Marie: This is the most stunning corrupt act I can imagine. (In fact, I did not imagine it. But Trump did): ~~~
⭐The Big Shakedown. Devlin Barrett & Tyler Pager of the New York Times: Donald “Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department. Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.” Thanks to RAS for the link. This is currently (at 4:00 pm ET Tuesday) the Times' top story. The link is fixed and it's now a gift link.
Robyn Dixon & John Hudson of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration said on Tuesday that there are 'no plans' for ... Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet in the immediate future, marking an abrupt postponement of a meeting Trump said a few days ago would happen in Hungary. The statement came hours after Russia’s top diplomat signaled a wide chasm between Moscow and Washington on ending the war in Ukraine. The Trump administration, in confirming the meeting’s postponement, made no mention of a diplomatic row between the longtime adversaries.... Russia on Tuesday rejected Trump’s call to freeze the fighting in Ukraine on the front line, signaling that the Kremlin has not significantly changed its demands for peace, after Trump said last week that he believed Putin wanted a deal.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Rachel Maddow featured videos of No Kings Day protests in every state: ~~~
~~~ AND Marcie Jones of Wonkette publishes lotsa photos & some videos of rallies around the country.
~~~⭐Demolition Don Tears Down the East Wing. Jonathan Edwards & Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: “Demolition crews on Monday began tearing down part of the White House to build ... Donald Trump’s long-desired ballroom despite his pledge that construction of the $250 million addition wouldn’t 'interfere' with the existing building. Construction teams were demolishing a portion of the East Wing, with a backhoe ripping through the structure, according to a photo shared with The Washington Post and two people who witnessed the activity.... 'It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,' Trump said during an executive order signing in July. 'It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.'... Officials declined to provide an explanation for Trump’s earlier comments that the new construction would not interfere with the existing building.” Thanks to akaWendy for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Darlene Superville of the AP: “The White House on Monday started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build ... Donald Trump’s $250 million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.... The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area. Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property. 'What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,' Scharf said last month. It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Scharf is the guy who explains executive order to Trump as he hands the unsigned orders to Trump to sign them. Trump usually looks surprised & befuddled by each order as if he'd never heard of it before.
~~~ Marie: This shocks me as much as Trump's firing federal workers who gave years of their lives to public service or his goons shooting off noxious (probably harmful & potentially dangerous) projectiles at a minister praying. At least when Trump razed the Bonwit Teller building & destroyed its historic friezes, he got building permits (okay, he lied in representing he would preserve the friezes). Now, he's just doing it, in violation of a law that require a lengthy, deliberative process for alterations to public buildings. BTW, the East Wing is where Melanie's offices are located. I guess she doesn't need them anymore. ~~~
Marie: A few commentators are wondering aloud why Trump is going all-out to "remodel" the White House -- with shiny "gold" plastic geegaws in the Oval Office, a paved-over Rose Garden, giant flags on the lawn and now of course, tearing down the East Wing to make way for a gigantic ballroom -- IF he's leaving office in three years. Although Marc Elias of Democracy Docket concentrates on all Trump & Co. have done/are doing to undermine the 2026 midterm elections -- and it's a lot -- clearly most of these anti-democratic moves could apply to the 2028 presidential election. In fact, the title of Elias' post is "Trump's Plan to Remain on His Throne."
Donald the Delusional. Paul Krugman: “... Trump is ... descending into states of delusion that are as he would say, like nothing anyone has seen before (notwithstanding Nixon’s nighttime drunken tirades). On Sunday, the day after millions of Americans marched in the massive No Kings Day protests, Trump dismissed them: 'The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.' Does Trump actually believe that? I suspect that he does. In the grip of delusion, a powerful person will dismiss and destroy anything that challenges their self-aggrandizing alternate reality.... There are many, many more examples of Trump’s delusions. He really does seem to believe that Portland is 'war-ravaged,' that Chicago is full of 'beautiful Black women in MAGA hats' begging him to stop crime, that China is going to cave to his trade demands, that gasoline is $1.99 a gallon, that he will lower drug prices by 500%, and much more.”
