Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.
Monday, February 10, 2025
It's Tariff Week, Again
I imagine what is happening is that one thing Trump believes in, other than racism, is tariffs, so they keep trying to find ones that don't make the line go down.
Sunday, February 09, 2025
Oh No Not My Precious Money
These fucking people.
“While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,” Britt told AL.com.
On Friday night, the NIH announced it was cutting payments toward overhead costs for research institutions that receive its grants, a policy that could leave universities with major budget gaps, The Associated Press reported.
Supervillains
A big criticism I have always had of these characters in movies and similar is that their motives rarely make any sense. Either it is nonspecific "I WANT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD" stuff like Brain in Pinky and the Brain or some peculiar specific goal that isn’t even well-served by whatever evil plan that is being hatched.
But I get it now after seeing Musk. He is a true solipsist who sees the world as a video game and other people as "non player characters." He is trying to "win" and if he can't he will unhappily unlplug the whole thing.
There was a funny Bernie-inspired debate a few years back about whether billionaires should be allowed, with all the usual dipshits lining up in favor. Point to Bernie, I think.
The author of the linked piece has since said "ooops, my bad" which I think he has about every single major position he has publicly taken in his life. Points for growth, but has he considered shutting the fuck up?
Saturday, February 08, 2025
The Purge
Crime for members of the political appointees of the executive branch is now "legal" in the sense that there is no agency to prosecute it. Until reporting reflects this explicitly, journalists are just talking about a fantasy country.
Be Prepared To Lock Them Up
It's all on a server that also hosts CSAM by now.
A federal judge has restricted the Elon Musk-led government efficiency team from accessing a critical Treasury Department payment system.
The order, issued early Saturday, stops the access temporarily and demands the destruction of any downloaded information saying there is risk of “irreparable harm.”
Friday, February 07, 2025
Someone Complained
Funny.
Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday made public an order delaying tariffs on de minimis, or low-cost, packages from China until the Commerce Department can confirm that procedures and systems are in place to process packages and collect tariff revenue.I doubt it will return. There's no easy way to add in seamless tariff collection.
Seems Bad
I'm sure he's matured since.
Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of Elon Musk’s squad that’s criss-crossing US government agencies, was fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing information with a competitor.
“Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors,” said a June 2022 message from an executive of the firm, Path Network, which was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this."
Big Balls himself.
...
Online Chats
Two US law enforcement officials who investigate cybercrimes told Bloomberg they’ve been tracking online chat rooms that Coristine and others participated in for at least a year. The officials, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss their work, said they first became aware of him, under the usernames “Rivage” and “JoeyCrafter,” while investigating an alleged hacker who Coristine was communicating with in an online forum. The officials wouldn’t identify the hacker or the case they were investigating.
Seems Bad
Won't stop until a judge sticks someone in jail.
Krause’s position will give him control over the Treasury Department system responsible for disbursing more than $5 trillion in annual payments, including for Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and thousands of other measures. Musk has demanded on social media that Treasury unilaterally stop sending these payments, accusing the department’s career staff of breaking the law.
Who Is This For
What, even, is the supposed joke?
Is that "the only problem"? What the fuck is wrong with you, man.Trump will finance the purchase of Greenland by selling time-share condos in Gaza.
— Congressman Brad Sherman (@BradSherman) February 5, 2025
The only problem: if a displaced Palestinian woman gives birth in Greenland, her infant will be eligible for birthright citizenship.
Seems Bad
There is the project 2025 stuff and the "everything that Trump has a grudge about" stuff, and he was convinced the problem with Covid was that people knew about it.
Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.One thing he reacts to is the line going down, so the plunging Dow will often be our one big hope. Doesn't save us from everything, of course.
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Who Knew There Were Lines
A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
The 25-year-old employee, Marko Elez, resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.
The deleted profile associated with Elez, who was embedded in the Treasury Department to carry out efficiency measures, advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act and backed a "eugenics immigration policy" in the weeks before President Trump was inaugurated.
"You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity," the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. "Normalize Indian hate," the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
Probably the last one that got him fired.
Keep Them Busy With Petty Shit
Thinnest skinned dorks in existence.
On Wednesday, some employees at the General Services Administration found a creative way to express displeasure with the “Fork in the Road” offer to resign: a spoon emoji. During one video meeting in which members of the agency’s technology-focused branch were encouraged to take the offer, some rained down spoon emojis in an associated chat room. On Thursday, G.S.A. workers noticed that the spoon had been removed from the list of emojis permitted in their videoconferencing platform.
Team Pritzker
The finest representative of the big oaf community.
