The Unqualified Are Taking Over Thanks to trump

I mentioned last article there's a ton of things to catch up on, but trump is just overwhelming me with assholery aimed at my own profession so I got to respond to this bullshit (yes I am pissed over this). 

This past weekend, trump went and fired the head Librarian of Congress - is that even something he could do? - over "complaints" that she was too woke and for the most absurd reasons (via Kara Yorio at School Library Journal):

President Donald Trump fired Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden in a terse, two-sentence email sent on Thursday night...

"This is unprecedented, and unnecessary; Dr. Hayden has served Congress and the American people with integrity and distinction,” EveryLibrary executive director John Chrastka said in a statement. “This is a purely political move. And coming as it does right after the Preliminary Injunction and TRO reopening IMLS, it is hard not to see it that way. Congress should be outraged at this overreach."

EveryLibrary has launched a petition asking the public to signal their support to stop the attacks on the Library of Congress.

Hayden was nominated to lead the Library of Congress by President Barack Obama and sworn in for a 10-year term in September 2016. She was the first woman and the first African American to serve in the position.

AP reported that Hayden had been targeted by a conservative group, American Accountability Foundation, which tweeted on Thursday: “The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids. It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

Her removal is the latest for the administration that is stripping federal agencies of women, people of color, and anyone whose work is believed to be in opposition to Trump's agenda...

In a later press briefing, the White House accused Hayden of being "woke" and including "inappropriate books" in the library collection, completely ignorant of HOW the Library of Congress actually functions (via Kerry Pickett at Washington Times):

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Carla Hayden was fired as librarian of Congress because she promoted DEI and pushed “inappropriate books” for children...

“We felt she did not fit the needs of the American people,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”

And we don’t believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well. So, she has been removed from her position, and the President is well within his rights to do that.”

Leavitt - and everybody else in that press room - doesn't understand that the Library of Congress has a mandate to include every professionally published book securing its Copyright - by that I mean books from established large and mid-sized publishers, including university presses: they do NOT take self-published books, trust me - so that Congressional staff and elected members have access to research materials (and even fictional entertainment). Hayden couldn't stop getting LGBTQ+ books if she wanted to. 

Also, these are NOT books that circulate or even go into Interlibrary Loan: NO CHILDREN are going to get their hands on these books through LOC, let alone people from outside of Congress (there is a reading room where visitors can borrow a book if available but they can't leave it with, and threats to cutting / stealing pages prevent anybody from walking out with one). Every excuse trump and his fellow book-burners anti-woke mob are tossing out there are lies. It wasn't the taxpayers she was serving, it was Congress (and researchers able to visit in-person). If Hayden was doing anything, she was acting as Archivist for the printed works of human knowledge stretching back to the 1800s, with the Library of Congress as one of the world's largest holdings of the modern era (if not all of human history, bigger than the famed Library of Alexandria). And that is something the anti-woke mob cannot abide.

This morning, trump added onto the bullshit by appointing Todd Blanche - as white a name you can get - acting Librarian, in spite of the fact Blanche has no work history or experience as a librarian period (via Hillel Italie at AP News):

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who represented Donald Trump during his 2024 criminal trial, has been appointed acting Librarian of Congress, the Justice Department said Monday.

Blanche replaces longtime librarian Carla Hayden, whom the White House fired last week amid criticism from some conservatives that she was advancing a “woke” agenda. She was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2015.

Blanche was named the number two Justice Department official after serving as a criminal defense attorney defending Trump against two cases brought by the Justice Department during the Biden administration. Blanche is a former federal prosecutor who was a key figure on Trump’s defense team in his New York hush money trial, which ended in a conviction on 34 felony counts.

There is NOTHING on this guy's resume that even hints he did time as a paralegal working a law library for research projects. I doubt Todd can tell you the difference between DDC, LC, and SUDOC (I've studied and worked all three, by the by).

The ONLY thing that qualifies this guy is his utter loyalty to trump, and a likely willingness to purge the entire Library of Congress - which is supposed to belong to CONGRESS - of every "woke" "DEI" "climate change" book in the collection. 

