Who Owns What, When It's All Debt?

Update: Thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! 

P.S. I am waiting at home this morning to get new toilets installed, so while I'm sitting here I'd like to promote my book Notice a Trend to help pay the bills uh encourage more man reading! And women reading! And sentient rock creatures who travel through space! And...

This is something Comrade Misfit posted over the weekend, and I wanted to delve into this nightmare a little more (by Victor Tangermann at Futurism):

AI companies are pouring untold billions of dollars into enormous data centers in their efforts to sustain increasingly complex and resource-intensive AI models.

It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.

This is the sort of thing that screams FRAUD. And nobody's doing anything about it except let it pile up.

Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. Like Enron, they’re using special purpose vehicles, or off-balance sheet arrangements such as legally distinct subsidiaries, as a way to make their financial reporting look healthier than it actually is — often a glaring sign that something is deeply amiss behind the scenes...

That none of these accounting tricks - those shell companies or "special purpose vehicles" - were outlawed when we had the chance spells out just how broken our federal government is when policing the uber-rich megacorps that are "too big to fail."

For the love of God, in my own lifetime we've witnessed financial collapse - the bankrupting of Savings and Loans - after financial collapse - the era of Enron and other tech companies collapsing under their own greed - after financial collapse - the mortgage industry meltdown of 2007-08 that led to a near decade of unemployment and housing woes. That last one directly affected me and my poor parents when I lost my job in 2008, and spent four years looking for a job and unable to sell my home to afford relocating to places where jobs were available.

I've learned a lot from that last economic collapse. For starters, I learned that we shouldn't bail out the CEOs first, we should bail out their victims - us - first, and then send those goddamn bastards to jail for their incompetence and greed. 'Cause one of the things I guarantee you is that these tech companies are getting us to pay in some form or another to cover for the massive costs they're adding up to keep their bubbles afloat. We've seen what happens when those bubbles pop: us taxpayers foot the goddamn bills (again).

I've also come to wonder why these businesses are allowed to accrue so much debt in the first place. My basic understanding of economics tells me debt is bad, and too much of it is very bad. I understand that in the complexities of running a business, companies may borrow loans to cover for expenses today on an understanding that in the future they will have more money to be able to pay off such debts. That they can use those debts to obtain more loans and add more debt to where they have more debts than money on hand is where things start looking insane IMHO.

This is where something like regulations and laws should be in place demanding that businesses hold themselves accountable to some degree: To prevent them from building up too much debt in the first place. You know, some sort of debt cap that says "whoa there, pay this off first before you go putting yourselves into billions more in debt." Without those regulations in place - and we've seen the damage when we've deregulated financial systems like Savings and Loans and the securities/financial markets - those corporate idiots can't stop themselves, spiraling into an ongoing cycle of borrowing and debt all because they're hoping their ship of gold-pressed latinum reaches port that big tech breakthrough pays off.

And this begs the question "WHO is lending these greedheads more and more money to put them further into debt?" The large international banks, obviously, but you have to ask them "At what point do you call in those debts? At what point do you stop lending to these guys - these techbros addicted to their AI hopes - when it's clear they're not going to deliver on any profit?"

In what way is all of this debt any good? Who benefits from this?

Because debt leads to one thing: Control. Any person - or business - deep in debt to another person has to obey the creditor. Otherwise, you lose your business, your car, your home, your livelihood, your very identity.

Debt is another form of slavery.

And if the megacorps collapse under debt, that cascade of financial ruin spreads out: Every other person doing business with them loses money and goes into debt they can't pay, which spreads out even further. A lot of us fell into debt after the housing crisis almost 20 years ago (!), and a lot of us are still paying that off.

Who owns all that debt? We don't, and yet we're the ones who are going to get stuck paying for it (again).

Goddammit. This cycle of economic short-sightedness and greed needs to end.

The Downward Spiral of an Unwell Mind

Update: Many thanks to Tengrain for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe this Thanksgiving season and remember to avoid turkey drops around the Cincinnati metro...

As a follow-up to the earlier observations about the overwhelming Blue Wave election cycle a few weeks back, there's been more stories in a number of Beltway Media outlets about donald trump's overall behavior since then.

None of it looks good. (via Elyse Wanshel at HuffPost)

On Thursday’s episode of Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker’s podcast, the comedians compared the president to his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, while discussing Trump’s cognitive state.

“You think he’s getting dementia?” McCusker asked his co-host Gillis about Trump.

“I mean, I don’t know. He just seems a little slower than usual,” Gillis responded. “There’s speculation that T-Dog might be rocking Biden brains,” McCusker added.

“He’s definitely not at Biden brains yet,” Gillis replied. “But he’s circling the drain...”

The comedians’ remarks about Trump were prompted amid a longer conversation regarding the president telling Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey to be “quiet, piggy” onboard Air Force One earlier this week. Trump said this to Lucey after she asked him a question about the Jeffrey Epstein files...

Regarding trump's insulting behavior last Friday, Rachel Leingang at The Guardian noted how the response outpaced the mainstream media's tepid underplaying of it:

It wasn’t the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help from the media itself...

Trump is going through a string of losses: Democrats dominating in off-year elections, having to reverse course on the Epstein files, Republicans refusing to get rid of the filibuster to end the shutdown, a faltering economy. There’s a possibility that he’s losing his air of impenetrability, and his grip on the right could maybe, just maybe, be loosening.

The anger he displayed in the clip could be a sign of someone on the back foot, overreacting to a question Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey was asking about why Trump was fighting against releasing the Epstein files “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”. The files related to the child sexual abuser released so far by Congress show that Epstein communicated regularly, and derogatorily, about women with a host of prominent friends...

It's not so much that trump was losing control of keeping the Epstein scandal under a tighter wrap. It's not so much that trump is walking back some of his beloved tariffs as their impact on goods worsened the economy for most Americans. It's not so much that trump is angry with the legal system pushing back against his deportation agenda, against his eagerness to deploy troops into our own cities, and against his attempts to charge his perceived enemies - such as former FBI Director James Comey - that are falling apart due to prosecutorial screw-ups (serving his whims, no less). 

It's that there's this unsettling realization that everything in TrumpWorld (tm) is falling apart, and breaking into pieces faster than anyone thought it would (via Kyle Cheney at Politico):

But the extraordinary rebukes and headwinds the president is now facing — much of it from within his own party — are revealing a GOP beginning to reckon with a post-Trump future. That dynamic crystallized after voters surged to the polls to support Democratic candidates for statewide races in New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and Pennsylvania, shattering expectations of close contests and signaling that even Trump can’t defy political gravity forever.