“Unlike Donald Trump, Illinois follows the law. The bipartisan Illinois TRUST Act, signed into law by a Republican governor, has always been compliant with federal law and still is today. Illinois will defend our laws that prioritize police resources for fighting crime while enabling state law enforcement to assist with arresting violent criminals. Instead of working with us to support law enforcement, the Trump Administration is making it more difficult to protect the public, just like they did when Trump pardoned the convicted January 6 violent criminals. We look forward to seeing them in court.”
Speaking Of Liars
The standard form of journalism is to privilege the statements of the people in power, then perhaps give voice to "critics argue" a few paragraphs later. What if you recognize you can't do that if your job is to inform readers?
News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks. Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for Ice operations, raids and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include “ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation”, “New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal noncitizens”, and in Wisconsin, “ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens”.
But a closer look at these Ice reports tells a different story.
That four-day operation in Colorado? It happened in November 2010. The 123 people targeted in New Orleans? That was February of last year. Wisconsin? September 2018. There are thousands of examples of this throughout all 50 states – Ice press releases that have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago. Some, such as the arrest of “44 absconders” in Nebraska, go back as far as 2008.
All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: “Updated: 01/24/2025”.
The distribution of Pinocchios from a glorified opinion columnist does not fix the problem.
I know we have this conversation every time Republicans are in power.
Yelling Is Good
I don't know what, precisely, roused the Democrats, but it was very clear their original post-election plan was to sit back and let Trump do unpopular things and wait until the midtermms. Give him enough rope, basically.
The plan was to go on TV every day and ask, WHAT ABOUT THE PRICE OF EGGS MR. PRESIDENT, while not standing up for their vulnerable constituents.
It isn't always clear what the minority party can accomplish/stop, but my view is sitting around looking like you aren’t even pretending to try does not actually endear you to voters. It certainly doesn't endear you to the people who might have YOUR backs when necessary.
They have to relearn this every time they lose.
And, no, I am not claiming that my very angry blog posts make a difference.
Sounds Bad
This is the kind of piece which people (understandably) use to defend the New York Times, but the real test is whether the political reporters remember they're dealing with people who lie about everything. Peter Baker probably thinks reading the news makes him biased, or something.
In the days after President Trump took office, as Elon Musk’s team began pressing for access to the Treasury Department’s payments system, officials repeatedly said that their goal was to undertake a general review of the system. They said they would observe, but not stop money from going out the door.
But emails reviewed by The New York Times show that the Treasury’s chief of staff originally pushed for Tom Krause, a software executive affiliated with Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to receive access to the closely held payment system so that the Treasury could freeze U.S. Agency for International Development payments.
In a Jan. 24 email to a small group of Treasury officials, the chief of staff, Dan Katz, wrote that Mr. Krause and his team needed access to the system so they could pause U.S.A.I.D. payments and comply with Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to halt foreign aid.
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Seems Bad
Hope the white house press corps are having an exciting time.
Half of Virginia’s community health centers have been cut off from federal grant money, forcing some to stop providing certain services and others to close branches.
The commonwealth has 31 Federally Qualified Health Centers with over 200 locations — a majority of which serve rural areas with limited access to medical care. Annually, about 400,000 Virginians rely on the care provided by these nonprofit, community-based centers, according to the Virginia Community Healthcare Association.
Positive Steps
We're not in "lol nothing matters" territory quite yet.
A second federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship, saying it’s likely unconstitutional and “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”
The nationwide preliminary injunction from US District Judge Deborah Boardman is a significant ruling against Trump’s Day 1 order, which was swiftly met with legal challenges and put on hold days later by a separate judge.
The order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” Boardman said during a hearing on Wednesday.
Woopsie Doodle
Gonna be like this every day.
The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.The CIA is also getting Musk's bogus retirement offer, which is not legal and contains the fine print that if you don't get the promised money:
The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking them to identify them.
You Could've Listened
I don't claim that The Left is always correct (The Left often doesn't agree with itself, so this would be impossible), but a tremendous problem is that anything coded left - such as criticism of Elon Fucking Musk - is dismissed out of hand by Very Serious Centrist Dipshits. If The Left hates him, he must be doing something right!
Dipshit.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who previously said there are certain aspects of DOGE he could get behind, told us he’s “appalled by the unconstitutional efforts to block funding appropriated and authorized by Congress.” Khanna said he’s made those concerns known to Musk.Yes I bet Elon is very concerned about your concerns!
Dipshit.
Maybe If His Byline Was "Matt" or "Nate" More Democrats Would Listen
Snark, but definitely not directed at Bouie.
And so the president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was. Whatever comes next, should the country weather this attempted hijacking, will need to be a fundamental rethinking of what this system is and what we want out of it.