Awk-ward! Jacob Wendler of Politico: “... Donald Trump sparred with Australian Ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd on Monday during a crowded press conference with the Australian prime minister, the latest clash in a relationship that has long been sour between the two officials. After an Australian reporter asked Trump if he had any concerns with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s administration, including Rudd’s past comments about him, Trump said 'I don’t know anything about him,' apparently not realizing that Rudd was in the room. Trump then asked whether Rudd was still working for the Australian government, to which Rudd replied that the comments were made 'before I took this position, Mr. President.' 'I don’t like you either, and I probably never will,' Trump said to Rudd in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Albanese.” Read on. (Also linked yesterday.)
Miles Taylor: "Donald Trump made his views on the First Amendment clearer than ever this past week in the most vulgar side-by-side I think I’ve ever seen in American politics. Within days of the New York Times revealing a White House plan to offer U.S. refugee protection to Europeans who are vocal anti-immigrant protesters, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself piloting a fighter jet and dropping human excrement on peaceful American protesters at NO KINGS rallies. In plain English, he embraced free speech for neo-Nazis who agree with him but feces for Americans who oppose him." Thanks to akaWendy for the link. MB: The sanctuary Trump plans to offer White people include not just Europeans but people of European heritage, like White South Africans. But Taylor's point is well-taken. (Also linked yesterday.)
All the Best People, Ctd. Daniel Lippman of Politico: “Paul Ingrassia..., Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be 'tossed into the seventh circle of hell' and said he has 'a Nazi streak,' according to a text chat viewed by Politico. Ingrassia, who has a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday, made the remarks in a chain with a half-dozen Republican operatives and influencers, according to the chat.... Using an Italian slur for Black people, Ingrassia wrote ...: 'No moulignon holidays … From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,' then added: 'Every single one needs to be eviscerated.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Oh dear, JayDee. It seems these youthful indiscretions might just ruin this young person's career. So unfa-a-air! ~~~
~~~ Robert Jimison of the New York Times: “The nomination of Paul Ingrassia..., [Donald] Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, appeared to be in jeopardy on Monday night after Politico reported that he had sent a series of racist text messages. At least four Republican senators, including the Senate majority leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, have signaled that they will oppose his nomination to the office, which is a traditionally independent corruption-fighting agency that safeguards federal whistle-blowers and enforces some ethics laws. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, told reporters on Monday evening that he had spoken with the administration about Mr. Ingrassia but did not share details. He told reporters, 'I do not support him.' Mr. Ingrassia, 30, is set to testify on his nomination on Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Four Republicans opposing him would be enough to kill his nomination if all senators were present and the entire Democratic caucus voted against him.” ~~~
~~~ Hailey Fuchs of Politico: “Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hopes the White House withdraws Paul Ingrassia’s Office of Special Counsel nomination, after Politico reported on texts that showed him making racist remarks to fellow Republicans. 'He’s not gonna pass,' the South Dakota Republican told reporters.”
All the Best People, Ctd. Marc Caputo of Axios: "The White House paused the judicial nomination of former Florida Deputy Attorney General John Guard due to his involvement with a charity linked to Gov. Ron DeSantis that's under criminal investigation, sources tell Axios.... The controversy stems from the diversion of $10 million in secret settlement money from a Medicaid provider that helped fund a DeSantis-controlled political committee in 2024 to kill a marijuana-legalization initiative. Guard signed the settlement but first privately raised concerns about it, according to emails obtained by The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Florida Capitol Bureau. Florida House Republicans and independent observers allege that the arrangement amounted to an illegal siphoning of Medicaid funds."
Alan Blinder of the New York Times: “Seven of the nine universities that the White House initially approached about a plan to steer more federal money toward schools aligned with ... [Donald] Trump’s priorities have refused to endorse the proposal. On Monday evening, an eighth signaled that it had reservations about it. Only one, the University of Texas, suggested it might be open to signing on quickly. The University of Arizona rejected the Trump administration’s compact on Monday, joining Brown University, Dartmouth College, M.I.T., the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia. Vanderbilt University did not directly express a view about the plan on Monday — the deadline the Trump administration initially gave universities for feedback — but its chancellor suggested misgivings about parts of it.”
Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: “As ... [Donald] Trump continues calling for investigations of his perceived political enemies, federal investigators are scrutinizing a trip that Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought charges against him in Georgia, took to the Bahamas, according to a subpoena reviewed by The New York Times. Ms. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., brought an election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies in 2023, but was disqualified from continuing to prosecute the case last year. She took the Bahamas trip with some colleagues last November, after she was re-elected to a second term. Her office said on Monday that the trip was for a leadership training session and that campaign funds covered the cost.
Elena Giordano of Politico: “European leaders and Ukraine’s allies issued a carefully worded warning to ... Donald Trump early Tuesday over his lukewarm support for Kyiv, backing his call to halt fighting but rejecting any suggestion of territorial concessions to Moscow. In a joint statement signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other European leaders, the group declared themselves 'united in our desire for a just and lasting peace.' The leaders said they 'strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately,' suggesting that the current line of contact could serve as a starting point for negotiations, but they warned that 'international borders must not be changed by force,' — a veiled rebuke to Trump’s openness to freezing the war along Russian-occupied front lines.” MB: IOW, European leaders are acting like au pairs trying to mind a bratty rich kid.
Gonzalo Solano of the AP: “The survivor of a U.S. strike on a submersible vessel accused by the Trump administration of transporting drugs in the Caribbean was released by authorities in Ecuador after prosecutors said they had no evidence he committed a crime in the South American nation, a government official said Monday. The official ... told The Associated Press that the Ecuadorian man, identified as Andrés Fernando Tufiño, was in good health after medical evaluations.... The man was repatriated by the United States over the weekend following a U.S. military attack on a submersible vessel suspected of transporting drugs in the Caribbean. A Colombian citizen also survived the attack and remains hospitalized after being repatriated to that country. U.S. military personnel rescued both men after destroying the submersible on Thursday.... There is little evidence to indicate that fentanyl is produced in the Andes.... The Colombian government said its survivor 'will be prosecuted according to the law' for alleged drug trafficking.”
Mattathias Schwartz of the New York Times: “The Trump administration can move forward with deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., under a ruling Monday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The 36-page ruling lifted a temporary block on the deployment of Oregon and California National Guard soldiers by Judge Karin J. Immergut of the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon. It was not immediately clear whether the order, also allowed the president to use National Guard soldiers from Texas or other states, as he has suggested he might do. The ruling came from two members of the three-judge panel, Judge Ryan D. Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade, both appointees of ... [Donald] Trump. Judge Susan P. Graber, a Clinton appointee, dissented....
“The memo came a day after a social-media post by Mr. Trump stating that he would send 'all necessary troops' to protect war-ravaged Portland from 'domestic terrorists.' Such incendiary descriptions do not reflect the reality in Portland, Judge Immergut had written, and have been at odds with law enforcement agencies’ own assessments of protest activity.... The state of Oregon and city of Portland, which filed the lawsuit, could ask for an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit to review the decision or appeal directly to the Supreme Court.” Politico's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Mattathias Schwartz of the New York Times: “Federal officials appeared before a judge on Monday to answer questions about whether the government violated a court order by using tear gas against protesters and residents in a crackdown on illegal immigration in the Chicago area. The hearing before Judge Sara L. Ellis of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois appears to be the first face-to-face courtroom exchange between a federal judge and a Homeland Security official about the crowd control tactics used in ... [Donald] Trump’s Chicago immigration crackdown.... The judge questioned [Kyle C. Harvick..., deputy incident commander of the Trump administration’s Chicago-area deportation operation,] about two recent incidents when tear gas was used against protesters. Mr. Harvick said he was not present at either incident, but that it was his understanding that agents on the scene had given warnings and had legitimate concerns about their own safety. Protesters who were present have disputed those claims in court filings.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Hannah Green of the Guardian: “US Customs and Border Protection implemented a rule this week that will require airlines to disregard 'X' sex markers on passports and input an 'M' or 'F' marker instead, sending those people with an 'X' marker into panic. 'X' markers became available to US passport holders in 2022, in an effort to allow people with gender identities other than male and female to obtain more accurate travel documents. Now, the new CBP rule has many people on social media and beyond worried that they will no longer be allowed to fly internationally.” Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Update. Johnny Diaz of the New York Times: “The new rule amounts to a data-collection change and does not affect passengers’ ability to fly.” MB: The only point to this change is to humiliate, embarrass or distress travelers who naturally identify as “X.” It's administrative cruelty for cruelty's sake. IOW, it's sick. (Also linked yesterday.)
