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 sad 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?

Just Saying...

Freak on a Leash

     Since yesterday, I've been thinking of the 1998 Korn song, "Freak on a Leash". Trump's staged gang-banging of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenkskyy left absolutely no doubt to anyone except for the MAGA Koolaid swillers, one from Utah in particular, where his true loyalties lie. You could almost hear the champagne corks popping all the way from Moscow.

     If it isn't already, it ought to be a point of fascination as to what Putin has on Trump. What possible kompromat does he have over the so-called leader of the Free World? It can't be the pee tape or anything in the Steele dossier. In today's corrupted political climate, Trump's followers would find some way to spin that into something positive. Besides, Trump is completely incapable of feeling shame. He is, however, hypervigilant about being vulnerable.

     And, since at least 2016, Trump has been acting like a victim in a hostage video. Since that shameful summer of 2016, when he openly asked Russia to hack into Hillary's emails and, the month before, when his son Don Jr, had Russian spies over at Trump Tower, Trump has given the Russians everything they could have possibly wanted, if not more. Russian state media is constantly crowing about "our boy, Donald" and even posting nude photos of Melania. They're plainly getting their talking points and facts straight from the Kremlin. They're even boasting about how they'll nuke the United States.

    Trump is the Soviet-era delineation of "a useful idiot" and they're treating him as such on their broadcasts.

Something takes a part of me
You and I weren't meant to be
A cheap fuck for me to lay
Something takes a part of me

      

     All Trump needed to do yesterday was to counter Zelenskyy's accusations about Putin with, "You're taking about the man I love!" JD Vance wasn't far behind. And his Mr. Sluggo face all throughout that disastrous Oval Office meeting yesterday showed his loathing for Zelenskyy and anything having to do with Ukraine or its interests.

     But what Trump obviously doesn't understand, or care to, is Ukraine's interests are Europe's interests and, by extension, ours. He obviously has a one dimensional understanding of geopolitics in which everything can be boiled down to a crooked real estate deal backed up by Mafia-like threats. Personally, I don't think he even gives a damn whether Ukraine keeps its sovereignty or even gets into NATO. All that matters to him is whether Putin gets whatever he wants.

     Or else.

     But there's an aspect to that clusterfuck at the White House that not enough people are paying attention to: The psychological manipulation. There's a woman on Facebook named Yuliia Vyshnevska who put up something very interesting on her Facebook wall. I won't reproduce it in full because of its length but she breaks down what she called, "a true masterclass in gaslighting, manipulation and coercion".

     But she identified the tactics used against Zelenskyy and they are:

     1. Blaming the victim for their own situation.

     2. Pressure and coercion into ‘gratitude’.

     3. Manipulating the concept of ‘peace’.

     4. Refusing to acknowledge the reality of war.

     5. Devaluing the victims of war.

     6. Dominance tactics.

     7. Forcing capitulation under the guise of ‘diplomacy’.

     8. Projection and distortion of reality.

     9. Creating the illusion that Ukraine ‘owes’ the US. And

    10. Undermining Ukraine’s resistance.

    Even when stripped of its geopolitical parameters, these are common gaslighting techniques used by spousal abusers in the interests of control. All that was missing was Trump vowing to turn over a new leaf, which he sort of did when he vaguely "offered" military aid to Ukraine in the inevitability of Russian aggression and further encroachment.

     Blaming the victim for their own situation. Telling the victim they do not have the means to go it alone. Telling the victim you are their only savior and that you'd better be grateful for it. Classic domestic violence manipulation. And any DV counselor or honest social worker would back me, or Vyshnevska, up on this.

      Zelenskyy should've known what to expect yesterday before walking into the lion's den. He was entering the lair of a person who called him a "dictator" (the same one who had no problem being a dictator on Day One, which is now stretching into its 40th day). He even accused Ukraine of starting the war.

     And, in a much larger and more dangerous version of the bully who kicks apart in five seconds a sandcastle that took hours to create, in just a few minutes, Trump flushed down the shitter an alliance and diplomatic ties in the making for eight decades. In fact, just hours after yesterday's spectacle, many NATO leaders broke their necks getting to Great Britain to plot strategies to oppose Russia and help Ukraine.

      So tell me again about who's "gambling with World War 3".

Shakedown Street

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

What's the difference between Organized Crime and the Trump administration during a shakedown? Mafia Dons aren't stupid enough to do it in front of cameras and microphones.

    When this administration finally crashes and burns like the Hindenburg, people will wonder why Trump didn't unilaterally sign an Executive Order renaming Pennsylvania Avenue Shakedown Street. Between Trump handing over total control of the largest government in the world to a Nazi South African sociopath to offering a path to citizenship for $5,000,000 to openly bribing oil executives with whatever they wanted for a one billion dollar bribe, the White House has become a mere front organization for a global criminal enterprise.