The Price of Stuff
A lot of people are suddenly getting "must pay duty" notices from other shippers.
People love their dropshipping crap and people fucking hate getting surprise tax bills from their delivery companies.
HONG KONG/SEOUL/SHANGHAI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service said it would temporarily suspend parcels from China and Hong Kong, after President Donald Trump ended a trade provision this week used by retailers including Temu and Shein to ship low-value packages duty-free to the U.S.Figuring out how to prevent shippers from exploiting the de minimis exemption is probably not a bad idea, but doing it in this hamhanded "don't worry about the consequences" fashion would be low hanging fruit for Dems if they weren't, also, on this anti-China kick.
The Trump administration imposed an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods that came into effect on Tuesday and moved to close the "de minimis" exemption that allows U.S. shoppers to avoid paying tariffs for shipments below $800.
People love their dropshipping crap and people fucking hate getting surprise tax bills from their delivery companies.
...the USPS has resumed service but the duty issue remains!
Anyway, this highlights a big issue with this kind of thing. The actual $ cost isn't necessarily a huge burden, but the paperwork and processing across several entities is.
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Sounds Bad
Maybe somebody should do something.
We know that the vast majority of federal aid has been halted, particularly that which comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development. This includes medical care and food for malnourished children, refugee hospitals, supplies for war-torn regions, and much more. Claims that humanitarian aid was exempted from the pause are simply not true. We know that clean-energy businesses aren’t receiving grants passed by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. We know that Energy Department grants intended for historically disadvantaged cities or projects with community benefit plans (including the restarting of a nuclear facility in Michigan) have been stopped. We know that electric-vehicle charging station grants have been stopped.
This is all completely illegal. Elon has boasted of shutting down certain payments through his takeover of the payment system, though that’s probably just bloviating. (It’s also terrifying, as it carries the threat of mucking up the payment system in ways that could destroy the country.) But we’re not in a theoretical place when it comes to payments to disfavored causes and organizations. They are doing this now, in the open, in plain view of everyone, and in so doing usurping the power of a coequal branch of the government.
Sounds Bad
Ryan said things at one point got better for Head Start following last week's chaotic funding/grant freeze.
— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) February 4, 2025
But now it has again gotten worse.
"A lot of programs are getting error messages or sorry messages," when trying to access their funding/accounts, he said.
For What You're Worth, Jake
Chris Murphy: They don't seem super different than Elon Musk, who has amplified vicious antisemitic information on Twitter and who gave the Heil Hitler salute on Inauguration Day -- it seems to be standard! Jake Tapper: For whatever it's worth, the Trump Team says that wasn't a Heil Hitler salute.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 10:05 PM
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WHO ALLOWS HIM? WHO ALLOWS HIM, MOTHERFUCKERS???
Journalists love pretending "the narrative" isn't something they are mostly responsible for.
Seems Bad
Hopefully Dems figure out a way to make crime illegal.
A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.
Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.
Monday, February 03, 2025
Happy Hour
Dems need to hire some shitposters for their messaging.
"Nazi children are destroying the government"
— Just Kidding (@internethippo.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 7:44 PM
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The Answer Is No
Pretty easy, really.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has warned New York hospitals that complying with the White House’s executive order to end gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth could well violate state law.
The letter, which the attorney general’s office sent Monday morning to health care providers and other organizations, puts hospitals at the center of a conflict between the federal government and state authorities.
Progress
More like this.
I do know that when Dems are in power, news outlets love to rush the cameras to the minority party, and when Republicans are in power, news outlets love to rush the cameras to the majority party, but that's more reason to create spectacle, not less.
WASHINGTON—Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said he would place a “blanket hold” on all of President Trump’s State Department nominees until the administration’s attack on the leading U.S. foreign-assistance agency ends, a move that threatens to stall Trump’s ability to get his foreign-policy team in place.Some members also went to the USAID building today. We'll see if they get any coverage!
I do know that when Dems are in power, news outlets love to rush the cameras to the minority party, and when Republicans are in power, news outlets love to rush the cameras to the majority party, but that's more reason to create spectacle, not less.
"Trades"
Robinhood Markets is getting in on the sports event contracts craze, offering retail investors the opportunity to place trades on the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl https://t.co/NAIvVckzjM
— Bloomberg (@business) February 3, 2025
Doug Ford, Leader Of The Resistance
At least we have some unexpected plot twists.
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford is "ripping up" Ontario's $100 million contract with Elon Musk's Starlink in the wake of U.S. tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods, he said in a statement Monday.