Trump has spent the days since recycling old grievances, berating members of his own party and choosing sides in a burgeoning intra-MAGA debate about antisemitism and bigotry within the GOP coalition...

A year ago, the idea that a Republican-led Congress would vote overwhelmingly in favor of anything Trump opposed would have been fanciful. Enter the Epstein files.

Trump’s coalition has long viewed the FBI’s trove of records related to the late convicted sex offender and disgraced international power broker to be a holy grail of sorts, one that could shed light on a grander sex trafficking conspiracy implicating world leaders and politicians. But Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein’s until they fell out more than a decade ago, spent the summer leaning on congressional Republicans to cease their search for records. Trump has denied wrongdoing and no evidence has suggested he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation...

The problems with trump's denials are 1) There is too much physical and eyewitness evidence that showed trump and Epstein close enough for trump to be aware of - and revel in - the shocking number of young girls in those circles; 2) trump himself expressed far too often an "appreciation" for young women that included allegations he spied on Miss Teen contestants in their dressing rooms; and 3) the reality now established that Mr. "Grab 'Em By the Pussy" is a court-confirmed sexual predator with dozens of other sexual assault claims still out there.

That trump used the Epstein scandal in the 2024 campaign to attack Democrats was just another brazen Deflection strategy that the Far Right have perfected: Accuse the Democrats of committing those crimes you yourself are committing, and turn that weakness into a strength. But trump promised to "expose the truth" about Epstein's sex trafficking of girls to the one group - his own QAnon conspiracy base - he shouldn't have, and they wanted trump to fulfill that once he got back into the White House. Problem was, trump's solution wasn't to release more documents but rehash the ones already released and pretend that was it... which only made things look worse for him and his lackeys for "covering up".

trump's attempts to control that narrative - one that kept painting him and his Republican allies as "pro-Sex Offender" - kept failing, because once his gaslighting fails he's got nothing else to go by:

What happened next was perhaps the most stinging intra-party rebuke of Trump’s presidency. Trump tried and failed to pressure Republican lawmakers to pull the plug on a vote demanding the Justice Department turn over the full library of Epstein files. An intense pressure campaign against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in particular went nowhere.

The fallout also claimed the relationship of Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose refusal to flinch led Trump to brand her a “traitor” and attempt to turn his coalition against her. Greene has responded by saying Trump’s attacks have endangered her life...

While trump's press people are defending him for "his honesty and transparency" nobody's going to forget how trump fought this for months. And no amount of scrubbing the files before release is going to hide the reality that trump and Epstein were two peas in the same vulgar pod.

Trump’s inability to cajole Congress into his preferred course of action on the Epstein files came at virtually the same time the president and his allies failed to move Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional boundaries to net Republicans another seat in the 2026 midterms.

Trump had been pressing for a Hoosier redistricting measure for months, but state GOP leaders signaled they simply lacked the votes to make it a reality, drawing a threat from Trump to endorse some Republicans’ primary challengers. Countermeasures by Democrats in Virginia and California could make Trump’s nationwide push a wash.

It's not helping trump that the earlier successful attempt to gerrymander Texas - on trump's public orders - is falling apart in the courts as well. trump's inability to win in the courts is hurting him on other key issues like his beloved tariffs policy:

Trump has long proclaimed that wielding tariffs against foreign governments is the key to negotiating favorable trade deals. Never mind that business and Republican orthodoxy has long considered tariffs as a backdoor tax on Americans.

But the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s approach, with justices he appointed sharply questioning whether the president can leverage emergency powers to tariff foreign governments at will. By all accounts, the argument was a drubbing for Trump’s side. And the president seemed to discover that reality when he vented at the court in a pair of Truth Social posts last week.

It’s folly to predict how the high court will rule, even when the justices send clear signals during the arguments. But Trump appears to be bracing for defeat that could have devastating consequences for his economic agenda. His administration has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of tariffs to the recent spate of trade deals he’s made around the world.

trump arguably can craft economic / trade deals across the globe without the threat or use of tariffs anyway. What's hurting him is how he worships the idea of tariffs: trump genuinely believes tariffs can work, and that he needs them as tools to bully / enforce his will upon others. Of any potential legal defeats trump is facing in the White House, this could well be the one that angers him the most.

It's that anger - that rage trump carries with a scowl and a sneer, always driven by slights imagined and real, the willingness to lash out in public without concern or civility, the open cruelty towards those he views (Women, Blacks, poor) his lessers - that's troubling. trump's never had much self-control over his Id, his narcissistic drive to humiliate others, even during his first tenure as President National Destroyer of Norms and the Rule of Law. Five years later, he's gotten older and gotten worse (via Tom Nichols at the Atlantic):

Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself. Yesterday the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution.

It would be easy merely to note, yet again, that the president is a depraved man and a menace to the American system of government. As remarkable as it is to say it, however, the outbursts of this past week are different, and were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein. No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show...

The president was already showing strain before his attack on the legislators. Last Friday, he lashed out at a female journalist who asked about the Epstein files, calling her “piggy.” (Trump seems to revel in getting away with speaking to women as president in ways that would land him on the sidewalk back in Queens.) On Tuesday, as he sat next to the Saudi crown prince, a man credibly accused by U.S. intelligence of murdering an American journalist, he lashed out at yet another female reporter: He called Mary Bruce of ABC “insubordinate”—a rather telling choice of words—and threatened to use the FCC to attack her network. Tuesday, of course, was the day the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House by a vote of 427–1. The next day, it passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and a humiliated Trump signed the bill into law.

Yesterday, Trump seemed to lose the last bit of his grip on his emotions as he fired off a fusillade of Truth Social posts. (“Trump must not have slept well Wednesday night,” Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark observed today.) “This is really bad,” the president wrote, “and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

“Lock them up” is a favorite Trump chant, but he did not end with this classic demand. He went on: “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” The charge, according to the chief executive? “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also reposted a comment that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Anyone with a basic understanding of U.S. history would remember George Washington never hanged political opponents: when he was rebuffed by the Senate the one time he visited Congress, Washington merely stormed out and swore to never go back. But this is trump raging at us today: Terrible at history, and desperate to lie that other great figures in history would do what he'd want to do.