    Today's spectacle was a case in point. Trump had Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and immediately proceeded to verbally give him noogies and Dutch rubs. For good measure, someone finally found Vice President JD Salinger wandering around the Beltway, brushed the pork rind crumbs out of his hobo beard and brought him to attend and contribute to said spectacle.

    Yes, a curiously invertebrate Marco Rubio was also there in barely more than spirit, looking like a dog when asked if he chewed up the toilet paper when Mommy and Daddy were gone. Brian Glenn, most famous for shtupping Marjorie Taylor-Greene, actually asked Zelenskyy why he wasn't wearing a suit. It was like watching an old episode of Romper Room in which the children were part of an LSD trial experiment.

     So there they sat in front of the fireplace, where Trump has fond memories of burning incriminating documents that he couldn't flush down the toilet, to hold a dog and pony show with arguably the most courageous world leader in the world and treated him like an immigrant shopkeeper in a heavily mobbed-up Lower East Side neighborhood.

    Zelenskyy was in Washington to sign a mineral rights deal that would've handed over 50% of Ukraine's rare earth minerals to pay back the money we'd already committed to Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion over three years ago. In exchange, Trump sorta floated the vague possibility that maybe, perhaps we'll put boots on the ground and protect them Russia. In other words, no guarantee of protection in this protection racket.

    Here's another difference between Don Trump and a mafia Don: At least when you sign over a percentage of your earnings to the mob, the mob actually provides the protection. Your mafia bosses are pragmatic enough to know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain, the shopkeepers no longer have any incentive to hand over protection money.

      And, as stated, Trump is treating this like any of his disastrous real estate deals in which his only motivation is lining his pockets and committing some moral and/or legal larceny along the way just for shits and giggles. And, in the process, by yelling at and talking over Zelenskyy, Trump and his hirsute appendage JD Vance exposed their geopolitical idiocy for all the world to see.

"Where's My Gratitude?"

To anyone who doesn't paint murals with their fecal matter could see, Trump was acting like a fat and old Scut Farkus, with Vance playing his top toadie, Grover Dill. Those of us on Zelenskyy's side were no doubt hoping he would go all psycho Ralphie on Trump's fat pasty ass. But, to his credit, Zelenskyy kept his composure and acted like a head of state while not giving an inch to Trump and his insane demands. Zelenskyy was actually in Washington today to sign a modified version of the original mineral rights deal in which Trump wouldn't get everything he wanted.

      If you think I'm overstating my case, here's a snippet of what was actually said in the Oval Office in front of cameras and microphones:

 

    The only miracle  was that Elon Musk wasn't there standing behind Zelenskyy, with his vestigial twin Little X on his shoulders, threatening to revoke Ukraine's Starlink access (which he's already done). At the end of this shit show, Trump was yelling about Hunter Biden's laptop. No, really, he was. He was with a world leader who actually stood up to him and, like a typical autocrat unused to opposition, he lost his shit.

     Over the decades, we've seen presidents have over heads of state in the Oval Office. The collegiality, even if it's fake, was always there and decorum was maintained. Because, above all, there was mutual respect for the offices. Because every Chief Executive before Trump understood that they were representing the most powerful nation in the free world and that we had to maintain our moral leadership and authority on the world stage.

    All that changed with Trump, who perpetually acts like the mob bosses with whom he'd done business for decades. That's why it shouldn't have surprised anyone that Trump would act like a bargain bin Tony Soprano in dealing with a world leader. What surprised everyone, even Reagan-era Republicans, was how blatant he was about it.

    While Trump and Vance were berating Zelenskyy for "relitigating" the ongoing war, Trump was busy relitigating his grievances over people having the temerity to notice his obvious collusion with and deference to the Russians, something Zelenskyy called him out for. And, being the semi-functional moron that he is, Trump obviously had the wrong expectations of Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy was there to see to the interests of Ukrainians, not ours or Russia's. He wasn't there to pay tribute to Trump like some vanquished warlord. But all that was lost on him.

 

 

    As proof of this collusion, Trump even tried to let a Russian spy into the Oval Office. That's right. That would be the same state-run, Soviet-era TASS that was the only media outlet allowed in the White House in May 2017 when Trump had two high-ranking Russian officials in that same Oval Office. Luckily, Karoline Leavitt kicked him out. But Zelenskyy wasn't far behind because Trump kicked the Ukrainian delegation out of the White House.