Marks
The easiest people to con are the ones who believe they are geniuses, and therefore untrickable. And so the savviest people of The Discourse - journalists, business guys - always think they are perfectly correct in believing that other people are the marks, that they themselves are in on the con. It's okay to lie to the great unwashed, the pig people, as I, a very smart person, am convinced I understand what is really happening.
Occasionally people complain when I link to paywalled things, but almost everything is paywalled now and I don't really know what to do about that.
(If it is paywalled for you, it is a long rundown of pronouncements from investor guidance newsletters and similar. As for getting around paywalls, disabling javascript after loading the site often does the trick!)
...That was fast:
It’s been fairly frequently remarked that markets seemed to believe that Donald Trump would do all the stuff that markets liked, and none of the things that markets don’t like. Well, we now know how that turned out.Imagine what else "markets" get tricked by!
Occasionally people complain when I link to paywalled things, but almost everything is paywalled now and I don't really know what to do about that.
(If it is paywalled for you, it is a long rundown of pronouncements from investor guidance newsletters and similar. As for getting around paywalls, disabling javascript after loading the site often does the trick!)
...That was fast:
I assume that means she agreed to pretend to do some bullshit.
But Mah Beat Sweeteners
Most journalist names - the ones who go on tv - are competing over who can ingratiate themselves the most with the incoming administration. If Dems want coverage they are going to have to work at it.
Oldheads remember how much derision the press corps directed at Democrats in in the minority who tried to do any oversight in the early Bush era. These people are truffle pigs to power.
Related: if you were a low level gov't staffer, would you trust one of the political reporters of the New York Times (or Dash Sulzberger generally) to not bury your whistleblowing under an avalanche of bothsidesing?
To not do worse than that?
Sunday, February 02, 2025
Would Probably Help To Know Some Lawmakers Have Their Backs
But I suppose planning tea time with genocidaires is more important.
The top agent at the F.B.I.’s New York field office vowed in a defiant email to his staff to “dig in” after the Trump administration targeted officials involved in the investigations into the Jan. 6 attack — and praised the bureau’s interim leaders for defending its independence.
“Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy,” wrote James E. Dennehy, a veteran and highly respected agent who has run the largest and arguably the most important field office in the bureau since September.
Tariffs And Trade Wars
I do think economists have muddled the issues for years, pretending that tariffs are in and of themselves some great evil borne out of ignorance, instead of one tool of taxation and policy among many.
It is the trade wars that are a problem, especially as tariffs become a tool for noneconomic goals (we call those sanctions now, usually).
Canadians know how to concentrate the pain onto various American brands in Republican states and congressional districts.
In 2018, for example, they targeted the vital playing cards industry. United States Playing Card Company is located in
Erlanger, Kentucky (Mitch's state).
The US rules the interdependent world om a lot of ways, but it is best not to surrender to bullies.
Elon's Been Working Hard
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - A key U.S. pilot messaging system was experiencing a temporary outage, which could lead to flight delays on Sunday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said late on Saturday.
I have no idea if this is really their fault, but purging all the people who know anything other than how to own the libs with Nazi shitposts...
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025
Happy Hour
Seems bad.
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
Team Pritzker
A useful corrective to all the officials who are handing over their lunch money. Well, your lunch money.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is blocking those who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol from working in state jobs, ignoring President Donald Trump's attempt to offer them a clean slate last week in a sweeping set of pardons and commutations.
Late Thursday, Pritzker directed the state’s Department of Central Management Services, the state’s primary hiring authority, to restrict hiring of those who took part in the attack on the Capitol by declaring they had taken part in “infamous and disgraceful conduct that is antithetical to the mission of the State.”
On Message
You (we) can do this without actually lying.
The blog era is behind us, but there was a brief period when leadership offices (Pelosi, Reid) took the benefits of having an alternative somewhat (even if not always!) supportive media seriously. Then... they all just forgot.
Bust Out
The new vision of government is "Elon and Donad get to take it all."
Nothing DOJ can do!!
Nothing DOJ can do!!
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
Remember When Bill Clinton Met Loretta Lynch On The Tarmac
And now no one thinks anyone in the Trump administration could be prosecuted for anything. Anyone he likes, anyway.
Our news outlets are not all powerful, but despite their lying protestations, they do pick their battles. Lately their battles have been things like "trying to ruin the lives of trans people" and "making sure that uppity Harvard president gets fired."
They get so mad whe you point out what they're doing, and then lie about the criticisms!
Journalism!
Our news outlets are not all powerful, but despite their lying protestations, they do pick their battles. Lately their battles have been things like "trying to ruin the lives of trans people" and "making sure that uppity Harvard president gets fired."
They get so mad whe you point out what they're doing, and then lie about the criticisms!
Journalism!