Do you understand the severity of what is about to happen if Blanche - an unqualified white boy hire - is able to weed out thousands of now-rare, hard-to-find books - some titles so old and out-of-print that even large research libraries like Harvard and Yale don't own them - all because they offend the racist/sexist/evangelical/ignorant sensibilities of the Far Right fringe? 

The book burnings of the Reich are about the most recent equivalence you can match that to. The destruction of the ancient Library of Alexandria would be the closest poetic example, except that destruction honestly took centuries of fires big and small to wipe it out. Trump and Blanche and the entire MAGA fringe are capable of wiping out the Library of Congress in weeks if not days.

What the absolute hell, America. If even one rare book from 1860 gets destroyed, our nation will regret it forever.

Call your congresscritters. DEMAND they defend their own Library!

This incident, by the by, is a perfect distillation of the damage trump and his Republican cohorts are inflicting on our federal government. Purging our agencies of effective, qualified personnel, and replacing them with idiotic, toadying nobodies clinging to trump out of loyalty and self-interest. What's happening to the Library of Congress is happening to CDC, to the IRS, to Social Security Administration, to offices of Veterans Affairs, to our national parks, to even our Defense and Justice Departments. We're getting the worst government led by the worst people, and Americans are going to suffer for this for generations to come.

Update: Just finding out now trump fired the head of the Copyright Office at LOC, arguably over a published report about AI's ineffectiveness and potential to destroy copyright protections for authors, artists, and musicians. This is going to get worse.

Revision to the Update: Got pointed out on Bluesky that there's more to what trump is doing with the Library of Congress. he and his lackeys are trying to gain access to the personal data of congressmembers and their staffs, especially any legal questions/research requests that are supposed to remain confidential. Basically, trump is looking for his own kompromat on both his opponents and allies to compel them to submit to his rule.

Holy Forking Shirtballs, We Got Ourselves a Pope Guy

There's a ton of stuff going on that I need to catch up on, from previous posts that need updates currently happening in the news.

The easiest thing to report on is that the Cardinals elected a new Pope on the second day of conclave, some considered it unusually fast but the results were just as fast for the last three elections or so, nothing shocking about that. What was shocking is that the smoke didn't come out purple (Prince, why hast thou abandoned us), and that the new Pope is a guy from Chicago (!):

And he's from the South Side of Chicago, home of the beleaguered White Sox, the Daley political dynasty and, until they decamped for Washington and eventually the White House, Michelle and Barack Obama.

The new pope, who has spent much of his career ministering in Peru and leading the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was born Robert Francis Prevost on Sept. 14, 1955, at what was then called Mercy Hospital, at the corner of South Prairie Avenue and 34th Street.

But while Prevost made his debut in Chicago, his parents and two older brothers were already living just south of the sprawling city in a working-class suburb called Dolton...

Prevost's father, Louis Prevost, served in the Navy during World War II and worked as a superintendent of schools in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The future pope's mother, Mildred Martinez Prevost, was a librarian with a master's degree in education and two sisters who were nuns.

His mom was a librarian?! (respectful grumbling noises)

The rest of the bio at the NBC News article details Prevost's education, heading to Villanova to get a degree in math before joining a Catholic Order - for St. Augustine - getting another degree in theology and then a doctorate for Canon Law in Rome itself. His career in the church was balanced between work in Peru - to where he got naturalized as a citizen there - and overseeing the Augustinian order as an admin.

The bad news? Prevost got involved in the cover-ups of various sex abuse scandals both the American Midwest and in Peru. While he himself hasn't been accused of the acts, he failed to report the matters or failed to remove the culprits from their positions. It can be argued that the church's bureaucracy was corrupt enough that Prevost couldn't do any other, but it remains shameful that he didn't do more to protect the victims and work to prevent any future ones.

The good news? Prevost's taking the name Leo (the XIV, that's 14 in Latin) as symbolic of what role he wants to perform as pontiff: Reformer. In particular, carrying on his predecessor Leo XIII who stood for workers' rights, better wages, and social justice for the poor on a global level. Leo's already attacking the Artificial Intelligence movement, how it threatens human dignity and labor rights.

