't even interested in hearing the questions. I and others in my predicament are living in a nightmare like something out of Kafka.

     Someone please make this stop.

     Addendum: I've just set up my first Go Fund Me. You can find the page right here.

Survivor: America

     These days, going to Raw Story every morning and reading the headlines is like reading the chapter titles of the most horrifying dystopian novel ever written. "Trump Signs EO Dismantling Dept. Of Education." "DOGE Orders Closure of 47 SSA Offices." "Trump Starts Intergalactic War With Technologically Superior Civilization."

     These days, the more literate of us can be forgiven for thinking of that famous WB Years phrase, "the center cannot hold." We're hearing a lot over a year and a half in advance of the 2026 "Blue Tsunami" that promises to sweep these Republican scumbags out of Washington like a pile of trash on a floor.

     And whether or not that happens, one has to ask, altogether for good reason, will we survive long enough until 2026 and will Trump allow that to happen? The obvious answer is, Hell no. If he ever did for America what he's done for Russia, America would be truly great again.

     But everything he does, whether directly or indirectky, in some way benefits Putin and Russia. Taking his side over our intelligence agencies. Backing out of the INF. Taking Russia's side over Ukraine. The list goes on.

     His brazen attempt a few days ago to unilaterally dismantle the Dept. Of Education was another example. Trump actually thinks he can run the country by the quasi-royal fiat of Executive Orders regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional they are.

     Trying to destroy the Department of Education is a case in point. It was created by an act of Congress in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. That means, if it was created through an Act of Congress, it can only be dismantled through an Act of Congress. Of course, right wingers in Congress, who have been foaming at the mouth at the very idea of destroying it from the beginning, pre-emptively cheered Trump for all of one hour until, whoops, Trump backed away from his own Executive Order and directed that same Congress to act as his own collective hatchet man.

     And Linda McMahon, the so-called Education Secretary, like all of Trump's Cabinet, has no problem sitting in an office in an empty building with nothing to do. Of course, the Republican mania for destroying the DoE is all about getting charter schools run by their wealthy buddies and keeping our children ignorant. Plus, the DoE is one of many examples of the government working for the people, which gives Republicans the dry heaves.

      But the DoE oversees school loans and, while kicking in just 13% of the national public school budget, it provides 100% of the funding for special education. This means a lot of Special Ed teachers are about to lose their jobs and every special needs student in the US will be denied the curriculum they require that had met their needs.

      The list, tragically, goes on. The Trump administration has gone to war with hungry school kids, axing free school breakfast and lunch programs, destroying federal aid through USAID and other relief agencies and have essentially declared war on anyone that isn't white or has a swinging dick.

     Keep in mind, all this is being done by an aging slug who doesn't heave his fat ass out of bed until late morning and spends all his weekends playing golf at one of his resorts.

     Yet most of this damage is being done by some of the worst psychopaths this nation can offer. Proving even the worst, most despicable criminals and excuses for human beings can always find an army of monsters to do their bidding.

      So, are we going to survive until January 3, 2027 and will Democrats undo the damage? The jury's out on that one.

Good Times in Gotham City

 

I Almost Forgot

 

     Early this month, I sat for an interview with poet and novelist Alice McMurtry (Yes, she's related to that McMurtry). It was originally supposed to be conducted on March 5th but during the call, she ran into some technical problems. We wound up doing an hour-long interview then Alice immediately discovered that not a second of it had been recorded. 

     After profuse apologies on her part, we'd rescheduled the interview a few days later. Alice usually does live broadcasts but that wasn't possible as the microphone on my new (used) laptop doesn't work. So, a quick purchase of a wireless recorder from Amazon and we were back in business.

     The interview went up on the 9th and, in the midst of the madness that's going on in Washington, I forgot all about posting the link to it, so here it is. 

     She and I discussed Tatterdemalion, even though it'd originally launched nearly a decade ago and, partly to her efforts, it's been enjoying a bit of a comeback of late. She bought not only two paperback editions for herself and a coworker but also the audiobook version narrated by the incredible and versatile Tracie Frank.

     The pictures above show the box of swag that Alice had kindly made with her own two hands and sent to me (it arrived just yesterday). It contains scores of dagger bookmarks (my idea), buttons, refrigerator magnets, bottle openers, pens and even a small notebook. Alice does this for all the subjects of her interviews because she's a real sweetheart of a gal.

     So go check out the interview.