Trump’s posts risk putting the lives of American lawmakers in danger, and he almost certainly knows it. Many people who have publicly criticized the president have found themselves getting death threats from his most fervid followers. (Like many Trump-critical writers, I started getting them years ago.) As Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former MAGA doyenne from Georgia whom Trump has now marked as a heretic, wrote on X last week, “A hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world.” Senator Elissa Slotkin revealed that she is now traveling with a security detail because of what she called “a huge spike” in threats that came to her office after Trump’s eruption yesterday.

This is the same trump who stirred up MAGA supporters to riot at the Capitol on January 6th, the event that trump and his lackeys would like to erase from history, but an act of violence that trump himself would love to revisit on the nation again and again.

A lot of this turns back on that earlier observation from the podcast bros openly wondering "is trump falling into dementia?" It's a serious concern, and it's one a lot of Biden supporters shouted back at the media when they went after Joe for his slowed delivery of speeches and lapse of memory. trump wasn't that much younger than Biden, and in spite of all the public announcements that trump is the "fittest smartest human being of all time" (uh, no) a lot of people could see by 2024 he'd gotten more unsteady on his feet and more prone to brain farts on stage.

There's been more speculation than usual in the past few months that there's serious health concerns: a questionable MRI exam six months after getting one; a missing weekend where trump came back with odd bruising on his hands; trump wandering away during a visit to Japan; falling asleep during an Oval Office presentation, during which someone else collapsed and trump failed to take notice of it at all.

Far be it to speculate or cast rumors, but there is too much growing evidence that trump's questionable lifelong habits - and time itself - is racing up to claim his ticket. It doesn't help that a number of actions trump is ordering on the hurry - such as bulldozing down the East Wing to build his own ballroom, or the insistence of getting a Peace Prize in spite of his bullying tactics, or the release of a new dollar coin (which historically never worked out for Americans) with HIS face on it - a blatant middle finger to the unwritten rule to avoid putting a living person on American money - are obvious clues that he wants to enjoy all of this - fake symbols of his "greatness" - before he no longer can.

You can feel a sense of panic, of things not going well behind the scenes, with this administration this time around. More than just the level of idiocy and ineptitude from the actions they've taken to break the Constitution and the nation for their own interests.

It doesn't help that as I'm typing this, trump's Defense Dept (fuck the name change, Pete) is staging naval and air maneuvers off the coast of Venezuela. They're making more public calls to strike drug cartel locations - not just Venezuela but also Mexico - as part of an "anti-terrorist" campaign that they can't prove. Like as though trump wants a military victory and another half-assed parade before his mind gives out altogether.

And nobody in a position to do anything about it - not the Democrats because they're out of power, but the Republicans in Congress and in the Cabinet - will lift a finger, because they dare not face the rage of a rabid MAGA base. They're perfectly content to let this farce play out, and carve out whatever they can get in the ensuing chaos.

Stay safe, America. Keep protesting in the streets against trump's war on anyone dark-skinned. But be ready for the craziness to hit DEFCON-1 sooner than expected.

Flirtin' with Disaster Once Again: Welcome to the 2025 trump Hurricane Season

Update: Hello again, those of you coming from Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Thanks as always to Batocchio for including this blog to the array of socio-political blogs still out there. Good luck, and stay safe.

In the "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" category of bad news today, Reuters is dropping this particular tidbit about trump's pick to run our federal disaster relief agency (via Leah Douglas, Ted Hesson, and Nathan Layne):

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

Insert every facepalm GIF you can find, folks.

The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year's season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

The remark was made by David Richardson, who has led FEMA since early May. It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context.

Richardson said during the briefing that there would be no changes to the agency's disaster response plans despite having told staff to expect a new plan in May, the sources told Reuters.

Richardson's comments come amid widespread concern that the departures of a raft of top FEMA officials, staff cuts and reductions in hurricane preparations will leave the agency ill-prepared for a storm season forecast to be above normal.

Hurricanes kill dozens of people and cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually across a swath of U.S. states every year. The storms have become increasingly more destructive and costly due to the effects of climate change...

Richardson, who has no disaster response experience, said during Monday's briefing, a daily all-hands meeting held by phone and videoconference, that he will not be issuing a new disaster plan because he does not want to make changes that might counter the FEMA Review Council, the sources said.

President Donald Trump created the council to evaluate FEMA. Its members include DHS head Kristi Noem, governors and other officials.

trump, of course, would like to use that "council" to make recommendations to gut that relief agency - and anything that would highlight the reality that climate change is happening - altogether. When you consider how trump is refusing to send aid to states like North Carolina still recovering from last year's hurricane season, we are facing a grim situation that when the storms do slam into the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts that our federal government is not going to lift one damn finger to help even if the heavily Republican-controlled states getting hit are screaming to high heaven.

Add to this how trump is denying aid to the midwestern states getting hit by tornadoes, and we're talking about an administration that doesn't give a damn about the lives on the ground. 

And so YES, Red state America. Every single one of you who voted for trump this 2024 you are getting exactly what you voted for: Cruelty and denial.

We are so royally fucked (again).

The Unqualified Are Taking Over Thanks to trump

Update: Many thanks to Steve in Manhattan for including this article to Crooks and Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please remember to order an excessive supply of Lucky Charms Marshmallows to tide you over as the trump tariffs disrupt our cereal industry, that is all...

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.

The Folly of trump's Nativism and Me-First World-View as the Trade Wars Escalate

trump is still obsessed with tariffs, even after all the economic chaos he's inflicted over the last three months.

Unhinged

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 20, 2025 at 4:07 PM

trump remains convinced tariffs are a winning move, that the "billions in revenue" getting raised by him - by the by, none of the ports were taking in tariffs because their systems are still screwed up - will fill our coffers even as Elon Musk and his DOGE minions empty them to their own pockets, and that - as always - he's the big business genius while every other financial expert/banker/CEO are screaming how tariffs won't work and are gutting their profits.

trump is still crowing how his "trade deficit" announcements are forcing nations to deal with him, even as there's every evidence that our major trading partners are about to drop very big hammers on us (hat-tip to Comrade Misfit who shared this CNBC report from Lori Ann RaCocco):

U.S. importers are being notified of an increase in canceled sailings by freight ships out of China as ocean carriers try to balance the pullback in orders resulting from President Trump’s tariffs and the escalation of tensions in the trade war.

A total of 80 blank, or canceled, sailings out of China have been recorded by freight company HLS Group. It wrote in a recent note to clients that with the trade war between China and the U.S. leading to a demand plummet, carriers have started to suspend or adjust transpacific services...