     The (usual) joint press conference was therefore cancelled, and no mineral rights deal was signed. In a curious turn of events, Trump fucked up so badly and so completely that neither the US nor Russia got what they wanted. Afterward, Trump acted like the stereotypical pigeon: Knocking over all the chess pieces, shitting all over the board and strutting around as if he'd won. I imagine he'll be getting a call from the Kremlin soon from a certain person warning him not to stand in front of a window higher than the ground floor.

My Private Idaho Security

     Dr. Teresa Borrenpohl thought she would attend a town hall meeting in Kootenai County, Idaho. Maybe she thought it would be like the Norman Rockwell painting, in which an average Joe stands up at a town hall to speak his piece while those around him listen attentively and respectfully.

     

     This is the way it should've gone.

 

     But this was Idaho, so this is how it went, instead.

     The Kootenai County Republican Party hosted a town hall in which the only lawmakers in attendance were, naturally, right wingers. Then at one point, Dr. Borrenpohl began asking questions about Medicare and reproductive health, two topics that Republicans hate to talk about and, when they do, let their feelings on the subject be known.

      Before she knew it, she was swarmed by two private security guards and the county sheriff, some right wing stooge named Bob Norris, who filmed the whole thing on his cell phone like a 13 year-old live-streaming throwing a brick through a window. They hauled her out of the town hall and arrested her on a charge of battery (she bit one of the anonymous goons). 

      They brutalized her to the extent that she had to go to the local hospital to be treated for her injuries. The battery charge was quickly dropped when the DA's office reviewed the video evidence (here's a video from CBS News showing the whole sordid incident). It came out a short time later that the two goons that Norris had sicced on her work for Lear Asset Management, Inc., a private security firm. The City of Coeur d’Alene has since revoked the firm’s license.

     A GofundMe for Dr. Borrenpohl has been set up and, at last count, she's gotten over $320,000, including five grand from Graham Nash (Yeah, that one).

     But that's not the only reason I'm writing this article. Yes, it's horrifying that speaking up out of turn at a town hall gets you treated like a Jew during Kristallnacht. Yes, it's horrifying that our First Amendment rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and our Fourth Amendment right against illegal search and seizure can be so easily violated the minute the Powers That Be hear something they don't want to hear.

     Yes, this is the horrifying reality of Mr. Trump's America. But my main reason for writing this is Ed Bejarana, the emcee of the town hall. This is what Bejarana said while Borrenpohl was getting mauled by a couple of for hire goons.

     “The reality is, there’s a whole bunch of great things that are happening, the problem is we’ve got a bunch of rabble-rousers who just won’t allow it to be spoken. So the thing is, what I’m doing up here is, I’m simply overtalking you because your voice is meaningless right now.”

     Apparently, the "great things that (were) happening" was the assault and battery of ordinary citizens speaking their mind. At a town hall.

     You will note in the lead image that Eddie fancies himself a book narrator. But he doesn't just narrate anyone's books. They have to have a certain... well, let's call it what it is, a certain Nazi sensibility.

     His website tells us that when he was in the military, he served in Germany (no surprise there). And, lest you doubt where his political sensibilities lie, note that on his Facebook page, he has a picture of Trump's mugshot, as if it's a perfectly good idea to elect a guy who was arrested four times in one year and was convicted on 34 counts of fraud.

     Again, Ed is also, in case you haven't guessed, an audiobook narrator. Here's his Audible page, if you want an idea of the kind of tripe he chooses to narrate, such as that deathless opus, Climate Change: A Convenient Truth, the book that dares to ignore the concept of melting ice. And, speaking of deathless prose, here's a link to his own alternative to literacy. Go leave a review. It looks as if he could use something other than one star ratings.

     I'd strongly recommend you contact Audible directly and let them know one of their narrators is a cryptofascist. Or you can email them right here. If you have difficulty getting through to Audible, you can lodge a complaint against him via ACX.

     So why am I going after this miscreant? Well, let's just say that when I read and heard his sneering remarks, calling Dr. Borrenpohl a "little girl", something inside me just snapped. There's just something about the smug fascism of this right wing cocksucker that makes him the perfect synecdoche of the entire neonazi MAGA movement. And it just provoked a visceral reaction in me that I haven't felt in years, maybe decades.

     And why do I think I can do anything about him? Well, never underestimate the power of social media, as I proved recently when I put on my Facebook wall the lead image. To date, it's gotten over 200 reactions and close to 1800 shares, meaning people are taking me up on my initiatives and putting the word out about this asshole. And the activity is showing no signs of letting up. I want to destroy this motherfucker's career. I want to personally put him in a refrigerator crate in the Back Bay of Boston so he can suck cock for MBTA subway fare.

     And I want him to know who took him down. I want him to know it's me. And if he wants to come after me, well, as the saying goes, FAFO. I've taken down bigger and better assholes than him. Hal Turner can tell you all about that.