Jeremy Roebuck, et al., of the Washington Post: “Former FBI director James B. Comey asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss the criminal case against him, calling it a vindictive prosecution driven by ... Donald Trump’s long history of personal animosity toward him. In court filings, Comey’s attorneys, led by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney for Chicago, and Jessica Carmichael, accused the president of personally instigating the case against the former FBI director. When several prosecutors refused to proceed, the attorneys wrote, Trump installed a loyalist in a key position to ensure that charges would be filed.... They asked U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the charges could not be refiled.” Politico's report, by Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney, is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Joyce Vance, on Substack, discusses James Comey's motion as well as an earlier government motion to remove Comey's lead attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.
Jenny Gross of the New York Times: “An outage involving Amazon Web Services, the cloud service provider that supports much of the internet, took many websites and apps offline for over two hours on Monday, in the latest disruption that showed the fragility of global technology infrastructure. The outage, which affected websites and apps for some major banks, gaming sites and entertainment services, started shortly after 3 a.m. Eastern. Amazon said in an update at 5:27 a.m. that most websites and apps relying on its services were working normally again, and that it continued 'to work through a backlog of queued requests.' By Monday afternoon Eastern time, however, reports of spotty services persisted on several sites.” (Also linked yesterday.) An AP story is here.
Alexandra Petri of the New York Times: “Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster, the highest title given to competitors by the International Chess Federation, and a popular chess commentator and livestreamer, has died. He was 29. The Charlotte Chess Center, a chess academy in Charlotte, N.C., where Mr. Naroditsky was a head coach, announced his death in a statement on social media on Monday. The statement did not cite a cause or say where he died.”
~~~~~~~~~~
France.Ségolène Le Stradic of the New York Times: “The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was sent to a Paris prison on Tuesday, the first time in more than half a century an ex-head of state has been jailed in the country. Mr. Sarkozy was found guilty of conspiring to seek funding for his 2007 presidential campaign from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman, and was handed a five-year sentence last month. Few observers expect him to serve the whole term, but his conviction has already prompted a fierce debate in the country. Judges involved in the case have been targeted on social media, with some receiving death threats, according to the president of Paris’s Court of Appeal, Jacques Boulard.... Mr. Sarkozy, a former lawyer who quickly rose through the ranks of French politics, is known for his pugnacious energy — powered by an immutable morning run routine — and sharp wit. Since he stepped down from office in 2012, he has retained influence both within his own conservative party and with President Emmanuel Macron, whom he publicly supported during the last presidential elections in 2022.” The AP story is here.
Japan. Michelle Lee & Chie Tanaka of the Washington Post: “Sanae Takaichi, a firebrand nationalist and security hawk, was chosen as prime minister of Japan on Tuesday, becoming the nation’s first female head of government during an unusually rocky time in Japanese politics.” Takaichi will host Donald Trump early next week. The AP's report is here.
25 comments:
Anne Applebaum, for The Atlantic, on The president’s disturbing, excremental propaganda campaign
"Trump, the successor to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, posted an AI-created video of himself as a fighter pilot, wearing a crown, flying over an American city, and dumping shit onto American protesters. The point was not subtle: Trump wanted to mock and smear millions of Americans, literally depicting them covered in excrement, precisely so that none of his own supporters would want to join them.
