Katie Rogers of the New York Times: Donald “Trump said that he underwent magnetic resonance imaging earlier this month, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that the results had been 'perfect' but declining to say why his doctors had ordered the scan. Mr. Trump also reiterated that he was interested in serving a third term, saying that he 'would love to do it' because of his popularity with his supporters. Mr. Trump, who spoke to journalists for about 30 minutes on a flight to Tokyo from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during his almost weeklong trip to Asia, seemed intent on presenting himself as fit to lead, if not run for the presidency again.” ~~~
~~~ Tom Ambrose of the Guardian & Agency: “Donald Trump said on Monday morning that he would rule out running for the vice-presidency in the 2028 US election, an unorthodox approach that some of his supporters have floated to allow the Republican US president to serve a third term in the White House. 'I’d be allowed to do that,' Trump said, in an exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One.... But he added: 'I wouldn’t do that. I think it’s too cute. Yeah, I would rule that out because it’s too cute. I think the people wouldn’t like that … It’s not – it wouldn’t be right.'” MB: As I mentioned in yesterday's Comments, I don't think Trump “would be allowed to do that,” because the last sentence of the 12th Amendment precludes it. However, Patrick highlighted a workaround scheme that does look “Constitutional.”
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: “The nation’s largest union of federal workers is calling on lawmakers to pass a stopgap funding measure to end the government shutdown, calling it an 'avoidable crisis' as the impasse approaches the one-month mark. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 federal and D.C. government workers, said in a statement Monday that the shutdown is punishing the very people who keep the country running.... The union’s statement is likely to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to support a House-passed continuing resolution. Five more Democratic senators would have to vote with Republicans to reach the 60 votes needed to advance the bill.” The NBC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Bear in mind that federal workers do not depend on regular commercial insurance markets to get their healthcare insurance. They get their insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which the Office of Personnel Management calls "the widest selection of health plans in the country." The government -- that is, you and I -- pay a significant proportion (about 75%) of the federal employees' premiums. So they're a lot more interested in getting their paychecks on time than they are on seeing that other Americans get affordable health insurance, too. Speaking of government-subsidized health insurance, if you're on Medicare or are about to become eligible, John Oliver sort of explains "Medicare Advantage" plans: ~~~
ICE Ignores First Amendment. Again. Claire Moses of the New York Times: “Sami Hamdi, a British political commentator and critic of Israel, was detained by immigration enforcement officers in the United States and will be removed, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, announced on Sunday. 'This individual’s visa was revoked and he is in ICE custody pending removal,' Ms. McLaughlin wrote, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Mr. Hamdi appeared to be the latest person to have an American visa revoked over political speech. Other cases have raised questions about First Amendment protections. Mr. Hamdi is the managing director of the International Interest, an organization that 'advises on geopolitical environments and risks across the globe,' according to its website. He has appeared as a commentator on the British television news channel Sky News and other outlets.”
Marie: Here's something I've sort of forgotten about, but thankfully akaWendy calls it to mind again: ~~~
~~~ Hannah Maio of CNBC [Nov. 2020]: “Walmart and McDonald’s are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The question of how much taxpayers contribute to maintaining basic living standards for employees at some of the nation’s largest low-wage companies has long been a flashpoint in the debate over minimum wage laws and the ongoing effort to unionize these sectors. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., commissioned the study.... Other notable companies with a large number of employees on federal aid include Amazon, Kroger, Dollar General, and other food service and retail giants. About 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time, the report found. 'U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America,' Sanders said in a statement Wednesday evening. 'It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald’s and other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Republicans complain that it isn't fair for us taxpayer to be helping lazy people who won't get off the couch and earn a living. But the truth is that in the majority of the cases, the "lazy people" are working their butts off, and the people you and I are subsidizing are among Republicans' favorite billionaires Jeff Bezos and the Walton family.
~~~~~~~~~~
This New York Times liveblog will tell you what Trump is doing today. The AP's live updates are here.
Keith Bradsher & of the New York Times: “Chinese and American trade negotiators said on Sunday that they had agreed to a framework of a deal on tariffs and other issues ahead of an expected meeting of the countries’ top leaders this week.”
~~~ Marie: I hope you adorable little children can read -- because Trump just put you on notice. ~~~
~~~ Adriana Licon of the AP: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out Nov. 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on. The new notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November. That program helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries. 'Bottom line, the well has run dry,' the USDA notice says. 'At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.'” MB: And, yes, this is a violation of the Hatch Act. It gets worse. ~~~
~~~ Illegal Aliens! Gender Mutilation! Alexandra Marquez of NBC News: “'Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry,' the unsigned message posted on the USDA’s official website reads. 'At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance,' the notice concludes.”
AP: “Flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, when the agency also reported staffing-related delays in Chicago, Washington and Newark, New Jersey. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed and canceled in the coming days as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown.”
Cheyanne Daniels of Politico: “'I think one of the reasons that President Trump is refusing to negotiate is because he thinks he can exercise king like-powers,' [Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)] said. ''He can open up the parts of the government that he wants. He can pay the employees who are loyal to him. ... This is part of what happens in totalitarian states.'... In an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz on 'This Week,' Sen. Mark Kelly [(D-Az.) said]..., '... the president has spent one hour on this. 'How much time has he spent talking about his ballroom?'”
The Kavanaugh Stop. Chris Geidner, the Law Dork: "Tuesday will be 50 days since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees issued an order allowing the Trump administration, essentially, to target working-class Latinos in its massive immigration raids.... The high court’s order blocked a temporary restraining order that had been issued in July by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles. Under the TRO, the Trump administration was simply barred from using only some combination of a person’s race or ethnicity, the fact that they speak Spanish or have an accent, and the type of work they do and where they were found to detain someone.... Although all three Democratic appointees spoke out through a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only Republican appointee to write anything that day was Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... In one particularly indefensible sentence..., Kavanaugh simply pushed the Fourth Amendment to the wayside[.]