The impact of the diminished freight container traffic to North America will be significant for many links in the economy and supply chain, including the ports and logistics companies moving the freight. If each sailing was carrying 8,000 to 10,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), that would equal a decline in freight traffic of between 640,000-800,000 containers, and lead to decreased crane operations at the ports, lower fees that could be collected, and declines in container pick-ups and transports by trucks, rails, and to warehouses for storage...

“We have no way of knowing how significant this drop in orders will be on vessel schedules,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. “There are no models to extrapolate this. What I can tell you is the majority of containers on the vessels servicing the Asia to U.S. trade routes is China. We won’t go to zero containers, but we will see a decrease in containers and as a result, in the future, we will see a massive raft of blank sailings announced...”

This is the first wave of a cascade effect, where the lack of shipments from China will disrupt our nation's supply chain from ports losing businesses to trucks / planes / trains / shipping companies losing money from dropped demand to deliver incoming materials across the nation. We won't see it now but in a month, maybe two months: fewer goods reaching our shelves at Wal-Mart or warehouses for Amazon. Fewer cars, and fewer car parts to manufacture here in the U.S. Fewer people working our supply chains, increasing unemployment and accelerating a growing economic recession. Among other losses to our nation's well-being.

And still trump thinks this is all glorious, that tariffs work.

I've written before why trump believes in tariffs, that he seems to think they generate revenues far greater than they really do. There are several other reasons he's obsessed: 

trump believes he's a world-class negotiator and that tariffs allow him to break and make deals to serve his whims. This is partly a vanity program; driven by pride and arrogance, blended with the stupidity and ignorance about how global economics really work (what the hell did he fail to learn at UPenn Wharton College of Business???).

trump really doesn't understand how trade deficits - which he based his blanket tariff orders a few weeks ago - work, and how little they affected our nation's economic strengths. Just because we were operating massive trade deficits with smaller (Third World) nations didn't mean those nations were defrauding the United States in any way: In a lot of cases it was because those nations didn't have enough revenues to buy things from our nation that would have meant any value to them. We traded with Madagascar for their vanilla but they had no reason to buy our soy or our motorcycles, not at the scale that would have balanced the books. And yet, the United States kept running one of the largest (based on GDP and sheer financial wealth) economies on the planet. Trade deficits didn't hurt us at all. Trade boycotts due to these tariffs, however, that will hurt...

But what's proving to be the biggest reason - other than trump's overall stupidity - is trump's Nativist / America-First world-view blinding him to how vital trade can be. trump wants to push his Narrative of "Make America Great Again" and to him that means cutting the United States off from the rest of the planet (with the exception of trump's BFFs Putin and Russia). Shutting down our foreign aid, closing off half of our State Department's foreign relations, pushing a harsh border enforcement to drive away foreign students AND tourists AND anybody else - and no lie, including penguins - all of this comes from trump's belief that America is a "superior" nation under attack by lesser mortals looking to defraud or destroy us.

It's a world-view no different than the one shared with trump's idol, the person he's admired for years. Yeah, that guy, he loved inflicting tariffs as soon as he came to power in Germany (via Timothy W. Ryback at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan, in a 32-page position paper designed for ready implementation were Hitler to suddenly find himself in power. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition...”

Any of that anti-foreigner rhetoric sound familiar?

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

You could say the same about Biden's economic recovery post-pandemic, which the mainstream media underplayed while obsessing over the price of eggs. trump's chaotic decision-making undid a lot of that, much like what happened in Germany:

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. “Within four years the German farmer must be saved from destitution,” Hitler said in his first national radio address as chancellor. “Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome.” Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. By this point, he had broken even with the tariff cheerleader Feder, and had abandoned most of the action items for developing a nationalist and socialist economy. These items had included increased taxation of the wealthy; state supervision of large corporations; and the prohibition of “new department stores, low-priced shops, and chain stores.”

As chancellor, Hitler left his own plans for the German economy intentionally vague. His chief priority, as he told his ministers, was to secure an outright majority in the March 5 Reichstag elections. Hitler calculated that he needed between 18 million and 19 million votes. “There is no economic program that could meet with the approval of such a large mass of voters,” Hitler told party leaders.

But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor...

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors...

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

“Our exports have shrunk significantly,” Foreign Minister Neurath informed Hitler in one cabinet meeting, “and our relations to our neighboring countries are threatening to deteriorate.” Neurath noted that informal contacts with Dutch interlocutors had been “bruskly broken off.” Trade relations with Sweden and Denmark were similarly strained, as were those with France and Yugoslavia. Finance Minister Krosigk anticipated that the agricultural sector would require an additional 100 million reichsmarks in deficit spending...

The costs of those tariffs arrived in the form of harsher sanctions and cutoffs, forcing the government to spend more than expected to aid farmers (and likely other industries). But none of that mattered to Hitler, who pushed forward on his agenda to seize authoritarian control of Germany outright, and basically building up a war machine with the armies to begin annexation and invasion of neighboring countries, triggering a world war by 1939.

If anyone else can notice the trends here - the tariffs leading to trade wars leading to military aggression and straight-up wars of blood and carnage - you can see where trump is taking the United States. We're not going back to some glorious isolationist nativist homeland that never existed outside of the fevered fantasies of a white patriarchal class: We're turning ourselves into a pariah state no different than Iran or North Korea, and about to escalate matters with our neighboring trade partners in Mexico and Canada with our unjustified version of an Anschluss. 

"This is NOT going to end well" is a fcking understatement tonight.

The Failure and The Fall

When I heard a few days ago that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was going to visit the White House to meet with American President Nope Still Not Going There donald trump to discuss arrangements to keep the U.S. committed to Ukraine's defense against Russia, I knew it was going to be a disaster.

We've long known that trump adores/worships Russia autocrat Putin - that trump seeks to emulate Putin's corrupt ruling style - to the point of defending him on the global stage in spite of America's own interests. There's been stories, rumors, even criminal investigations into trump's ties to Russia that exposed how extensive those ties were (and still are). With regards to which side trump took in Russia's prolonged and expanded war on Ukraine ever since 2022, it was clear trump was rooting for Russia even parroting every pro-Russian talking point in opposition to the real world.