Mockery isn’t Trump’s only tool, nor was it the only one that his team has borrowed from other autocrats and would-be autocrats around the world....For those using the oldest tools in the authoritarian playbook, the nature of the smear is unimportant. What matters is the intention behind it: Don’t answer your critics. Don’t argue with them. Don’t let them win over anyone else. Describe them as dangerous radicals even when they wear frog costumes. Imply, without evidence, that they were bribed to speak out, because there can’t possibly be any sincere idealists who criticize the Party and its Leader out of a genuine desire to help other Americans. Dump AI-generated sewage on their heads to discourage anyone else from joining them."
"Federal Workers Given Secret Order
The Trump administration has ordered federal employees not to share photos of the East Wing of the White House being demolished to make way for the president’s $250 million vanity project
The Treasury Department’s headquarters, which are located next door to the East Wing, look out on the construction site for the 90,000-square-foot ballroom Donald Trump is building with private donor funds.
Treasury employees received an email Monday evening telling them not to document the demolition, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote."
Don't look out the window, don't talk about the window, you don't even see a window. Nothing is out that window. Certainly not the destruction and desecration if the People's House. Now repeat after me.
Object Lesson
Oopsie! Sez Bezos!
Depending on what you were doing yesterday, or needed done, you may or may not have seen what can happen when a single node of Amazon's Web Services crashes.
AWS, as it's known, provides cloud services for a crap ton of companies and internet based operations and yesterday an entirely avoidable problem (and easily corrected, if you know what you're doing) brought things to a screaming halt.
"It took a day without Amazon Web Services for Americans to realize how reliant the internet is on a single company.
It’s not just that people couldn’t place mobile orders for coffee at Starbucks or ask Alexa for the weather. Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.
AWS is one of a small group of cloud computing juggernauts that form the backbone of the internet, providing businesses with backend computing tools needed to power crucial parts of their daily operations. That includes everything from storage to virtual servers that companies can use to develop and deploy apps without investing in their own hardware."
And believe it or not, estimates of the cost of this outage could range into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
So, wha' hoppen?
In the IT world, among sysadmins (I was one, once upon a time), the people who keep the lights on, there's a pretty common expression, "It's always DNS". DNS is short for Domain Name System. DNS servers are what make the whole shebang work. You type in a URL and your device sends out a message to a DNS server asking it where and what is this address. DNS translates the query and sends back the relevant info, and bingo, you're here at Reality Chex, or the NY Times, or trumpsucks.org.
So that's the what. T'he why is the basis of this object lesson. For that we go to The Register a longstanding beacon of sanity in the IT world. And here's where we get the why. Very simply, Amazon has lost tons of experienced IT engineers either through layoffs or because talented people said "Fuck this for a game of soldiers" and departed for less onerous working conditions:
"And so, a quiet suspicion starts to circulate: where have the senior AWS engineers who've been to this dance before gone? And the answer increasingly is that they've left the building — taking decades of hard-won institutional knowledge about how AWS's systems work at scale right along with them."
So when all that knowledge walks out the door, you may still have some smart people working for you, but...
"When that tribal knowledge departs, you're left having to reinvent an awful lot of in-house expertise that didn't want to participate in your RTO [return to office] games, or play Layoff Roulette yet again this cycle. This doesn't impact your service reliability — until one day it very much does, in spectacular fashion. I suspect that day is today."
continued...
The lesson:
"This is a tipping point moment. Increasingly, it seems that the talent who understood the deep failure modes is gone. The new, leaner, presumably less expensive teams lack the institutional knowledge needed to, if not prevent these outages in the first place, significantly reduce the time to detection and recovery. Remember, there was a time when Amazon's Frugality' leadership principle meant doing more with less, not doing everything with basically nothing. AWS's operational strength was built on redundant, experienced people, and when you cut to the bone, basic things start breaking."
The short of this object lesson is this: When the South African Chainsaw Asshole went to town with his pimply faced Hitler Youth, cutting and shredding government departments, what you have left is a horribly depleted workforce that very often has lost almost all of its institutional knowledge, many because DOGE cut them or Fatty forced them to take buy outs. What happened yesterday at Amazon's Web Services is happening right now at a myriad of government offices, only in slow motion. But at some point, citizens will find themselves well and truly fucked because those services that we relied on will crash and there will only be Big Balls or some other nose picking idiot left in charge who doesn't know shit from Shinola.