There is also the huge implications of the Catholic Church promoting an American-born to the Papacy and how it's a huge rebuke to trump's regime (via Francis (no relation) X. Rocca at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

...the conclave that concluded today in Rome has chosen the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church: Robert Francis Prevost. Making the milestone even more remarkable is that Prevost was chosen on just the second day of voting by the most geographically diverse body of papal electors in history. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the Church’s first-ever American pope was selected during Donald Trump’s presidency, as Washington assumes a more contentious stance toward the rest of the world...

Many observers are likely to cast Leo as anti-Trump, a role that Francis was often cast in himself. In February, a profile on X apparently belonging to Leo reposted an article criticizing J. D. Vance, who had argued that Catholics should prioritize their family and neighbors over foreigners. And indeed, it seems likely that the new pope will continue policies—such as advocacy for migrants and environmental protection—that his immediate predecessor embraced and that the current U.S. administration largely opposes. But almost any of the 133 men voting in the Sistine Chapel today would have done the same had he been chosen pope... By taking the name Leo, the new pope is clearly signaling an intention to highlight modern Catholic social teaching, a tradition that began with Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.

That the new Pope is going to come out swinging for workers' rights is happening just as trump and his oligarch billionaire buddies like Elon Musk are gutting federal workplaces and causing havoc with our trade / tourism industries to where large-scale unemployment is unavoidable.

Leo's position on immigration - similar to Pope Francis' - already puts him in conflict with trump and the sadists in trump's administration (via Ali Bianco and Gregory Svirnovskiy at Politico):

A social media account under the pope’s name repeatedly criticized the Trump administration — and especially Vice President JD Vance — in the months and years before assuming the papacy.

A series of posts under an account for Robert Prevost — now the Bishop of Rome and newly anointed as Pope Leo XIV — shows the Chicago-born Cardinal reposting an op-ed criticizing Vance on his interpretation of his faith, and the strict immigration policies that Vance along with President Donald Trump have touted.

The account in mid-April reposted someone else’s rebuke to Trump’s meeting in the Oval Office with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and pointed to an op-ed by auxiliary Catholic Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, D.C., highlighting the suffering of migrants summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador.

“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” the op-ed that Prevost reposted reads.

In a more pointed example, the account in February posted an opinion piece from the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal-leaning Catholic newspaper, titled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

It's telling that the rabid MAGA base are livid about Leo XIV being the head of the largest American Christian denomination (via Greg Sargent at the New Republic (paywalled)): 

Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new pope as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented...

In a podcast with Matt McManus (a contributor to Commonweal) Sargent covers some of the attacks (via transcript):

McManus: Well, I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about the new pope’s views over the next couple days as people scour everything he is ever written and everything that he is ever said. The choice of the name Leo is itself significant. Pope Leo was widely regarded as the “People’s Pope” or the “Workers’ Pope” because he is one of the founders of Catholic social teaching. Now, to be clear, the O.G. Pope Leo was by no means a socialist or a Marxist, the way they, say Laura Loomer, is trying to imply that the current Pope Leo is a Marxist. But he did stress that there were significant problems with capitalism that led to the emergence of things like atheistic socialism and atheistic Marxism and called for a conciliation between workers and capitalists that would favor the workers—or at least better their conditions. So I think that in itself is telling about the direction that he is planning on going in.

But if you look at some of the stuff he said over the past couple years, he is very clearly pro-immigrant. Back in 2015, he stated that he was opposed to the death penalty. He spent a long time in Peru, by all accounts living in quite modest circumstances and demonstrating an unusual level of concern for the poor. So that’s all a positive sign.

Sargent: Well, MAGA is not happy about any of it. Charlie Kirk accused the pope of “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.” Laura Loomer erupted over the idea that the Pope seemed to endorse the need to pray for Floyd, calling him a “career criminal” and “drug addict.” MAGA figure Sean Davis called the Pope anti-Trump and pro–open borders...

If you are known by your enemies, then we know Leo XIV is going to be someone standing up for the immigrant, the impoverished, and the "what the hell happened to our jobs" citizenry.

It's still early, but there ought to be a betting line in the UK on how quickly the Pope is going to excommunicate JD Vance, and for whichever sadistic stance Vance will take in defense of trump's crimes.