Whatever Zelenskyy was hoping to get out of this meeting revolved around confirming at least security agreements in Ukraine's favor leading to any legitimate peace negotiations, making sure that Ukraine won't get abandoned at the table. Leading up to all of this were efforts from trump and his foreign handlers trying to squeeze a reckless deal for Ukraine's rare minerals to the tune of $500 billion, a public and vulgar attempt at extortion.

So this meeting, whatever hopes people had going in... well, that got stomped into dust real quick. This is trump we're talking about: his idea of "the art of the deal" is to bully and yell at his opponents until they cave and give him something to crow as a victory.

The bullying came in different directions, not only from pro-Russian media attendees asking skewed and insulting questions at Zelenskyy but also from Vice President "Weird Boy" JD Vance making accusations that allowed trump to ratchet up his own threats (via NPR):

Trump told Zelenskyy, "You're not acting at all thankful" for the support Zelenskyy's country had received from the United States, adding that the Ukrainian leader had been disrespectful and telling him, "You're gambling with World War III."

Zelenskyy tried to object, saying he has "all the respect for your country" and saying, "I said thanks," as Trump raised his voice to speak over him...

The argument came at the end of a lengthy question-and-answer session with reporters, after Trump defended his approach with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he was trying to broker a deal between two parties.

"I'm not aligned with anybody. I'm aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world, I'm aligned with the world, and I want to get this thing over with," Trump said.

Vice President Vance then defended Trump's approach as "diplomacy."

That elicited a strong response from Zelenskyy, who said Putin had broken previous deals. "He broke the ceasefire. He killed our people... What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?" said Ukraine's president, who has been seeking greater security assurances as part of any deal to end the war.

At least Zelenskyy left having retaining his nation's mining rights and natural wealth from falling into trump's greedy mitts. On the other hand...

In terms of actual diplomacy, this was a disaster for the United States. It exposed trump as a bully - yet again - on the international stage, and this time with arrogance and recklessness that our allies can no longer ignore. It showed trump and his administration are wholly on the side of Russia, which is the clear villain in all of this tragedy, and signals the growing likelihood that trump will flip almost 80 years of American pro-Western policy to turn us into Putin's next puppet state alongside Belarus and Georgia (and what Putin wants to do to Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Baltic nations, and the rest of Eastern Europe).

There was this dread during trump's first term disasters that he was going to pull the United State out of NATO, a long-standing alliance that assured peace between the major Western nations since the 1950s, all to appease Putin who is desperate to dissolve NATO in order to rebuild his dream of a Russian Empire. Previously, he didn't have full control of his Cabinet or the Joint Chiefs who were likely horrified to lose NATO allies. This time, trump is in full control and all he needed was an excuse like "being disrespected" for everything the U.S. (under Biden) did to support Ukraine since 2022.

After today, the NATO nations have to understand they are on their own. The newly elected (likely) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said after his party's victory this past weekend that it's clear "this administration does not care much about the fate of Europe." Whatever dominance the United States had as a superpower in the post-World War era - our political influence, our ability to maintain global alliances across every continent - is fading fast as trump reveals that most of the nations out there can no longer rely on America.

Doubling down on this has been the recent freezing of USAID financial, medical, and transactional support of nations and peoples in need of aid. trump's open disdain of "shithole countries" has translated into an immediate refusal to provide any support, leading to broken services overseas and broken promises as people start dying from this cruelty (via Alan Yu, Allison McManus, and Laura Kilbury at American Progress):

The forced takeover comes after two weeks of attacks on foreign aid. On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order freezing nearly all U.S. foreign assistance for 90 days, claiming a need to reassess taxpayer dollars spent abroad. Days later, Secretary Rubio issued further guidance that forced U.S. officials to issue “stop work” orders to contractors, nongovernmental organizations, and aid groups; in response to strong opposition, Secretary Rubio later issued a waiver for core “life-saving” humanitarian needs, but its scope remains ambiguous.

In total, the Trump administration’s actions the past two weeks have caused unnecessary chaos and disruptions across the world. U.N. agencies, international relief organizations, and U.S. aid groups are scrambling to assess and mitigate the damage to lifesaving programs and more. While some of the administration’s efforts are already facing legal challenges and strong pushback from members of Congress—several of whom were denied access to USAID headquarters this week—these actions have real and lasting consequences for Americans and people around the world.

Trump’s attacks on aid are not about cutting waste or making the government more efficient; they’re about using blunt force to fulfill Project 2025’s pledges to put to death U.S. foreign assistance spending and “serve the President’s agenda...” But slashing the U.S. foreign assistance budget is a textbook example of penny-wise, pound-foolish. In fiscal year 2023, USAID managed a budget of $43 billion, comprising about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. budget. Extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, by comparison, would represent the equivalent of more than nine USAIDs each year: $400 billion in costs that would disproportionately benefit the ultrawealthy...

The broad range of U.S. foreign assistance programs—from lifesaving global health programs to alliance-building security partnerships—represent cost-effective ways to ensure global safety, security, and stability that do not require the United States to send troops into war. Foreign aid accounts for just 1 percent of the federal budget, and by disrupting it, the administration invites costly litigation and job loss throughout the foreign assistance sector...

Nothing kills trust like abruptly halting equipment, training commitments, and funding. Foreign governments that count on U.S. assistance now see their agreements suddenly upended by a political decision in Washington. Such harmful actions are “own goals,” both undermining trust and partnership with recipient countries and sending a clear message of unreliability and untrustworthiness around the world. This weakens U.S. global power—not just the so-called “soft power” of foreign assistance but also the required foundation of trust, durability, and respect to rally foreign partners’ support and action when it comes time to achieve U.S. goals. These include competing with China; combating transnational threats such as climate change, narcotics trade, and pandemic disease; and addressing the next global macroeconomic crisis...

The United States - for all the sins we've committed over the decades, the questionable wars and military interventions, the economic dominance we've imposed that kept poorer nations struggling to serve our needs, the cultural hegemony that made America arrogant and ignorant on the global stage - was (no longer is) a legitimate leader among nations trying to keep the peace and perform real humanitarian work. Now, no nation can trust us nor should they rely on us. Other superpowers like China and Russia - whose goals on the global stage are not humane nor friendly to their regions - are likely racing to fill the void of leadership that trump created, and the chaos that's coming will be unavoidable.

Today was the day the American Empire - not so much an empire of nations as it was an empire of ideas - fell from grace. The damage being done even if we free ourselves of trump's - and the Far Right sadists' - corrupt rule will last at least this generation and the next.