This is a far cry from making America great again. In fact, it's making America stupid and unworkable. But then, that's the point, right? Isn't that the whole point of Project 2025?
Right.
Here endeth the lesson.
The Rich (and Stupid) get Richer...
Because of COURSE they do.
Now one might suspect that Amazon's stock took a beating after yesterday's cloud clusterfuck, but no...its stock went up!
"Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock didn't suffer a similar fate to CrowdStrike (CRWD) after its global IT outage in July 2024, when the cybersecurity firm slumped as much as 20% following a faulty security update. In fact, Amazon's (AMZN) stock was up during the session on Monday as traders shrugged off the developments. In contrast, CrowdStrike's stock took several months to recover following its debacle, and there wasn't an immediate antidote to restore investor confidence."
So there was a difference there. But also it appears that Amazon's goliath-sized footprint demonstrates it's both its global reach and the necessity of its ubiquity.
"People might be getting more used to these types of disruptions in our highly connected world, especially if they don't occur often and are resolved quickly. However, it also makes a big difference in the type of disruption. AWS (AMZN) is a powerhouse that has achieved 'too big to fail' status and technical glitches happen from time to time in the world of cloud computing."
So...at least for investors, for the nonce, "shit happens" takes care of any concerns. But for the rest of us, and most certainly for people at the government level, "shit happens" can easily morph into "Holy Shit! It happened!" And the it in this regard is the very real possibility of a huge IT infrastructure attack. If internet services being down for a few hours was a pain, and if I'm a bad actor working for a foreign power, say Russia or China, I'm looking at what happened yesterday and thinking "Hmmm....all it took was a DNS outage to screw with the US. We can do that in our sleep, and since that idiot Trump fired all the smart people in his government, we can use the smart people we didn't fire to really fuck with the whole country."
Now class, a show of hands. How many think the MAGAts in the Fat Hitler Reich are thinking about this, and if they do, have the first clue of what to do about it?
No one?
Right.
So, per RAS's posting, Fatty is ordering everyone to shhhhhh....not say anything about the East Wing of the White House being razed. And don't take pictures!
Because there's no way anyone else can see this.
The stupid is all.
Lindsey Halligan
Anna Bowers
"“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began.
Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touched on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law."
By the way, like Lindsey, if anyone asks my messages here were supposed to be retroactively off the record.
The sort of outcome described by Anne Applebaum in the link provided by Wendy is exactly what we should expect as post-literate conditions accelerate, as I mentioned in a post yesterday about the demise of reading as a door to knowledge and wisdom.
The ability to make rational judgements, the use of critical thinking to assess situations, has been almost thoroughly replaced by rude appeals to raw emotion. The fact that the appeal in this case is being made by a rude, emotion driven demagogue, himself unable to access critical thinking, is beside the point.
Instagram, Tik. Tok, YouTube and a host of other internet domains are beset by this same sort of blunderbuss approach to manipulating public opinion. And it doesn't have to affect everyone, just enough idiots who are susceptible to this sort of crap for it to have a huge effect on the public discourse.
Trump has been dangerous and debilitating on so many levels. He is a monument to the worst of humanity.
So here's a question that has been bugging me for a long time. It's about gerrymandering, a topic front and center once more as the Supine Clot prepares to gut the entire Voting Rights Act and hand the Party of Traitors permanent control of the House by deciding Louisiana v Callais in favor of the "not black" residents who brought the case.
The question in Callais, which has become a premiere example of hypocrisy in a court that has made that quality its watchword, is can a state draw a congressional map to ensure that black voters get a fair chance at representation.
The answer, for Alito, Roberts, et al, is "fuck no", them darkies can go jump.
Why? Because at some point, (Shaw v Reno, 1993), the Court said you can't use race as the basis of a district map because of ...get this....the equal protection clause...which means, in effect, that only white voters are protected.