In the meantime, just be aware the new Pope is a White Sox fan (the first known pontiff to attend a World Series!), an eater of Chicago-style hot dogs and tavern pizza (not sure about deep dish, alas), and now comes with his own Power-Up music intro.

Just as long as Bobby... uh, Pope Leo remembers this one key thing from the Blues Brothers:

Boys, you gotta learn not to talk to nuns that way.

If The Smoke Comes Out Turquoise, I Think That Means They Ordered Mexican For Dinner (Ow Stop Hitting Me)

In what are very dark times indeed, I know I shouldn't be snarking on stuff but the whole "Elect a New Pope" thing is just open for humor. 

For example, the news report that the Vatican had to re-install the smokestack they use to announce to the crowds if they elected a new pope or not (via Clare Marie Schneider at NPR):

Throughout this secretive, locked-door affair, the recently installed chimney will be the only indication to the public about how the process is going. After a ceremony within the Sistine Chapel is held to mark the beginning of the conclave, the doors are locked, Bry Jensen, host of the long-running Pontifacts podcast, told NPR.

That's when "the verbal and communicative gates go down," Jensen said. "There is no further communication until a pope has been elected, aside from smoke."

As the cardinals deliberate, they vote until they reach a two-thirds majority agreement on who to elect. With each vote, they burn their ballots in a stove installed in the Sistine Chapel for this purpose. If black smoke plumes from the chimney, the cardinals aren't in agreement and will need to vote again. Once white smoke can be seen from the chimney, it signals to the public that the Roman Catholic Church has a new leader. The process relies on chemicals to produce the desired color...

When that article popped up on Bluesky, I just HAD to Reply Guy with this:

This time, it's been set to provide a vast array of colored smoke: Black = no pope Blue = the pancakes were soggy Red = they've decided on watching "Sinners" Green = they've found the hidden stash of Irish whiskey Pink = it's Roan Chappell! Purple = Prince has returned! White = pope

— Witty Librarian Resistance (@paulwartenberg.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 9:21 PM

(I'm Unitarian. I'm *allowed* this amount of levity towards my Catholic brethren. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

That said, there's a few more colored smokes that the cardinals can send to signal their intents:

• Violet = They've agreed to buy for Janis Joplin her Mercedes Benz
• Beige = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a White guy
• Taupe = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Latino guy
• Onyx = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Black guy
• Fuchsia = They're just messing with us. Seriously, is fuchsia even a real word?
• Olo = How are there even new colors to be found? Don't we have a full palette of 256 blends and tints and gods know how many options to choose from in the RGB chart?

There will be no Orange smoke. There is no way the cardinals will vote in trump after his ill-humored and tone-deaf mockery of their papacy.

That all said, to the cardinals getting locked in with each other over the next couple of days - they rarely elect a pope on the first go, there's too many candidates and factions to winnow down thanks to the two-thirds majority requirement, and I doubt one of them will get over 50 percent the first round - and we're all praying they select a new Pope who does look to the future, towards the more positive virtues of faith such as charity, humility, love of others, and grace.

One Sentence Observation About the Escalating Conflict Between India and Pakistan This 2025

Considering both nations have nuclear warheads aimed at each other, and decades of near-insane levels of hostility towards each other that would make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a genteel wine and cheese party, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF------

...India has launched strikes on several parts of Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled territory, in a dramatic escalation of tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals...

In an assault India dubbed "Operation Sindoor," the Indian military said it struck nine sites in "Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed."

The Indian Defense Ministry said the strikes were in response to a militant attack that killed 26 people in India-administered Kashmir last month.

Tensions have been on the rise between India and Pakistan since April 22, when gunmen killed at least 26 tourists and injured a dozen others in India-administered Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of having a connection to the attack — the worst aimed at Indian civilians in more than a decade...

The U.N. secretary-general's office called for "maximum military restraint" from both India and Pakistan, saying the world cannot afford a war between them.

---FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFfffffffffffffffffffffffffff (runs for the bomb shelter)

Between The Rock and The Dumb Place

With all of the unsettling things donald trump is doing to our international trade, our global standing, our farmers, and our tourism industry, it's the deeply insane shit he's posting on social media that distracts just a bit. But there may be something darker in trump's latest brain-fart to re-open the infamous Alcatraz prison as a holding place for the worst criminals the most defiant opponents (via Bill Chappell at NPR):

President Trump says he is ordering federal agencies to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz — the notorious maximum security prison that closed more than 60 years ago.