This Isn't a Reduction. It's a Home Invasion.

     Imagine you buy a house. Then the HOA hires an illegal alien, he sends a bunch of juvenile delinquents to your doorstep and they demand access to your home and workstation. You tell them no then they come back the next day with guys claiming to be from the US Marshal's Service and they force their way in.

     Then your neighbor down the street gets a visit from the same HOA goons, except they bring with them actual, armed FBI agents. Alarmed, the homeowner then calls the local police. Only, rather than siding with him and protecting his rights, they not only help the vandals break into their home, they then kick him and his family out while the goons ransack their house. Sounds insane, right?

 

    This is exactly what's been going on in Washington DC. Rachel Maddow made this one the segments on her show last night. Musk and his children's crusade have been barging their way into government buildings run by organizations that aren't even part of the government and are not even under legal or administrative purview by the Executive branch.

     This is part of the description beneath the Maddow video: "The U.S. Institute for Peace announced Monday that despite being independent of the executive branch and controlling its own building and the land it sits on, their objections to members of Elon Musk's DOGE team trespassing in their building were overridden by D.C. police."

     The police are actually helping the robbers break in and take whatever they want and all under the aegis of a self-interested sociopath who actually wields no power whatsoever over government or anything outside of his own corporate sphere. DOGE simply doesn't exist except in Trump's and Musk's drug-addled brains.

     How insane is that?

     This is the very delineation of the bull in the china ship. It's dangerous, reckless, mindless, and guarantees nothing good. And, like the proverbial bull, Musk or his minions don't belong anywhere near these buildings, much less in them, much less helping themselves to whatever highly personal and sensitive information they please.

     Hard as it is to imagine for anyone not actually playing witness to these thuggish spectacles, the asylum's staff is getting kicked out of the asylum and the ones with guns are giving the keys to the inmates.

     Much has been made of the fact that it only took Hitler 52 days to destroy Weimar Republic Germany and stuff it with his ideologues. Even Hitler himself was surprised by how quickly he was able to accomplish this, at how little opposition he encountered.

     Trump got illegally shoehorned back in the White House thanks to Elon Musk's electronic skullduggery and it's been closer to 60 days. And it could be said that the only reason Trump didn't beat Hitler's timeline is because the US government is simply much larger than Germany's government in 1933. But the German people elected Hitler and allowed him and his thugs to have free rein when they could have stopped him.

     We're now at the point where historians in the future will be wondering, "Why didn't the Americans do more to stop that lunatic?"

 

     And it isn't just the ransacking of government offices at the hands of a corporately-funded street gang (which is doing more damage than a so-called Venezuelan street gang ever did). It's also the rash and sloppy ICE raids that often feature masked ICE agents. Just recently, they abducted yet another college student who's living here legally.

     The government has just given itself the right to revoke student visas and any other visa willy nilly if someone's been deemed a "national security risk". Who actually gets to make that decision and under what legal justification is anyone's guess.

     One can only hope that the next Democratic president (Please God, let it be AOC) makes Letitia James the new Attorney General. Then the Republicans will see a weaponization of the Justice Department that's worse than their worst fever dreams.

Substitute "Tom and Daisy"

 

     ...with "Don and Elon", and you have a creepy prophecy from a century ago. 

     By now, you may have heard about US District Judge Theodore Chuang's ruling (.pdf) earlier today. He basically called Musk's and Trump's obsession with closing down USAID and freezing Congressionally-allocated funding unconstitutional without actually calling it unconstitutional. Of course, this set off Marsha Blackburn, a dependable Nazi foot soldier, who said the judge suffered from (ho hum) "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

     And, just as predictably, Pam Bondi, who obviously got her law degree out of a vending machine at a Publix supermarket, called it "judicial overreach". Judge Chuang had ordered that all USAID employees be rehired, its programs refunded and that any future decisions would have to be made or discussed with legitimate USAID personnel.

     It remains to be seen if Musk obeys the federal court  order but, considering Trump's conduct of late (Look at the White House's and Justice Department's thumbing their snouts at the judge's ruling about the Venezuelan immigrants who were just extraordinarily renditioned), I wouldn't hold my breath.

     But Judge Chuang's ruling was pretty unambiguous- He basically told Elon Musk to go fuck himself. Right wing dittoheads, incapable of forming a single thought that didn't originate in Donald Trump's diseased and demented mind, are frothing at the mouth over the salvation of an agency that, until two months ago, didn't even know existed.