BUT in 2019, the court said Political (ie partisan) gerrymandering is perfectly okay! (Rucho v Common Cause).
But in southern states like Louisiana, if you did a venn diagram of race based gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering, you'd get a circle, because the districts would be drawn to favor only white voters either way.
So here's my question. Why is PARTISAN gerrymandering okay? Why? In favor of either party. Because here's the other thing: for a court that sez precedence, schmecedence, that thinks Stare Decisis is just something someone said once (per Private Jet Thomas), you know absolutely, that when it comes to precedence that helps the outcomes they desire, Stare Decisis is the fucking word of god.
Just another stupid question, I guess.
People are sayin' 'you don't spend 250 million dollars on remodeling your house (and it's
not even yours Donald) unless you (Donald) plan to live there a long, long time.'
Or maybe until death do us part.
Why is partisan gerrymandering OK?
Because there is no statute or amendment specifically forbidding it.
Whereas there are prohibitions on discriminating on other attributes.
That the court's current explanation.
But ... the Constitution guarantees each state a Republican form of government. At some future point Scotus will rule (I predict) that gerrymandered permanent majorities violate that. Not this SCOTUS. We probably won't live long enough to see it.
@Akhilleus: re: political gerrymandering. This is one of those situations where Johnny & the Dwarfs like those states' rights. In a 5-4 decision, where Roberts wrote the opinion, the confederates decided that the federal courts don't have jurisdiction over states' gerrymandering because “The Constitution supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.” Roberts did let on that the U.S. Congress and/or the states themselves could pass laws that limited gerrymandering, but gosh darn, the courts' hands were tied.
Now, however, it looks like the confederate Supremes are about to lump racial gerrymandering in with political gerrymandering, by gutting Section 2 (so pretty much all of) the Voting Rights Act, which, you know, O'Kavanaugh says has passed its sell-by date anyhow.
For those who wish to read more:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/one-person_one-vote_rule
As we all know, the Founders were never entirely comfortable with democracy; hence the Bill of Rights, etc., in the Founding documents. Real populism pushed back after the Civil War and gave us the Initiative, Referenda and direct election of Senators. Then there all those progressive court decisions...that led this Boomer in what he thought was the right direction.
But no matter how uncomfortable the Founders might have been with democracy, the Supine (white supremacist) Court is even more so. In their pursuit of a white, Christian state, they're willing to ignore not only Stare Decisis but provisions of Constitution itself. Emoluments, anyone?
as seen on Bluesky - t**** declaring himself almost in the number 1 spot above Washington and Lincoln
Once he solves war number 9, he will be there.
(Given that he is now murdering people, destroying the people's house, ignoring laws, and so on and so on, aren't any of the billionaire supporters or the average man of business or even the magas concerned for his mental health and that he might start a war or drop a nuke or do something equally horrific since he seems to truly believe everything his sick brain conjures up?)
RAS,
This Lindsay Halligan testiness and obvious lack of understanding in the proper way to conduct interactions with a reporter (ie, there is no such thing as retroactive off the record demands) are yet more indications that the entire Fat Hitler regime is composed of JV bench riders, in other words these schmoes aren't even getting to start for the junior varsity. They're not even ready for not ready for prime time. What they are ready for is routine flouting of laws, ethics, norms, best practices (shit, they don't even make the Worst Practices grade), and basic human decency.
When Hitler Barbie, KKK Leavitt was asked an entirely reasonable question about who chose Budapest for this next opportunity for Fatty to embarrass himself with his former love interest, Vladdy Daddy, her response was "Your mother!" The equally appalling Steven Cheung, former flack for an operation where guys kick each other in the nuts, gave the same response (must have been the go-to answer for the Trumpy juveniles). This isn't just immaturity, it's the sort of insulting immaturity of schoolyard buttheads. "Huh...yo momma!" Seriously? This is the Press Secretary for the President of the United States?
They are in a class all by themselves. Small brained, incompetent, unprofessional, nasty shitheads.