"I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America's most ruthless and violent Offenders," Trump said in a post on Truth Social...

Trump's message suggests he wants to restore Alcatraz to its original dual purpose. The twin goals for building the original prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, were "to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons, and to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious" about stopping rampant crime in the 1920s and 1930s..."

Trump did not provide details about a timeline for reopening the prison. And the National Park Service did not reply to NPR's request for comment about the president's new plan for Alcatraz before this story published.

But enacting Trump's proposal would come with a steep price tag, both for constructing and operating a new prison facility on an island whose most plentiful natural resource is sandstone.

Alcatraz was shuttered "because the institution was too expensive to continue operating," according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It said operating the island prison was nearly three times more expensive than any other federal prison at the time.

"This isolation meant that everything (food, supplies, water, fuel...) had to be brought to Alcatraz by boat," the bureau says. "For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week."

I remembered my travel to San Francisco for a librarian convention in June 2001 (right before 9/11, before air travel required 108 checkpoints and hoops to jump through) and saved the photos here and there on my computers. I made a visit out to the place in-between convention meetings and such.

Welcome to The Rock! - Sean Connery

I'm a librarian. OF COURSE I TOOK A PICTURE OF
ALCATRAZ'S LIBRARY!

I was 31 at the time. I had more hair back then.

(I'm not including the photos of my foray to Colma to pay my respects to Emperor Norton. Then again, Norton would be a far wiser and saner leader for America at this point)

I remember what the tour guide said about Alcatraz as a prison: The costs of shipping everything across the bay made it impractical, they couldn't install pipelines for water or fuel, and they had no way to add facilities like desalination plants. It also didn't help that by sitting in the middle of a saltwater bay, they dealt with serious corrosion of the steel and concrete that made it harder to maintain as a prison (this is what Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers took advantage of). I saw someone post on Bluesky how back in 1963 it cost the government three times what a normal prison cost, and held fewer prisoners. We're making more money out of Alcatraz as a tourist attraction than as a prison.

So why is trump suddenly fixated on converting an abandoned prison that would cost wasteful hundreds of millions of dollars to restore? (Other than trump being a brain-dead idiot that is)

We need to look closely at trump's Truth Social rant (well, to read someone else's screenshot, let's not login to that place shall we). Here's a screenshot from Bluesky via John Brooks  :

Yes, I agree, 8 years of you is indeed far too long

[image or embed]

— John Brooks (@johnbrooks.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 8:42 PM

Beneath the opening rants of using the prison to house "the dregs of society," and threatening to throw "violent offenders" into Alcatraz, trump is including "judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came to our country illegally." One of these things is not like the others... 

Don't forgot, right now trump is locked into a legal fight with federal judges who are refusing to bend to trump's agenda to ship without due process a number of criminal migrants but also too many honest legal migrants that trump's ICE thugs are rounding up under false pretenses and unproven allegations. We're close to the point where these judges are going to hold trump's DOJ lawyers in full contempt of their courts, and we're already in a constitutional crisis over trump's refusal to respect the Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Rule of Law.

Obviously frustrated with these legal barriers to his ambition to rule without restraint, trump is breaking out the bullying threats by telling everyone he's willing to jail these judges if they keep protecting the rights of those trump and his wingnut ilk condemned (without proof) as "criminals". But why threaten to send these judges to places like Leavenworth or Florence Supermax - places most Americans might not recognize - when he can threaten them with Alcatraz, one of the most infamous prisons in modern history (it defines a whole Trope, after all)? Everyone knows Alcatraz, even if they've never been to San Francisco to see it in person (and you can see it - once the bay fog lifts - pretty clearly along the bay shore).

All trump thinks they need to do is splash the prison with a new coat of paint, install some modern cots, put his name in large gold letters outside the main gate, and viola! Instant place of intimidation to his foes and allies alike.