     Hopefully, this is just the beginning. Just a week ago, Judge William Alsup also ordered that terminated employees be reinstated immediately within the DoD, VA, Departments of Agriculture, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury. Naturally, the aforementioned right wing dittoheads dismissed Alsup as a California liberal (even though he was born in Jackson, Mississippi).

      But there's also something that judges need to take into account, especially when their rulings about DOGE's antics: The Appointments Clause in the Constitution. This is how the Appointments Clause appears at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2:

     ... and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

     When the Founding Fathers baked that into the Constitution in the 18th century, they were thinking more along the lines of presidents appointing people for actual political positions with the advice and consent of the Senate or, barring that, the amen from the House of Representatives. I don't recall Congress creating, recognizing or funding DOGE nor giving Trump the power to appoint Elon Musk as some wouldbe Fagin leading a pack of arrogant juvenile delinquents to take apart our government.

     Just a little something for federal judges to think about.

Good Times at Gotham City

 

Let Us Prey

 

Miracles performed:

Bankrupted four casinos, businesses in which people give you money and often get nothing in return.

Took a booming economy and destroyed it in a record eight weeks.

Only person to steal millions from a children's cancer charity.

Got $413 million from father and another $400,000,000 from NBC yet had to file for bankruptcy five times.

When a bank called in the note, sued them for billions.

Complains constantly that NATO's not paying its fair share while paying $750 or nothing in taxes.

Credibly fooled tens of millions into believing he's a business genius.

Everything Trump and Musk Touches, Dies.

     I keep going back to the title of Rick Wilson's famous book, especially when I read about the nuclear fallout of the Trump administration these past eight weeks.

     Hearing about these various and growing instances of Trump's black thumb is cold comfort because they really don't change anything.

     In his ongoing obsession with destroying the government, Musk has been taking his eyes off his own companies. Twitter is still a right wing hellscape and is still losing users by the droves. Its net worth is only a fraction of the $44 billion that was paid for it. He just blew up his second consecutive SpaceX rocket, 120 Starlink satellites are literally falling out of the sky each month, and Tesla stock, in short order, has lost half its market capitalization. It's trading at less than half what it was as recently as last December.

     This means, as Musk's so-called wealth is almost completely tied up in Tesla stock, he's lost about half his wealth. There are protests at Tesla dealerships all over the world, including two in the UK, and one in Florida was burned to the ground. Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly have both gotten rid of their Teslas in very public fashion and many others are following suit.

     Basically,  Musk is in Stage One or Two Mike Lindell Syndrome, aka Kanye West Carcinoma.

     As for Trump, well... The stock market, for which I have, admittedly little sympathy, has seen one disastrous drop after another. In just a few weeks, it's lost trillions from its collective value. The Dow Jones looks like a leap path of a suicide cliff jumper. The Kennedy Center has seen a steep drop in ticket sales (50% or more last I read), donations are down and countless acts (including Hamilton) are canceling their engagements.

     The European Union is rallying behind Zelenskyy and are preparing a new world order without the United States at its head. We're alienating allies left and right and several, including Canada, are hitting us with retaliatory tariffs (the biggest driver of the current market volatility) and boycotting anything American. Prices of things like gasoline and countless foodstuffs are going through the roof.

     And, in between rounds of golf, Trump airily dismisses this as "a transition".

     And this is just some of the fallout. I could go on if I wanted to take up the entire landing page of this blog.

     America, its once-robust economy and international prestige, are withering on the vine. But to hear Trump talk, he's building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

     The Democrats, as I've said recently, are doing nothing to stop it. Whatever is being done to oppose these rabid assclowns, is being done by the American people and the courts. Rebellion and disobedience is in our blood, is baked into our Constitution that people like Trump and Musk hold in complete contempt. That tends to happen when our Great Experiment is as seriously threatened as it has been these past two months.

    People like Trump and Musk are splinters or viruses in the body politic. The American people are the immune system and eventually, they will push this splinter out, pus and all. The question remains whether the rest of the body will survive long enough for the immune system to save it.

The Democrats Are Officially Completely Useless

     What does it say when Rand Paul, one of the most radical Republicans in the Senate, votes No on a GOP-engineered spending bill and 10 Democrats and independents vote for it?

     Yet, that's exactly what happened yesterday when Chuck Schumer led the charge to invoke cloture on the spending bill, thereby #1, denying Democrats the filibuster and #2, requiring only a simple majority to pass the short term CR.