I apologize to the rest of world: I know there are a sizable number of Americans - broken and spiteful - gleefully reveling in this destruction. There were a near-equal number of Americans who tried to prevent this, and there's arguably a growing number of Americans who were disaffected before now waking up to the damage done. But all the guardrails were torn down in my nation the last 40 years, and now we're all falling over the cliff into the rocky shoreline.

I call on America's allies, our long-standing friends across every continent, to stand against the evils trump and his wingnut lackeys are inflicting on all of us, do everything possible to break and end his corruption before it ruins us all.

Day One of Not In the Mood

There's a reason why I'm not thrilled to be entering into a new year this 2025. Actually there's several.

Just the painful reality that a court-convicted sex offender and criminal felon will be entering the White House to represent the entire United States. donald trump may have been President before, but it was through a fluke of a broken Electoral College system. This time, too many fellow Americans happily voted for this monster knowing full well all the crimes he'd been convicted (and the ones charged on him that will now ever see a courtroom). Just this fact alone hurts my soul, and I know I'm not the only one.  

There's the horrifying damage trump and his Far Right lackeys can and will inflict on our nation, on our system of laws and protections. I know there are experts telling us that our institutions are firmly entrenched, that there are limits to many of the changes trump and his MAGA extremists want to enforce (to break our government altogether). The thing is: these bastards are going to try to wreck everything no matter what, far worse than what they tried the first time around because this time trump has more Executive powers granted to him by his allies at the Supreme Court. This time around there are NO adults in the room to rein in trump's more sadistic desires, only fellow sadists pandering to trump's obsessions and destructive urges.

trump is still out here spewing anti-immigrant outrage and lies, providing every proof that he intends to enact a massive deportation scheme that will tear apart families, capture and punish innocent lives - especially children who did nothing wrong - even the ones who ARE natural-born Americans, and betray every aspect of America's better ideals and aspirations. We're about to become a national prison, hunting and caging 20 million people because the Far Right views them as animals, without care to the immorality of such acts.

trump will take the American economy - still the strongest on the planet even with all the concerns about inflation (which has been dropping all year, thank you for not asking) - and break it through overt acts of corruption and stupidity. Forcing the federal reserve to buy into Bitcoin using billions of taxpayer money without any proof of its value; Twisting the stock market to favor trump's own holdings and generating enough uncertainty to cause meltdowns and panics; Harassing businesses with threats to perform shakedowns; Worst of all, pushing for tariffs that won't raise revenues but will trigger trade wars with even our biggest international allies.

trump will preside over a federal government - from the Executive to the Legislative to the Judiciary - under full control of a hard Conservative Republican Party obsessed with Culture War dogma that will affect our public education, our health care, our civil rights, our Social Security and Medicare safety nets.

trump is going to preside over yet another massive train wreck of an administration, and there's no sign that anyone is going to be in a position to stop him before he hurts millions and steals billions.

Welcome to 2025.

The fires are already starting.

Unhappy Thoughts Part II

Update: I need to get back into the mood to blog, as Steve in Manhattan ended up using this from two weeks ago to share at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Blame it on the boogey(man) that is trump... /rage

The post-election blues continue on, obviously.

One of the things still haunting me a month later is how the results just did not fit the enthusiasm I saw among fellow Harris/Walz voters, how it just didn't seem possible that a deeply unpopular figure like trump could add to a popular vote count to win.

And now we have to cope with the "autopsy" as it were with people yelling and screaming where things went wrong.

Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this Monday pointed me to another blog where the artist created a cartoon basically highlighting all the (hindsight) armchair quarterbacking taking place among the Democratic ranks after the loss:

 

Visit Amp's blog to view the full image, please

As the artist Ampersand noted:

Lacking any clear-cut truth, most people just go ahead and say that the election proves that the Democrats have to endorse whatever policy stance they prefer or they’ll never win an election again...

I understand the impulse. I think the Biden administration has been horrifically bad on Gaza. Now that Harris has lost, it would be very convenient for me if everyone agreed that Harris lost because of the Biden administration’s terrible policies on Gaza.

But “convenient for me” isn’t the same as “true.” (Which is a very unfortunate way to set up a universe, and as soon as I locate the management I will make a complaint)...

Everybody's got a pet peeve and policy issue to defend. I've encountered a number of the ones presented in that comic: I've met people who are obsessed over reports how Elon Musk's Starlink system got election counting data before any official counting was done; I know a few people online who were genuinely upset about Biden's failure to rein in Israel's genocide of Palestinian families in Gaza and West Bank; I've read the arguments from the media pundits who think Biden (and by proxy Harris) were getting punished for higher prices even as inflation was trending down.

I myself am convinced that the mainstream media - led by the cowards at New York Times and Washington Post - failed to keep voters informed about how criminal and corrupt donald trump was, underplaying his scandals while punishing Biden/Harris/Democrats with a "both siderism" narrative that made Democrats look old and broken themselves.

But even I know that's not the entirety of the problem.

The real answer why Democrats failed to win this 2024 election cycle is that donald trump - leading a squalid and cruel army of Republican officials and voting base - appealed to the worst nature of a large plurality of our fellow Americans and got them to back his election. He stuck to his decades-long campaign hating on immigrants, hating on Blacks, hating on women; getting more and more Republican figures and media cheerleaders to push that fear and rage. And he got more and more voters - and not just angry Whites but also angry men and angry women from the very ethnic groups he's attacking - to buy in, spreading Hate like a plague. 

trump went from 63 million voters - when we could explain it away as a failure of a broken Electoral College - to 74 million - where we could avoid it by accepting Biden's popular vote win of 81 million - to 77 million where there's no other way to avoid this.

Democrats lost because Republicans appealed to sadists and assholes who are greater in number than we realized. The Cruelty was the point, and now it's policy. 

Every attempt to appeal to any rational Republican or centrist voting group wasn't going to work. Trying to get more liberal and progressive voters to show up seems limiting, and not enough of them were willing to buy in to the Big Tent Biden and Harris tried to build.

The reason why a lot of us who voted for Harris - who voted for competency and sanity and justice and an America we thought we knew - are skittish and unhappy today is that we've learned our neighbors, families, and communities are full of people who knew trump was a monster - a convicted felon and sex offender, openly willing to commit more crimes as President - and voted for him anyway.

Gods help us.

The Cycle of Violence This Saturday Night

Christ on a bike:

Donald Trump appeared to be the target of an assassination attempt as he spoke during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, two law enforcement officials said. The former president, his ear covered in blood from what he said was a gunshot, was quickly pulled away by Secret Service agents and his campaign said he was “fine.”