And like all things trump thinks about, he honestly didn't think this through. The judges are going to ignore his threats because they're more concerned about upholding the Rule of Law (without that, judges lose all power and they know it). trump's already threatening migrants - especially the legal residents and their children - so yet another prison threat is no different than threatening them with shipping to El Salvador. And arguing to open such an expensive location for what is clearly an ego-driven fantasy undercuts every claim trump makes that he's "cutting costs" and saving us money.

We could laugh away trump's obsession with re-opening such a relic, but don't laugh away the underlying threat to it all. trump wants to break the judges against him, he wants to destroy every aspect of the Rule of Law.

In this, we need to stand firm. Like a Rock.

(yes, simile intended)

It's Cinco De Mayo Time 2025!

Just a quick note or three about CINCO DE MAYO this 2025:

Find yourself in sunny Minot North Dakota!!

Head out to Herbert's Taco Hut!

Get yourself a taco!

Aim both middle fingers in the general direction of donald Racist Orange Shitgibbon trump!

And Celebrate the Battle of Puebla as General Zaragoza intended!!!

P.S. more blogging to follow this Monday. brb.

This Remake Isn't Any Better

There's a thing about the first 100 days of a presidential administration that's supposed to signify the successes - and failures - pointing towards how that presidency is going to turn out.

I'd like to refer to Maha - who's also quoting a few other observers - over at her blog to describe just how badly trump's second go at driving America over the cliffs is going: 

Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet  he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.

Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.

I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.

They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.

Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people. 

Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers...

Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.

“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.

“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.

So there we are...

I've noticed some of these things already. When confronted with the facts his actions aren't working, are unpopular, or both, trump will refuse to admit his mistakes and double down on them until someone with the power to tell him no steps up and stops him... at which point he'll blame everyone else - including the ones who stopped him - for the screwups.

Always remember this about trump: trump views the world as made up of Winners and Suckers/Losers, and he must never admit to being a Loser.

As trump's tariff wars keep starting and delaying - except for the ones on China, which are now taking effect - he refuses to admit how his chaotic actions are unsettling the global economy to where he's triggered the start of a world-wide recession, and he's threatening to keep up with that chaos until he gets the trade deals with other nations - which they won't cooperate bending towards - he wants.

As trump's anti-immigration policies are scaring away legitimate tourists and college students, he doesn't want to admit the warrantless overkill arresting law-abiding migrants and students is breaking any laws, and he's insisting everyone he's shipping - illegally - to El Salvador are hardened gang members by flouting manufactured "proof" nobody else can take serious.

trump can never admit he's wrong... which is why the things he's doing wrong will get worse.

It'd be pretty to think that the end result of this would be a broken, mostly dead Far Right Republican power base that can never rise again to any political control of the United States. But that should have happened the FIRST TIME AROUND, when trump's failures and the GOP's inability to rein him in should have ruined their reputation with a majority of voters and doomed them for a generation or three. Instead, this miasma of disinformation and short-term memory failure - and the Democrats' refusal to throw trump and his lackeys into a courtroom for guilty verdicts and prison cells - allowed trump to come roaring back into office where his greed, rage, fearmongering, and idiocy would doom us again.

Only this time, he's been granted more power than before, and there's NOBODY in a position to delay his obsessive agenda to burn it all down - so he can rule the ashes - or else cushion the damage getting done.

A lot of people are going to lose their livelihoods - their lives - because this trump sequel is darker and dumber than the plotline that came before. And there's a serious question if we're going to recover anything out of what's to come.

O Canada! (Thank God)

God exists, and She's Canadian (yes this is a Gen X Dogma reference).

Canada held their national elections this Monday, facing down a potential conservative flip the way most other western liberal nations were facing in the post-COVID reactionary world. However, thanks to one unavoidable factor - donald MOTHERFUCKING trump, out here hitting their nation with high tariffs and taunting them with threats to make them "the 51st state" - affecting the overall mood of the Canadian electorate, the results are favoring the liberal party under new-ish leadership to continue their fight against trump's bullying ways.