     Yes, the Democrats defenestrated their most potent weapon so they could keep open for a few more months a government that the GOP is slavering to shut down. They could've demanded a much shorter 30 day stopgap bill that would've given them time to regroup and advance a saner version of the CR. They could've insisted on inserting amendments to the CR. And, again, they could've debated the Continuing Resolution through the filibuster.

     But they didn't do any of those things. In fact, Schumer gave the GOP everything they asked for without the GOP having to make any concessions whatsoever. It was like the reprise of the Ukraine-Russia "peace talks" in Saudi Arabia which the Russians didn't make a single concession.

     The CR allows Washington DC to spend its own tax dollars to meet its budget but Congress still had to authorize that.

     Trump already signed the resolution into law and Congress is out of session all week next week. So that's that.

     But then there's the House plan that passed by a razor-thin 217-215 vote. So what was in that bill?

     I'll let the fine folks at the UPI take over.

     "The House's plan would set up a massive reconciliation bill that would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts and implement new ones at a cost of $4.5 trillion over the next decade.

     It would also allocate $300 billion for spending on defense and border security, raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years, and add almost $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.

     The budget blueprint would also direct multiple committees to cut billions of dollars, including $880 billion in cuts spearheaded by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Because Trump has ruled out cuts to Medicare and Social Security, budget experts say that may necessitate cuts to Medicaid, which is under the committee's jurisdiction."

     It seems that Schumer and what laughably passes for Democratic leadership is perfectly OK with all that. To their credit, House Democrats were infuriated with Schumer falling supine before Trump.'s feet. Every Democrat in the House voted against the CR with one exception.

     Anyone who knows the first thing about the budgeting process and our financial capability knows, there's no way they're going to extend those tax cuts without that nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. And Republicans are coming for Social Security next. There are over 73,000,000 on Social Security and 80,000,000 on Medicare and Medicaid. 

     And those of us, such as yours truly, are paying a hefty $175 a month premium for health care even though we've been kicking into the fund for decades (In my case, since 1975, when Medicare was just a decade-old). So, Republicans are nakedly attempting to cut nearly a trillion in Medicare and Medicaid over the next decade and, frankly, I'm pessimistic that our premiums will go down.

     We all knew the spineless Congressional Republicans would give everything that Trump demanded. I just never thought even the historically lickspittle Democrats would get in on the action, too.

Trump is a Car Salesman

 

     All he needed was the plaid jacket.

     Yesterday, Donald Trump violated the spirit of the Hatch Act of 1939 by hawking five Tesla vehicles. Or, at least, one would think he did. Technically, he didn't violate any law because, for perverse reasons, the Hatch Act doesn't restrict presidents or vice presidents from engaging in any pernicious political activity on federal property.

     But it was, nonetheless, unseemly and the optics were horrible.

     There he was, the so-called leader of the free world, promising to buy a Tesla from his biggest political benefactor and essentially his boss, to help prop up sales which have been sagging since Musk starting acting like someone out of Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

     Of course, Donald Trump acts as if he's never gotten in a cold car in his life, much less driven one, so it's highly doubtful that he actually bought one. Don't forget, until Elon Musk stole the election for him and paid a quarter billion dollars to that end, Trump had nothing but harsh words for electric powered vehicles. As recently as last fall, he'd inveighed against electric batteries with monologues in which he chooses between getting electrocuted by batteries and getting eaten by a shark.

     But then Elon Musk, a guy who originally threw his support behind Ron DeSantis, stepped into the picture. Like Putin, Musk saw a useful idiot who could be his Trojan Horse that got him into the very center of our government, where he's resided like a heartworm.

     Suddenly, Teslas weren't so bad any more. Like everything else Trump says and does, this was so tawdry and nakedly corrupt that one had to practically rub their eyes to make sure they weren't hallucinating. And, for all we know, this was Musk's idea. One can hardly blame him if it was. After all, "the world's richest man", as the supine media like to call him, is largely only worth what his Tesla stocks are worth, since virtually all his wealth is tied up in it.

     Since he began torching his brand both literally and figuratively,  Musk's new worth has dropped by at least $100,000,000,000. But if you're a centibillionaire, at least on paper, you can afford to lose a hundred billion. So, Trump thought it would be a good idea to film a poorly-executed car commercial in front of the White House, with his sociopath buddy standing next to him like a ketamin-addled shadow, with the intention of making him even richer.