Westcoastman,
Re: the demolition at the White House (I'm reminded of an old Ray Bradbury story, "The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place" in which rebels plan to burn down a house full of priceless artworks), as you suggest, one could easily infer that a certain fat orange blob intends to stick around, maybe forever (or until such a time as the stroke medication he's taking no longer works). Don't be surprised if this gaudy saloon he's tacking on to the People's House is sheathed in cheap looking shiny fake gold siding with a huge TRUMP sign squatting on the roof, maybe a giant scantily clad neon girl next to it, the sort you might see atop a strip club. Class, all the way.
Rod Serling predicted Fat Hitler...
But he saw him, rightly so, as a six year old monster who controlled the whole world, who killed, or maimed, or muted anyone who displeased him. A monstrous child in charge of everything.
Yup, Rod was a pretty smart guy. Way back in 1961, he showed America what life would be like when the country is ruled by an evil, dyspeptic little brat.
Now we're all in the Twilight Zone.
"Bannon Got Mafia Hitman Released For Loving Trump
In 1998, Vito Guzzo, a reputed member of the Colombo crime family, pleaded guilty to five murders and several other violent crimes. In court, he described his crimes without emotion “I killed Ralph Sciulla by shooting him in the head,” he told the judge, reading from a piece of paper. Guzzo served 26 years of his 38-year sentence and was freed earlier this year after striking up a friendship with Steven Bannon.
Bannon met Guzzo at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut while serving a four-month sentence. Bannon told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that Guzzo is “the single biggest Trump fan you’ve ever seen.” He said Guzzo “could literally quote” Trump’s speeches."
If you hear about prisoners walking around the yard quoting Fat Hitler now you'll know why.
Akhilleus,
Here is where "your mom" is an appropriate response.
"As Paul Ingrassia’s nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel languishes, it’s hard to find anyone willing to defend him in Congress. But the Trump nominee who allegedly sent messages saying he had a “Nazi-streak” does have someone willing to go to bat for him on Capitol Hill: his mom. Donna Gallo Ingrassia, a New York-based real estate agent, tried to confront the top Democrats on the Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Reps. Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, respectively, and defend her son at their offices in late June."
Crime Pays
"President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit."
He costs tax payers millions in investigations and prosecutions. And now he wants his former (actually current) personal lawyers and sycophants to approve a quarter million dollar payday for looking into his crimes. All the while they are aiding and abetting his current crimes.
Speaking of six year olds
"Dem Rep Drops AI Revenge Poop On Johnson
House Speaker Mike Johnson found his defense of Donald Trump’s feces-dumping video turned right back on him in yet another nasty AI video. When asked at a press conference about the president’s video targeting “No Kings” demonstrations on Monday, the 53-year-old insisted that Trump was merely using “satire” and was “probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media.”
In response, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, 44, replied with a clip of the moment, which is then followed by an AI poop landing on his head, as he looks up sheepishly and the audience bursts into laughter. The Florida Democrat captioned the video, “Just using social media and satire Mr Speaker,” with a winking emoji."
@RAS: It's a quarter of a _B_illion dollars. I wish the bastard would just call it quits and try to spend all of the money he has now. Hell, I would be impressed if he could spend 1/10th of his money.
@Niskyguy: You are right. I meant billion. Trump taking a quarter million dollars from us tax payers isn't worthy of a story anymore. And probably happens most days before he has had his second diet coke of the day.
But who is the epically corrupt Pretender shaking down?
I can't imagine that those costs, real or imagined, were all his. As I remember, he used campaign money for many of his legal costs. Whether it was his to spend in the first place is one question. The other is whether any corrupt reimbursement should go to him or his donors.
You are absolutely right Ken. I hadn't even given any thought to the fact that Trump didn't pay for any of that himself. It was always "give just $10 more dollars for the Trump defense fund" eternal grift to his supporters. Another example of him always using other people's money. A lot of the time he wasn't even paying his incompetent legal team for the work they did for him. I remember Giuliani claiming that FH owed him millions of dollars for the hours he put in losing case after case. The fact that he routinely didn't pay people for their work was one of the reasons he had to hire beauty queens that don't know how conversations with journalists work. Just another complete scam from start to finish.
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