Ed Kilgore over at New York's Intelligencer site took note of how trump screwed it up for himself and his wingnut conservative allies in the Great White North (paywalled):

...The bookmark at the end of the month was Monday’s national election in Canada, which Donald Trump worked hard to make a referendum on his various threats to our most important trading partner’s economy, independence, and even integrity. Elections are rarely defined by a single issue, but there’s not much doubt north of the border that Trump personally turned a certain victory for his Conservative counterparts into a stunning win for the left-for-dead Liberals. The ruling party made mobilizing the country against Trump’s various provocations the successful formula (personal edit: search for #ElbowsUp, kids!) for a fourth consecutive national win under the leadership of recently appointed prime minister Mark Carney, who is sort of the Kamala Harris of Canada, given long-time leader Justin Trudeau’s handoff to him in January.

Despite clear signals he was putting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an impossible spot, Trump never let up, issuing this especially provocative bit of advice to Canadians on Truth Social on Election Day itself:

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!

Trump was essentially offering to displace the entire Canadian election system and extinguish that country’s sovereignty in exchange for his benevolent rule from Washington.

So Trump has produced a revived government in Ottawa with a distinct mandate to fight him tooth and nail. But that’s not the only way he was a loser on Monday. It’s not at all unusual for politicians to rally domestic support by picking a fight with other countries; it’s a jingoistic political tale as old as time. In this case, there is zero evidence (outside the hardest core of MAGA loyalists) that Americans have rallied to Trump’s Canada-bashing cause. Au contraire, as they might say in Quebec. An April 22 Washington Post–ABC–Ipsos poll showed Americans opposing a takeover of Canada by an astounding 86 percent to 13 percent. Even Republicans opposed it, 71 percent to 27 percent. Yes, many of them viewed this “idea” as a classic example of Trump just trolling the world. But if that’s what it was (and he has denied he’s trolling at all), he’s taken the joke far beyond the point where anyone in Canada is laughing, making himself a bit of a laughing stock in the process...

Somewhere in trump's aging, dementia-addled brain, he's gotten the notion that he can coax, bully, and/or harass the entire nation of Canada into succumbing to his will and joining the United States as one huge state (never mind the geographic, logistical, political, and cultural nightmares that would all cause). He clearly flunked out of 19th Century U.S. history, which would have taught him that Canada resisted even American military invasions during the War of 1812. Hell, that resistance developed their own rise of nationalism and pride in having defended themselves against our arrogance. They view the Battle of Queenston Heights the way Americans view Yorktown, or Gettysburg, or D-Day.

For trump to keep insisting that "it'll be better" for them to surrender to trump's annexation pleas is a huge ongoing insult to Canada. If he's doing it to intentionally troll them, to get them to roll over in his tariff negotiation tactics, he horribly miscalculated. He's made it so that anything even indirectly related to trumpism such as the conservatives in Canada - who probably made hourly phone calls to their American buddies begging them to get trump to shut up for even a day - got the Elbows Up treatment. It's telling that the leader of the national Conservatives Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat, a humiliation even UK Tories leader Sunak never endured (via Promit Mukherjee at Reuters):

Canada's main opposition leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat in Monday's general election, results from Elections Canada showed, as the Conservatives were beaten by the incumbent Liberal Party.

Poilievre, 45, failed to retain his seat in the Ontario district of Carleton, losing it to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy...

Poilievre, a career politician, looked set to become Canada's next prime minister at the start of the year as he pitched himself as a change from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had led the Liberals since 2015.

Poilievre rode an anti-Trudeau wave and his sharp one-liners resonated with the public.

But as U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and often mused about making it his country's 51st state, opinions shifted in favor of Carney over Poilievre...

Poilievre tried to deflect any anti-trumpism by loudly decrying trump's tariffs and calling on national pride, but his own rhetoric style and decades of attacking liberalism made Poilievre the one target Canadians could punish. They couldn't punch trump - safe behind our border - but they could punch him.

Granted, the Conservatives did gain seats - there is a terrifying trend of young men voting far right in Canada as much as here in the U.S. - but they failed to win the plurality, giving Liberals the opportunity to form another coalition. Poilievre may lose his spot as party leader now that he's ousted from office, but now it's a question of the next party leader and how Far Right they'll be (and how susceptible they'll be to trumpian Far Right ideology takeover).

For the Center-Left in Canada, there is relief. For the Center-Left in America, there is a sliver of hope.

For the ongoing trade and border wars trump is threatening to escalate...