     And, no, it had nothing to do with saluting the American worker, especially since Teslas are also made in China and many of the parts are made in other countries. But, hey, what's there not to like about electric vehicles, after all? They're just one in an endless series of about-faces that Trump has made in recent years.

     Like his initial suspicion of cryptocurrency, one of the very few extant examples of Trump's gut actually informing him well. Now that he's got the cryptocurrency elite in his corner, suddenly Trump is not only touting cryptocurrency, even launching his own, now he wants the American taxpayer to underwrite the cost to buy cryptocurrency and create a Fort Knox for it.

     Isn't intellectual evolution a wonderful thing?

     And just think- For just a few million ill-gotten dollars, they can and have bought large chunks of a government with a $6.1 trillion annual budget.

     America! What a country!

What Happened to the "Opposition" in "Loyal But Principled Opposition"?

     I keep thinking of that line in The Dark Knight where the Joker asks the crime bosses of Gotham City, "Did your balls fall off?"

     Because the Democrats for the most part have been so morally supine these past seven weeks that I half expect their Congressional leaders to come to the Beltway wearing Tommy Bahamas and board shorts. They seem to genuinely believe that being the minority equals powerlessness. But the plain fact is, Republicans have a House majority of just two seats and three in the Senate.

     As Trump and Musk destroy the federal government and throw tens of thousands out of work, Democrats need to remember when and how Republicans still got to call the shots when they themselves were in the minority. But however the Democrats do it, if they do it, it's becoming more obvious that keeping Schumer and Jefferies in place plainly isn't working out.

     The government is going to shut down in three days and the Democrats seem as powerless to stop it as Republicans and, while Republicans are gleeful at the prospect, they're simultaneously preparing the groundwork for blaming the Democrats when it does happen.

     These are some of the things that Democrats need to do if they're to remain relevant:

Daily Press Briefings

     There's been something like a movement on social media for the Democrats to hire Pete Buttigieg  as a de facto Secretary of Facts to do daily press briefings. He's articulate, well-informed, witty and the Democrats could do a lot worse than hire Buttigieg to inform the American people of what's going on. In fact, they are doing worse. They need to set up their own shadow press secretary and press office and to stop letting Karoline Leavitt be the sole source of news coming out of the government.

Left Wing Mass Media Ecosystem

     Granted, this is difficult but perhaps not as difficult as it sounds. While it helps, it's not necessary to get on national TV while things like social media and podcasts exist. If an idiot like Matt Gaetz could have a podcast, why can't Democrats? The Fifth Estate has proven over the last 20 years or so to be far more agile, nimble and quicker than the Fourth Estate ever will be. The Democrats as a whole need to embrace this.

Engagement Teams

     This, of course, starts with the grassroots. The Democratic Party, justifiably, has been credibly accused of being out of touch and not actually engaging with voters. Yes, Kamala Harris on the campaign trail last year was warm and engaging in her public appearances but that's not the same thing as actually connecting with voters. Plus, her warmth and seeming engagement from stages and surrounded by Secret Service people was no match for Trump's unending doom and gloom, apocalyptic message of retribution. Democrats can't continue to lose elections and think they can just spend their way out of the minority by sending out fundraising emails to disgusted and disappointed supporters. The Democratic Party, the DNC, the DSCC and the DCCC need to coordinate and pool their resources. They need to buy, lease or rent buses and go to not just Democratic but Republican strongholds and reach out to voters. Yes, I'm talking about bringing back the Freedom Riders of the early 60s, especially at a time when our freedoms these days are so endangered and held in contempt.

COMMIT TO VOTE & GOTV

     Democrats got lulled into a sense of false security after the 2020 election when Joe Biden got over 81,000,000 votes. Obviously, they were hoping for similar if not better results as long as Trump stayed on the Republican ticket. And, yes, the numbers were incredible. The 66% voter turnout for 2020 was the highest we'd seen in literally 120 years. Early voting numbers were through the roof. Yet, while early voting numbers actually went up last fall, somehow it didn't translate to overall turnout. If we're to believe the numbers, Kamala Harris actually received 15,000,000 fewer votes than Biden did just four years before. Democrats need to stop taking their historical demographics for granted. Trump got 13% of the Black vote in 2024, as opposed to 8% in 2020 and 4% in 2016. He also saw a spike in Hispanic voters. Democrats are losing the POC vote because those voters rightly suspect their interests are not being met. My suggestion: The Democrats need to hire Stacey Abrams. After the right wing Supreme Court essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 12 years ago, Abrams founded an organization that successfully registered 800,000 voters in Georgia who weren't previously registered. She's also an effective fundraiser, having gotten $6,000,000 to fund Democratic Senate campaigns that saw not one but both seats go to Democrats. It's time Stacy Abrams went national. The Democrats need to hire her to set up a national GOTV apparatus.