Highly Paid Advanced Politics Knowers
That they believed this shows they do not understand anything about politics.
People tout polls saying even dem-leaning people thought immigration was an important issue, but this is mostly because their leaders (Democrats) went on TV and agreed it was.
Generally you don't beat conservatives on their home field, and Dems have been insisting they can my whole life.
People might have "legitimate concerns" about immigration. It is a genuine policy question and reasonable non-racist people can argue about the details (love or hate immigration, our system is a fucking mess!). But once it becomes a live cable news issue all of that is out the window.
You don't satisfy anti-immigrant sentiment by touting your very sensible bipartisan plan to be very tough on immigrants indeed. You satisfy it by going on TV and being a big racist, though that doesn't even satisfy it, it just feeds it.I was on an MSNBC panel last year when Republicans rejected Biden's bipartisan immigration compromise, and the liberal guests were genuinely convinced it was going to seal Trump's defeat in November. Never made any sense to me
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 31, 2025
People tout polls saying even dem-leaning people thought immigration was an important issue, but this is mostly because their leaders (Democrats) went on TV and agreed it was.
Generally you don't beat conservatives on their home field, and Dems have been insisting they can my whole life.
People might have "legitimate concerns" about immigration. It is a genuine policy question and reasonable non-racist people can argue about the details (love or hate immigration, our system is a fucking mess!). But once it becomes a live cable news issue all of that is out the window.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Trade Wars
The press will probably pay the most attention to the big ticket (steel, aluminium) items that Canada is likely to retaliate with, but the "fun" stuff is "let's piss off an individual member of Congress." Last time they had a fight with Trump they went after a bunch of Kentucky products to tickle Mitch McConnell. Such things don't necessarily involve a lot of money, but they can gut an important, or at least well-connected, local company.
Is This DEI
What we know for sure is the people responsible will not be blamed, because lol that's not how America works.
Staffing was ‘not normal’ at airport tower, according to a preliminary F.A.A. report.
Staffing at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report about the collision that was reviewed by The New York Times.
This Ain't It, Champ
In the first week, Trump removed 7,300 people. On average, Biden was removing 15,000 a week.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 30, 2025
Under Biden 72% of ICE arrests were criminals. Under Trump it's dropped to around 50%.
Trump is removing less people and less criminals. These guys are terrible at everything. https://t.co/rytt6ONTTm
Today Is The Day Donald Trump Became President
Trump went on TV and blamed a bunch of people (Obama, Biden, DEI, Buttigieg, intellectually inferior people [wink], etc.) so I guess it's ok to "politicize" things.
First He Came For Inspector General for the US Department of Agriculture
I think Trump should get rid of Powell, both because he's right that Powell should have cut (or at least, should have previously, who knows in the glorious new Turmp era), and because fake Fed Independence is part of the ridiculous religion of econobollocks (independent from whom, motherfuckers, independent FROM WHOM?)
US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the US central bank, hours after officials left interest rates unchanged despite his public calls for them to cut.Powell is a Person Who Matters, you see.
Now Is Not The Time To Determine Who Is Responsible For What
A big difference betweeen Democrats and Republicans is that no matter what happens, the Republicans go on TV and [in this iteration] blame it on Woke or whatever. It doesn't always work, but throw enough spaghetti against the wall and something sticks.
You can say that's intrinsically dishonest and "we" shouldn't emulate that, and I agree to some extent, but there's something inbetween that and "carefully choose an issue, do one cable news hit, fail to hear the applause, and move on."
It's not a stretch to blame almost everything bad that happens on Trump and has goons shutting down the federal government, though that does require defending the government. Asking people who are part of the government to defend it shouldn't be so much of an ask!
You can say that's intrinsically dishonest and "we" shouldn't emulate that, and I agree to some extent, but there's something inbetween that and "carefully choose an issue, do one cable news hit, fail to hear the applause, and move on."
It's not a stretch to blame almost everything bad that happens on Trump and has goons shutting down the federal government, though that does require defending the government. Asking people who are part of the government to defend it shouldn't be so much of an ask!
Morning Briefing
I get that maybe no one understands what's going on, but do you think this, from the New York Times emailed "morning briefing," even comes close to explaining it?
Trump reversed an order to freeze federal fundsAre people getting their grants and loans or not? NOBODY KNOWS!
The White House yesterday walked back President Trump’s order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. A federal judge had on Tuesday temporarily blocked the order after it caused mass confusion across the country.