A local prosecutor said the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead. The Secret Service said two spectators were critically injured.

Posting on his Truth Social media site about two and a half hours after the shooting, Trump said a bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said in the post. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

The attack, by a shooter who law enforcement officials say was then killed by the Secret Service, was the first attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It comes amid a deeply polarized political atmosphere, just four months from the presidential elections and days before Trump is to be officially named the Republican nominee at his party’s convention... (via Jill Colvin, Julie Carr Smyth, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Michelle L. Price at AP News)

This is all happening in the moment and it's always too early to speculate even though a number of Far Right agitators on social media are already accusing Biden and "the violent Left" of being behind this shooting.

If there's anything I agree with on social media right now, it's THIS sentiment:

Mom can you come pick me up history is happening and I’m scared

— samuel catlin (@lint_ax) July 13, 2024

Seriously, America. Make this goddamn partisan madness stop.

For all my hatred aimed at donald Shitgibbon trump, the most I want to see done is him facing justice in a jail cell for all the crimes - the tax fraud, business fraud, and sexual assault - he's committed (and the ones he's allegedly done that he still needs to face in trial). Killing trump doesn't solve the reality that a willing and angry MAGA voter base will remain - and become even more angry and violent - and will be eager to turn trump into a martyr. Violence aimed at a group doesn't make that faction change their tone or their minds: It tends to radicalize them further, feeding into a cycle of violence aimed at the ones they blame.

Any form of political violence - street riot, bombing, targeted assassination - becomes self-defeating. I just wrote about what happened at Kent State: because the ROTC building had been fire-bombed, a lot of Americans in the middle class across the political spectrum actually felt the protestors were to blame and deserved to get shot by a panicked National Guard. Violence begets - and excuses - the reactionary violence that follows. 

The idea that a Propaganda of the Deed would rally a silent hidden faithful into a mass movement justifying your planned utopia never happens. Assassinating Lincoln didn't win the Civil War for the South; shooting Garfield actually pushed the federal government into genuine civil service reforms; killing McKinley never sparked a Socialist uprising in America; what happened to JFK didn't end the Cold War or change U.S. policy towards Cuba (whatever the hell it was that motivated Oswald (maybe), we still don't know for certain); and shooting Reagan never impressed Jodie Foster (I'm not being flippant here, that's kind of what Hinckley was trying to do).

All that's going to happen now is a family will have to cope with the tragedy of losing a loved one - whoever it was that died at the rally - and the MAGA faithful are going to stir themselves into a frenzy over which conspiracy theories will make them the angriest and more eager to act out.

The political violence we've been trapped in since 2016 - with trump's demagoguery of immigrants and liberals - and accelerated in 2020 - "Stand Back and Stand By" anyone? - remains a downward spiral this 2024. History - chaotic, fear-driven, violent - is happening, and it's not going to stop until more innocent lives are taken.

No Punishment to Which trump Can Be Subjected By a Wingnut SCOTUS

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the King of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a National revolution...
-- The Federalist 68, by Alexander Hamilton 

I really hate being in this darkest timeline. 

As I dreaded earlier, this Far Right controlled Supreme Court ruled on donald trump's plea for legal immunity to save him from the federal charges he is - maybe was now - facing over the stolen classified documents at Mar-A-Lago and his role in the January 6th Insurrection. They basically gave him everything trump asked for and destroyed any pretense at accountability in the process (via Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog):

In a historic decision, a divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly.

The decision left open the possibility that the charges brought against former President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith – alleging that Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election – can still go forward to the extent that the charges are based on his private conduct, rather than his official acts.

The case now returns to the lower courts for them to determine whether the conduct at the center of the charges against Trump was official or unofficial – an inquiry that, even if it leads to the conclusion that the charges can proceed, will almost certainly further delay any trial in the case, which had originally been scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024 but is currently on hold.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the president “is not above the law.” But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, countered that if a future president “misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop...”

Sotomayor is rightly pointing out that a corrupt President will ignore the meaningless assurances Roberts is offering, because that corrupt SOB will figure out how to drag everything under that "official acts" umbrella and nobody - not even future Courts - will be able to argue otherwise.

This ruling goes against what was considered settled law with Nixon v United States, which stated clearly "no one is above the law." This Roberts Court is now saying that a sitting President is above the law, and can inflict acts of retribution and cruelty on everyone else.

This is the power of kings: To rule with impunity and injustice. This is something our nation's Founders fought against. We're due to celebrate the holiday honoring their Declaration against the tyranny of a British king, and these wingnut Justices just undid everything the Founders stood for.

When they created the Executive branch, when they settled on a President of the United States, the Founders insisted on establishing checks and balances to ensure political power never rested with a tyrant. By creating the idea of even limited immunity related to the "duties of the office", this Court just upended those balances, ended those checks.

A crooked man in the White House - someone like trump - can now do anything he wants.

Consider what trump wants to do in a second term in office should he lie, bully, and steal his way back into the Presidency. he's openly planning revenge against the New York officers and judges who held him accountable for his acts of fraud and sexual assault. trump and his anti-immigrant handlers are drawing up plans to seize up to 20 million people they'll claim are illegal immigrants and hold them in "camps" (note: there aren't that many illegals in America. They'll likely be seizing real citizens - mostly kids unable to produce ID - and making them suffer) in clear violation of civil rights. And he's planning to gut the Executive branch of civil service employees in violation of workers rights and the needs of the public. 

We are now facing the serious threat of an uncontrolled donald trump sitting in the Oval Office with a literal license to kill.

The entire nation needs to recognize the threat donald trump and his Far Right Republican allies represent. No one is going to be safe if he gets back in the White House.

To the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, you need to come back to the ballot box and support him - as Biden respects the rule of law and denounced today's ruling - again. To every Independent voter out there, you need to pick a side now and vote for the Democrats who won't subvert the Constitution and its protections we've lived with our whole lives. To any Republican voters who still respect the rule of law and understand how dangerous trump is, you need to get over any hesitancy to vote Democrat and for the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY vote Biden.

The entire nation as we know it is now at the edge of the cliff. trump and his cronies are eager to drive us over that edge.

Time to stand up. Time to vote. Time to deny these corrupt trumpian powers any dominion over us.