Rapid Response War Rooms 24/7/365

     The Harris campaign had a rapid response war room on Twitter and it proved efficacious. Whenever the Trump campaign told a lie (which was literally every day) or stepped on their dicks, Harris' Rapid Response War Room was right there. Whoever was in charge of that Twitter account knew what they were doing. We need to make that a permanent feature in the social media ecosystem.

Fireside Chats/Rallies

     I cannot overstress how important this is. FDR informed and reassured the nation about what was going on, especially during WWII. His fireside chats were a staple in American homes and we need to bring back that level of engagement.

Motivators/Cheerleaders

     Harris succeeded in doing this during her campaign, for all the good it did. She got a brief onetime endorsement from Taylor Swift and brought Beyonce and Oprah onstage with her. But Democrats need to bring in more influencers and not just celebrities and podcasters. One way of engaging if not actually connecting with voters is to ally oneself with celebrities. And Democrats need to find good, knowledgeable voices and elevate them to positions of greater prominence. The Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal gave us Ann Coulter. Why can't we do the same thing? 

Civic Engagement

     Again, civic engagement is not just important, it's necessary and vital. Right now, AOC is an outlier in that she's informing people what their rights are in the event ICE comes banging on their door. Republicans are furiously going after her, which is proof positive that she's telling the truth and has all her shit in one sock. AOC needs backup and more Democrats need to hold more rallies, more town halls. They need viral moments (Look how quickly Al Green put himself back on the national map the night of the State of the Union) and they need to connect with voters and that starts by informing them what their voting and civil rights consist of. Getting in "good trouble", as the late Rep. John Lewis once put it. Take a page from AOC's book: Make them notice you and get your dialogue out there.

Charismatic leadership 

     Politicians often have a charisma gap and that's no truer than the current Democratic leadership of Schumer, Jefferies and so forth. We need leaders who are going to resonate with the grassroots and the current crop of zombies staggering around the Beltway just isn't doing it. If you want to reach half the voting public that's actually sane, you're not going to do it with Octogenarians and colorless pod people who about as charming as IRS auditors. Gen Z is a now a powerful and growing voting bloc. And you're just not going to get their attention if you send out geriatric barnacles old enough to be their grandparents.

Identify what people need/want & give it to them.

     This is one of the most crippling problems facing Democrats and this problem didn't just pop up in the last election cycle. The minimum wage hasn't gone up in nearly 20 years and remains at a ridiculous $7.25 an hour. Democrats also seem to have less of an appetite for making Puerto Rico and DC states, which would immediately give them a majority at least in the House if not both chambers. But Democrats are too busy attending cocktail parties to raise funds for the DNC and schmoozing with well-moneyed lobbyists and corporate executives who can get their attention much more quickly than their rank and file constituents. People need help in more ways than most of us can can count. It all starts with convincing those hurting folks that you not just feel their pain but are committing to doing something about it.

Drive the Narrative

     This goes back to establishing a liberal/progressive ecosystem that should inevitably include if not start with podcasting and social media. It's not enough to have a narrative. You have to have the dominant narrative that will resonate with more people and drown out the constant fire hose of lies of the Republican Party. The old political adage of not getting in your opponent's way if they're falling is no longer working. Yes, the current fascist administration is burning down as if doused with white phosphorous. But the problem is this administration taking us all down with them. And the Democrats need a more efficacious message than, "Trump evil. We not Trump."

Shadow Cabinet

      This was something Trump was, admittedly, very good at. He'd set up his own shadow cabinet starting the day he slunk back to Mar a Lago on January 20, 2021 with his forked tail tucked between his fat thighs. Before we knew it, he was appointing one right wing activist or another to these "advisory" positions and he and his flacks were inundating the media ecosystem with all sorts of bullshit. He also hosted right wing heads of state at Bedminster and Mar a Lago. We need to bring over progressive world leaders like President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico and President Lula da Silva of Brazil.