The Trump administration had struggled to explain the funding freeze, a decision that interrupted the Medicaid system, which provides health care to millions of low-income Americans.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote on social media that “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.” She said the president’s executive orders on federal funding “remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
The decision by the Trump administration to pull the directive was a significant reversal. Democratic leaders celebrated the announcement.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
The Beat Sweetener
They all (except Axios!) write their love letters to the new press secretary so they can get the press releases 5 seconds before the other guys. Journalism!
And once you start, you can't stop. Are you going to point out that your new favorite source is a liar? No! So what are you doing?
And once you start, you can't stop. Are you going to point out that your new favorite source is a liar? No! So what are you doing?
Clarity
Calvinball continues.
... I don't speak fluent conservative gibberish, but I think this means they think they can make the court case moot by rescinding the memo, while still having the substance of the memo be in effect. Card says moops level lawyerbrain.
Confusion among Senate Republicans about where things stand on Trump’s funding freeze and OMB.
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 29, 2025
“My understanding is that they rescinded the memo but they didn't rescind the intention,” Kennedy says
Q: How does that work?
“I don't understand.”
Choose Your Fighters
Some intel: I've talked to journalists and folks on the Hill about this. Last night after OMB's action, some Senate Dems tried to unify the caucus to vote against Duffy. Schumer, among others, opposed it, and it flopped. The current Dem leadership strategy is to use strong language but not do shit.
— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 9:33 PM
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Well that was fun
Marisa broke the story of the first memo.
🚨 BREAKING: OMB has just issued a memo *rescinding* the previous memo freezing all federal financial assistance programs. Full text, per government source:
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 5:48 PM
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Well What Are You Going To Do About
No I don't think The Klob or any of them have have a magic wand, but even a failing plan is better than no plan.The reckless funding freeze by the Trump administration jeopardizes everything from community health centers to cancer research to child care to critical infrastructure projects. It is an unconstitutional power grab that puts lives and livelihoods at risk.
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar.com) January 28, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Axios, Welcome To The Resistance
The NYT and WaPo have puff pieces about Karoline Leavitt and Style-sectionish coverage of her press briefing including this from the Wapo:
“I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day,” Leavitt said.
White House Press Secretary Makes Steely and Unflinching DebutOnly Axios says, AKSHUALLY, she's a fucking liar.
The big picture: Asked by a reporter how many of the 3,500 immigrants arrested since Trump took office have criminal records, Leavitt said, "all of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws."
- "I know the last administration didn't see it that way, so it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are."
- Leavitt declined to say if all the undocumented immigrants had criminal records.
Reality check: There is no law making it a crime to live in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. Instead, the law treats it as a civil violation.
Back to the WaPo, which concludes with the decoder ring for their coverage:
Observers, including White House correspondents, were eager to see what approach Leavitt, 27, would take to engaging with the media. Leavitt, who served as an intern during Trump’s first administration, was a public-facing spokesperson for the Trump campaign last year, making her a logical choice to serve as press secretary as someone who was already familiar to the journalists who have covered the president.
The title is a joke, but every time you make criticisms of the NYT and WaPo, they respond with, "OUR JOB IS NOT TO BE THE RESISTANCE."
New White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did her first press briefing today and told a number of demonstrable lies (about condoms for Gaza, the criminal records of undocumented migrants, and more). This is how the New York Times covered it.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 4:24 AM
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Break Everything
I admit I don't know where I am on the "they are trying to break everything" versus "they are trying to break some things but are too stupid to know what is what" question.
I know, a bit of both, as always.
I know, a bit of both, as always.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
A Bit Too Neat, Writers
They were going to have him die of Covid until they decided at the last minute to renew it for a second season. Having Elon Musk fuck up his plane for season 2 is probably a bit too obvious.
Boeing is working with Trump advisor Elon Musk on ways to deliver delayed, overbudget Air Force One replacements sooner, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Tuesday.The pair of Boeing 747s that will serve as the next Air Force One aircraft are more than $2 billion over budget and years late, which the company has attributed to design changes, labor constraints and supply chain problems. President Donald Trump struck a deal for the aircraft during his first term, after threatening to “cancel order!” before he took office in 2017, complaining about high costs.
The AI Race
Even if Spicy Clippy is revolutionary, it is hard to see how one even wins the "race" or benefits from it.
Throw More Money Down The Well
Priorities.
The DeepSeek announcement from China has been called by some AI’s “Sputnik moment” for America.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 27, 2025
It’s precisely why I made AI a top priority in the last Congress and will keep at it.
Our competitors are going to use every single opportunity they get to overtake the US’s lead on…
Type The Press Release
Embarrassing how newspapers just ran with White House spin, but get used to it!
A deportation arrangement with Colombia that the White House on Sunday night presented as a total victory for Donald Trump is looking less clear in the light of day.