Thoughts About the 2022 Midterms

A lot of post-midterms articles are out there on the Intertubes, a number of wry observations and urgent recriminations towards Republicans, and I would recommend glancing at Rude Pundit's to get a taste of the schadenfreude getting served over the GOP's historic failures.

I say "failure" even as the Republicans claimed (slim) control of the U.S. House of Representatives - and retained control of a number of Red states - because it's been traditional in the modern era of partisan politics that the party in opposition to the White House - this year the Republicans in opposition to the Democratic President Biden - wins big in the following midterms. This year, the Republicans were expecting a "Red Wave" to counter the 2018 "Blue Wave" that gave Democrats control of the House vs. donald trump.

The polling - mostly from conservative-leaning providers like RCP - were all pointing to a huge 30-seat flip of the House. There were a number of projections Republicans could regain a tightly fought Senate, even in spite of the crazed candidates running in various campaigns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Arizona (and several others).

Republicans were beating the war drums hard on the economy, railing against signs of a recession as inflation (re: gas prices) soared to levels that hurt any President's standing with voters.

This was also all happening with the 2022 district realignments for the House, where the updated Census numbers required new maps and allowed the parties - yes, Democrats did it too - to aggressively gerrymander those districts to give them advantages. Republicans held the gerrymander advantage due to controlling enough battleground states to outduel the Dems (who also shot themselves in the foot by not gerrymandering New York to their advantage, screw you Andrew Cuomo).

Throw in the Republicans attempts at voter suppression - far greater than what they had in 2018 and 2020 - and there was every likelihood that turnout would drop, hurting Democratic chances.

And with all of that going the Republicans' way... they STILL failed to retake the Senate - which added an extra Democratic seat meaning the 50-50 power-sharing is no longer working and Mitch McConnell can suck it - and their win in the House was by a meager five seats, causing headaches for party leadership they weren't expecting.

It is, according to historians, the worst midterm performance for an opposition party since 1962. There was a similar situation for Democrats in 2002 failing against Dubya, but the 9/11 attacks and the patriotic fervor clearly skewed the situation. There were the Republicans failing against FDR in 1934, but the Great Depression was still happening and a lot of Americans still hated them and Hoover for screwing them over.

The Republicans ought to be rejoicing in that they control the House, which they can use to investigate Biden's administration family for scandals every day they meet on the Hill, and file every impeachment complaint until all they do is vote on embarrassing Biden and Harris for the 2024 campaign (lacking control of the Senate, no impeachment will go their way: For the Republicans it's all about making the Democrats look corrupt and weak to their own voting base). They are openly planning repeated hearings over Russia's planted evidence Hunter Biden's laptop, as it's the only thing they can do other than force federal shutdowns to break the entire government.

Instead, the Republicans are in-fighting over the poor results. They were expecting a wave and all they got was a trickle. The My Pillow guy Mike Lindell - who is constantly shilling conspiracy theories for trump's Big Lie about "stolen votes" - is challenging for control of the RNC, arguing the current head - Mitt Romney's daughter Ronna McDaniel - failed to inspire better turnout. There were a number of reports of GOP leaders railing against trump's involvement, pushing on them unstable and unpopular candidates like Hershel Walker in Georgia who hurt turnout among needed independent voters.

There are going to be post-mortems, autopsies, follow-up reports, what have you, which the Republicans will ignore like they did after they were stunned in 2012, when they expected four years of Tea Party fauxrage would turn America against Obama. The GOP's response after that loss was to double-down on the Far Right fearmongering to encourage their voting base to stay faithful, and they've been spiraling downward ever since thanks to trump's takeover in 2016.

If the midterms are showing me anything, these are the observations I've made:

Like Bob Burnett points out at Common Dreams, the American electorate is polarized to the point of frozen stasis. In previous eras before the Culture War shifted all of the Conservative votes to the Republicans after 1994, there was an expectation of centrist/moderate party voters crossing the aisle to vote for candidates or issues regardless of party. By 2014, branding won out: Republicans (tm) can no longer find themselves voting for ANY Democrat (tm) (and the same goes for Dems refusing to vote for any GOPer) even when the issues should compel them to vote for the other party that's in favor of those issues.

While this means you can rely on your party base, it means you can't expect any more voters to flip your way. Whatever independent/No Party Affiliate voters are out there, you find yourself praying for them to show up for you to overcome any demographic limitations you've already set for your party with the gerrymandering and suppression. And voter turnout for NPAs is unreliable at best.

The results are also telling me that for the Republicans this is the best they can do for turnout, and they STILL screwed up. This is as far as they can get for voter turnout and numbers going their way. Even WITH the extreme gerrymandering favoring them, even WITH the voter suppression laws they put in place to reduce turnout numbers... the Republicans STILL couldn't pull off a Red Wave of their own.

For every voter the GOP had on their side showing up angry over inflation, the Democrats had voters showing up angry over the loss of abortion rights. For every Red state they held onto, the Republicans lost control of a couple of state legislatures they could not afford to lose.

And this was the midterms. Voter turnout for Presidential election cycles are higher, and 2024 could well be a repeat of 2020 in that regard.

This is also something hurting Republicans in the long run: The inevitable demographic shift of older (Boomer) voters to younger (Gen Z/Millennial) voters is starting to happen. One of the things the Republicans realized in 2012 was that by 2028, simple dying off of the older generations that make up the Conservative voting base will increase just as the kids who grew up watching Republicans burn everything down will get old enough to vote. (The divided Generation X sitting between the two generations is too small a voter bloc - they're the ones not showing up to vote at all - to help Republicans) We are looking at a one-two punch for Liberal-leaning younger voters that could flip even Red states Blue in ways that suppression and gerrymandering can't stop. 

It's one big reason why the Republicans doubled-down anyway: They figured that the 2028 demographic shift was unstoppable, so they worked in the short-term to dominate Congress and the White House to ensure the one thing that could counter that Blue shift - a Far Right Supreme Court - would be in place to prevent the full liberalization of America that would undo everything they've done since Reagan's tenure.

In the short term, the Far Right won. In the long term, the bill for all the damage they've done - the racism, the deficits, the corruption made worse by trump's rise to power - is coming due. This middling, frustrating midterm fiasco for the Republicans is the beginning of the end of the control they've had on the public discourse since 1980.

And it terrifies them. The Far Right Republican base have a pretty good idea what these midterms mean, and the panic showing through their ongoing performative outrage is going to get worse.

The Wingnuts are about to double-down on the previous double-down to turn crazier than they've ever been. Stay safe, people.

And Io Saturnalia!