     Bring back former Cabinet officials starting with Buttigieg, people who by and large had stayed at their posts for all four years of the Biden administration while avoiding scandal and high turnover. Many of these former officials can and should be employed to inform the American public about what it's up against and of the very real dangers we currently face.

And So It Begins...

    In the beginning, one of the few glimmers of hope, if it can be called that, was that eventually Donald Trump's outlandishly bloated ego would reassert itself and he'd start to turn on Elon Musk when he got the perception that Musk was stealing his thunder. That first indication has finally come.

    Trump held a Cabinet meeting today and essentially told Elon Musk that he was overstepping the bounds of his illegitimate authority to fire federal workers. Trump may be incipiently demented but even he's still savvy enough to know when things are falling down around his ears.

     Practically from the moment Musk gave a Nazi salute on Inauguration Day, he's been gutting the federal government with the speed and industry of a honey badger on amphetamines. Not only that, he's been systematically axing regulatory agencies and officials that had once had oversight over his various companies like SpaceX, Tesla and others. Obviously, Musk's goal was to not only remove all oversight of his corporate entities but to free up enough money to continue getting outlandishly huge contracts for said companies.

     The result was something you could typically expect. This ketamin-addicted psychopath essentially threw the entire government into a state of turmoil and even right wing lawmakers are getting furious pushback from their own constituents at town halls. (Naturally, these profiles in courage are now opting to avoid town halls entirely.)

     The reason these Republican voters are so angry is perfectly understandable. Many of them lost their jobs with the government or know or are related to others who had. Republican voters, like Democratic and Independent ones, vote with their pocketbooks. Just like Democrats and Independents, they. too, voted largely because of their concerns for the economy. When you take away their revenue stream, when you cripple their ability to pay their bills and then simultaneously needlessly raise prices so it makes it even harder for them to keep body and soul together, of course they're going to be angry.

     The reasons for Trump's reversal on Musk are probably manifold and have absolutely nothing to do with concern for his fellow Americans, or even his own voters. Musk is embarrassing him and revealing his administration for the rancid shit show that it really is. Trump views everything through a self-interested PR lens and he's dimly beginning to come to the conclusion that maybe putting Musk in charge of the Civil Service and basically the whole government was one of his worst ideas.

     Again, Republican voters are justifiably furious over the chaos that Musk had started. Air traffic controllers, nuclear regulators, health care professionals and other highly-vital employees have been thrown out on the unemployment line. In several cases, employees have been fired, then rehired (if they can reach them after they were locked out of their email accounts), then refired only to be rehired again. The 6000 workers at the USDA who were originally axed can tell you all about that. Our government is administratively insane.

     So, Trump today reasserted his nominal control over Musk and the government by telling him to use a scalpel instead of a hatchet. Still, 76,000 VA employees are facing imminent termination and the Social Security administration is next. There's no indication so far that Musk is taking Trump's guidance under any serious advisement. He's probably telling his juvenile delinquents, "Carry on and forget what Trump said. You all know who's really in charge." Musk, after all, is paying them.

     Don't forget, Musk is a guy whose own four year-old son knows who's really in charge ("You're not the president and you need to go away," as he picked his nose and wiped his boogers all over the Resolute Desk.). Don't expect Musk to take this lying down. Just because he seemed to accept Trump's new edict, it doesn't mean he'll heel to any more than Trump is obeying the courts to unfreeze Congressionally-allocated aid to foreign countries.

     And, of course, Trump's cynical about-face on Musk's nonexistent authority to fire federal workers doesn't necessarily carry any weight. After all, firing much of the Civil Service and much of the federal workforce was one of the cornerstones of his campaign and Project 2025 last year. It's just inconceivable that so many American voters decided to go with the guy who vowed to destroy this country, this government and to breezily say this would all somehow Make America Great Again without once explaining how.

     But, after just six weeks of this clown show, the wheels are falling off the wagon that's barreling toward the edge of the cliff and even a fucking idiot like Trump knows the bridge is out up ahead. Courts have forced Trump to reinstate workers he'd fired. The people are fed up with the economic ruin and chaos. Even the supine mainstream media are beginning to notice how bizarre and ruinous all this is.

     For the first six weeks, Trump and Musk have been joined at the hip like Chang and Eng Bunker. They gave interviews together, had a joint press conference at the Oval Office, Musk was allowed to sit (or stand) in on Cabinet meetings. It's a miracle that Musk contented himself to stand in the gallery at the State of the Union instead of sitting between JD Vance and Mike Johnson.