The Colombians the US tried to deport by military flights on Sunday will start traveling back to Colombia on Monday on the nation’s own planes, according to the South American country’s ambassador to the US.
Who presented it that way motherfuckers? WHO PRESENTED IT THAT WAY???
The latest NYT story fronts Trump's victory lap even though if you read carefully it is clear Petra "won."Only Got One Hammer
We are going to talk about how we like to talk about kitchen table issues, while sitting at the kitchen table, and consider "immigrants and trans people being herded into camps" as just noise, and also probably good.
The new administration was going to “flood the zone,” and Democrats couldn’t afford to chase every single outrage — or nothing was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffries told them, according to a person in the room who requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Jeffries, D-N.Y., urged members to focus their message on the cost of living, along with border security and community safety.
Crime is out of control and there are too many immigrants, Mr. President! WHERE IS THAT WALL YOU PROMISED!!!
Who is part of the community, Hakeem, WHO IS PART OF THE FUCKING COMMUNITY?
Monday, January 27, 2025
That Fucking Newspaper
The generous, benevolent, helping Mr. Smotrich.
Mr. Smotrich has long advocated for helping Gazans who want to leave to depart, and for the Israeli military to remain in the enclave to help pave the way for eventual Jewish settlement there."helping Gazans who want to leave [after we turned their world into a hellscape]."
I Guess, As Usual, You Didn't Think About This One For Five Seconds
Kids generally have two physical parents, but not all of them bother to appear for the birth certificate.
How can I prove my father was a US citizen? How can I do this years later?
Practial issues aren't the only ones, but at least fucking think through those before you decide to end birthright citizenship, as a little compromise with fascists.
Once something ceases to be a right - an extremely clear constitutional one in this case - it becomes an always adjustable, contestable, and removable bureaucratic grant.
Today is an appropriate day to consider what happens when citizenship is negotiable!
Begun The Trade Wars Have
These headlines don't contradict each other, but the difference does show the importance of headlines, and neither story makes clear what, exactly, was agreed to after this.
NYT
Petro had said earlier that his government would not accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with "dignity." Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet."A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves," Petro said. "That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants... In civilian planes, without being treated like criminals, we will receive our fellow citizens."
Sunday, January 26, 2025
These Fucking People
Don't deport *my* immigrants!!!
A South Florida Republican is urging President Donald Trump to spare hundreds of thousands of people from Latin America and the Caribbean from his immigration crackdown.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar called on the Department of Homeland Security in a letter Friday not to remove people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were allowed to enter the U.S. by President Joe Biden’s administration under a humanitarian parole program.
Sure Why Not
I expect a lot more "not giving a shit" about this than DC conventional wisdom believes.
WASHINGTON/BOGOTA Jan 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would impose retaliatory measures on Colombia including tariffs, sanctions and travel bans after the South American country turned away two U.S. military aircraft with migrants being deported as part of Trump's immigration crackdown.Trump's using military planes for no reason other than to pretend it's a military issue.
If You're A Star
Musk deliberately gave a Nazi salute twice and then gave a speech to neo-Nazis and our glorious truth-telling journalists and pundits are still doing the equivalent of this.
There are a lot of reasons Peters wrote that - including that he is a racist piece of shit himself, one of those reporters who transmutes "racism" (perpetrator) into "racial anxieties" (victims) - but one is simply that for years reporters who know nothing about Musk (the highly paid ones whose names you know) refused to listen to the reporters who did (the low paid ones who actually work for a living).
There are a lot of reasons Peters wrote that - including that he is a racist piece of shit himself, one of those reporters who transmutes "racism" (perpetrator) into "racial anxieties" (victims) - but one is simply that for years reporters who know nothing about Musk (the highly paid ones whose names you know) refused to listen to the reporters who did (the low paid ones who actually work for a living).
The Best Ideas
The tech brain geniuses trying to explain to us how the Spicy Clippy is going to change the world.
So imagine a world in which an A.I. knows your stress levels tend to drop more after playing World of Warcraft than after a walk in nature. Imagine a world in which an A.I. can analyze your reading patterns and alert you that you’re about to buy a book where there’s only a 10 percent chance you’ll get past Page 6.A not very good personal assistant who is capable of doing dumb stuff, often incorrectly.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Sure Why Not
"Fascinating"
I didn't read it and maybe it's extremely interesting, insightful, and relevant, but it is also completely fair to criticize how the newspaper of record markets The Politics Show.
Nobody Could Have Predicted
Just handing over their lunch money daily.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a negotiator of past immigration deals, said the GOP isn't going to rely on Democrats for a deal to beef up immigration enforcement.
“On border security, no,” Graham told NBC News, making it clear that the GOP will instead use the Senate's arcane budget process to bypass a filibuster and effectively cut out Democrats.
The push came in a letter Wednesday to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., which was led by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and signed by 12 other Democrats, most of them from politically competitive states.
Seems Bad
What's happening here, Washington Post.
...wait, hold on, paragraph 3!
The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.Well I've read the top of the story, no needing to keep reading.
...wait, hold on, paragraph 3!
The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general."Appeared."
Friday, January 24, 2025
You Know What Happened Next? Joe Biden Won
They probably should've continued listening to The Groups, instead of moving right on immigration, lending credence to Trump's biggest issue, and pushing public opinion against immigrants. Everything The Left always says will happen when you try to out-Republican Republicans.
They also wanted anti-war people to shut the fuck up 2004. Maybe they're right that it would've helped if they did, but "telling people to shut the fuck up" only seems to apply to The Left, when for others it's "listening to their legitimate concerns."
Their line is, basically, "Democrats can't win unless everybody is an unpaid campaign volunteer, on message all the time just like we are, from our boats." And, I dunno guys, that's not a viable campaign plan!Yup! Dems had a very popular message and policy on immigration. But thanks to a small group of activists who never represented most Latinos or immigrants, this is what happened when Biden used the same exact language in 2020: https://t.co/mI3Y6uvpvw https://t.co/6dyjnLpUVj
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) January 24, 2025
They also wanted anti-war people to shut the fuck up 2004. Maybe they're right that it would've helped if they did, but "telling people to shut the fuck up" only seems to apply to The Left, when for others it's "listening to their legitimate concerns."
Mommy and Daddy Parties
Forget the substance of being "tough on immigration" for a moment, or anything having to do with reality. Is there a single voter in the county who would believe that Harris would be "tougher" on immigration than Donald Trump?
Even if being tougher on immigration is popular, even if it is one area where Donald Trump is beating her, how insane do campaign advisers have to be to tell her to go out there and claim she's going to be a bigger bastard than Donald Trump?
The people who were responsible for the campaign blamed The Left for this shit.
Now they are paralyzed because too many of them still want to prove they're the Big Balled Beat The Immigrants party.
Even if being tougher on immigration is popular, even if it is one area where Donald Trump is beating her, how insane do campaign advisers have to be to tell her to go out there and claim she's going to be a bigger bastard than Donald Trump?
The people who were responsible for the campaign blamed The Left for this shit.
Now they are paralyzed because too many of them still want to prove they're the Big Balled Beat The Immigrants party.
Echoes of the Kerry campaign, which was basically "George Bush isn't killing enough of the right brown people." It was dumb then, but it was more understandable dumb in the post-9/11 era.
This Won't Bring Down Price Of Eggs, Mr. President!!!
Seems bad.
Kennedy, then chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit, later recounted online that Samoan “government officials, including the Prime Minister were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the respite from vaccines.” Wherever the idea originated, Kennedy was quick to offer them a way to do it.
It’s a milder version of an idea he has long championed at home — that the safety of vaccines, well established by scientific consensus, needs to be studied further in the kind of trials that would depend on a large group of children going without them. With a renowned health informatics expert in tow, Kennedy visited Samoa in 2019, to pitch the prime minister and ministry of health on an information system that would track the impact of medical interventions, including vaccines, on the nation’s 200,000 citizens.
Way To The Right
I know we're supposed to pretend the last year didn't happen, beginning with the Dems desperately trying to pass a Bipartisan (Republican) Immigration Bill, which the Republicans, predictably, LucyFootballed, and ending with this:
"I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers that came into our country illegally. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won," Harris said. "Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk," she said.People can argue it was Smart Politics if they want, but don't fucking tell me it didn't happen. What happened is after Harris lost, the people who argued that was smart and necessary and good pretended it didn't happen, and went on to make their next boat payment.
Send Up The Jake Tapper Signal
Have the Dems said anything about our precious troops being harassed?
[the answer to the question is no one in leadership has]
“Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a local establishment in the City of Newark, detaining undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant. One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned. This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures….’They went way to the right on immigration, ran right into a blind alley, and don't know how to get themselves out of it.
[the answer to the question is no one in leadership has]
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Step 1
Reagan appointee.
A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour on Thursday was blistering in his criticism of Trump’s action as he granted a temporary restraining order that blocks Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, said from the bench. “There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say where were the judges, where were the lawyers?”
Sure Why Not
I bet this story went through many editors.
An aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson advised Republican colleagues against subpoenaing former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as part of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her, according to written correspondence reviewed by The Post and a person familiar with the effort.Computer, enhance and accentuate:
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