     However, even Trump is beginning to see the light of day, even if it's just the harsh glare of bad PR. There's a major power broker in Washington who's even more insane than Donald Trump and it's Elon Musk.

      Think about that for a moment.

The 100 Minutes Hate

     Do I really have to do this?

     Yes, yes I do. 

     This is, after all, a political blog, one approaching its 17th year, and I have been doing this for just over 20 years. People come here looking for political content and I'd be abrogating my responsibilities if I didn't comment on major events such as a state of the union address. 

     But I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit that I'd actually forgotten the State of the Union was last night until it was half over. After all, Democratic members of Congress were planning on boycotting the address, while some were content to hold up little signs in pathetic, token attempts at opposition. If they can phone it in, why can't I?

     However, we political bloggers have that grim duty and, no matter how much it hurts or assaults our sensibilities, we still have a job to do, right?

     

    The address went off the rails before it even started when Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico held up a sign reading, "This is not normal". Within seconds, Lance Gooden of Texas ripped the sign out of her hands like the good little Nazi he is.

    It didn't get much better when Al Green stood up and said Trump didn't have a mandate to cut Medicare. Little Mikey Johnson stood up as if he sat on a burning coal and ordered Green removed from the chamber while dittohead Republicans sang, "Hey hey hey hey goodbye". (Green has since announced he's introducing articles of impeachment, not that that has a prayer of going anywhere in the Reichstag the House has turned into).

     (Bottom line: If a white Republican named Greene heckles Joe Biden, no problem. But if you're a Democratic black man named Green, you get kicked out for heckling a fascist Republican. Just so we're straight on the rules.) 

     And speaking of the world's most overpaid bleacher bum, Greene broke the House dress code by wearing her stupid MAGA hat on the floor and Mike Johnson apparently didn't think the Sergeant at Arms should've escorted her out for her own violation of the rules.

     Just so we're straight on the rules.

     Finally, Trump slouched to the podium, scowled at Mike Johnson like the miserable prick he is and proceeded to lie about everything under the sun. I mean, what else could we expect? This is the same clown who publicly lied 30,500+ times during his first so-called "presidency". And this was at the core of my apathy, the apathy of many others like me. After all, what's the use of a state of the union when not one thing that drops out of Trump's maw is even remotely factual?

     Doing something over and over and expecting different results and all that.

     It wasn't a State of the Union. It was a Trump rally, only sloppier, more disorganized, undisciplined and ad libbed. It was like a deleted scene out of Idiocracy. All it needed was the machine gun.

     As usual, CNN's poor Daniel Dale worked himself half to death trying to stay caught up on all of Trump's lies. He lied about DOGE's savings to the American public, which are minuscule compared to the contracts Elon Musk has gotten for his various companies (and the destruction of the departments that would have provided oversight of them).

     He lied about the government funding turning mice transgender. No, he really did.

     He lied about tariffs, claiming they would bring trillions into the economy when in reality it will just raise the cost of goods for American companies and consumers.

     He lied by blaming Joe Biden for the cost of eggs, which have only skyrocketed since January.

     He lied about ending the part of the Green New Deal that Biden signed into law.

     He lied about how much  the Paris Climate Agreement (out of which he just pulled us again) cost us.

     He lied about migrant crossings.

     He lied about them coming from insane asylums because the fucking idiot doesn't know the difference between an insane asylum and applying for asylum.

     He accused Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department, something of which he's guilty and then some.

     He lied about inflation.

     He lied about agricultural purchases from China.

     He lied about autism.

     He lied about military recruitment.

     He lied about Social Security benefits.

     He lied about aid to Ukraine.

     He lied about Panama Canal deaths from over a century ago. 

     And he lied by relitigating the 2020 election. No, he still hasn't gotten over that.

     He lied about everything.

     Again.

     So what was the sense in watching the usual litany of lies?

     The only thing that's possibly more frightening than what Trump's doing to this country are the idiots who think he's doing a bang up job. The price of eggs and many other things are going up while planes are dropping. The economy's going in the shitter, the Dow recently lost over 800 points in one day and tens of thousands of government workers have lost their jobs, including control tower personnel and nuclear regulators and our allies are turning on us left and right. Our government is getting hollowed out by an autistic, ketamine-addled Nazi who plainly has no idea what the fuck he's doing.

     Yes, there will be a blue wave that will at least take back the House and maybe the Senate in 2026 but the question we have to ask ourselves is, will we survive for the next two years?