Peter Charalambous of ABC News read Jonathan Karl's new book in which Karl published some of the evidence Jack Smith had intended to use at trial against Trump in the insurrection case. Among the new tidbits: "Prosecutors were able to support their timeline of events in part using a forensic copy of Trump's iPhone.... Trump's phone ... appeared to contain evidence demonstrating that Trump understood he had lost the election and was aware of the extent of the violence taking place at the Capitol, the book says. According to Karl, the FBI's report on Trump's phone showed that the device was used to access multiple images that depicted the violence at the Capitol, including violent confrontations between officers and protestors, and photos of then-mortally wounded Ashli Babbitt, who was later pronounced dead at the hospital after being shot as she tried to enter the House floor.... 'The throughline of all of Mr. Trump's criminal efforts was deceit,' Smith wrote in the final report." Also linked yesterday. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post report, by Amy Wang, is here. The page includes a tweet by Karl, which includes a photo of the handwritten notes Mike Pence took while on a phone call with Donald Trump, during which Trump pressured Pence to throw the 2020 presidential election. (Or you can see the tweet here. You have to blow up the picture to read Pence's notes.)
Marie: Amudalat Ajasa of the Washington Post lists some things you can do to avoid so much exposure to toxic chemicals. I've done a few of these things, and I'm in the process of doing a couple more of them. The link is a gift link.
~~~~~~~~~~
~~~ New York City Mayoral Race. Lisa Lerer of the New York Times: “Zohran Mamdani, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez united on Sunday for a huge rally in Queens, casting Mr. Mamdani’s once unlikely candidacy for mayor of New York City as a powerful step forward in the Democratic efforts to push back on ... [Donald] Trump. With early voting underway this weekend, Mr. Sanders described a win by Mr. Mamdani, a Democrat, as Mr. Trump’s 'worst nightmare.' Ms. Ocasio-Cortez promised that there “will be a day after” the Trump administration. And Mr. Mamdani, speaking to a stadium of cheering supporters in Queens, said he would build a city that would offer a rebuke to the Trump agenda.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Argentina. Emma Bubola of the New York Times: “The party of Argentina’s budget-slashing president, Javier Milei, won a resounding victory in legislative elections on Sunday, a crucial test for his administration that ... [Donald] Trump had said would decide whether the United States extended a financial lifeline to the country. It was an emphatic win for Mr. Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who has significantly curbed Argentina’s crippling inflation, but whose tenure was recently hit by financial and political turmoil. His party received over 40 percent of the vote, showing that despite pain inflicted by his austerity measures, many Argentines are still willing to back his libertarian experiment.” The France 24 (in English) story is here.
Caribbean. Frances Robles of the New York Times: “Authorities in at least five countries rushed on Sunday to evacuate low-lying areas in preparation for record amounts of rain expected with Hurricane Melissa, which is currently a Category 4 storm moving slowly west in the Caribbean. Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the Bahamas were opening shelters and making other emergency preparations as experts warned that Hurricane Melissa could become the strongest storm to make landfall in Jamaica’s recorded history, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. The storm surge there could reach eight feet or more in coastal areas, the agency said. Southwest Haiti and portions of Jamaica were bracing for 'catastrophic' flash flooding and landslides from the intense and fast-developing hurricane, which has already killed at least four people.”
France. Aurelien Breeden of the New York Times: “The police have made arrests in the brazen jewelry heist last week at the Louvre Museum in Paris, the French authorities said on Sunday, without specifying how many people had been taken into custody. The robbery, which stunned France, was carried out by four people. Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement that the arrests were made on Saturday evening and that one man was taken into custody at the Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was trying to leave the country. It was not immediately clear whether the police had recovered any of the stolen jewelry, which is worth more than $100 million and includes gem-studded royal tiaras, necklaces and earrings dating to the 19th century.” The AP report is here. Also linked yesterday.
31 comments:
The Bessent in the dell
The Bessent in the dell
Hi-ho-the ethics go
and he can go to hell
So poor Scott Bessent feels farmers' pain. The poor man! Too bad. And him with only $500 million in the bank.
If Scott Bessent can tell the difference between a soybean and a pinto bean, I'm Ghengis Khan. Farmer, my ass. What he is, is a fucking crook:
"In case you’re wondering whether it’s a massive conflict of interest having a treasury secretary who is vested in the crop he is negotiating the sale of with China, you’d be right, according to government ethics experts."
Another cheap chiseler, just like his boss. Conflicts of interest? No conflict. The Conflict would come if these MAGA machers were NOT in a position to enrich themselves.
"As Sen. Ron Wyden, who serves as the Democratic ranking member on the Finance Committee, said to The New York Times, 'if these guys gave a whit about clearing the stink of corruption off this administration, then you wouldn’t have the Treasury secretary picking and choosing which ethics requirements to follow and which to blow off.'"
So I make a point to refrain from reading the Times' expert on blow up doll girlfriends, as my constitution can only take so much kooky cogitation emanating from bizarre winger brain waves.
But I made an exception to see what Mr. Neck Beard 'fraid of girls had to say about Fat Hitler's demolition of the a third of the White House and his planned gaudy, costume jewelry bordello and saloon for billionaires and foreign dictators.
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/opinion/trump-white-house-demolition-ballroom.html
>Here's his open:</a>
"The controversial public building is ugly and intimidating, architectural vainglory battening on presidential ego, inappropriate to its setting, unmoored from memory and tradition."
But he's not talking about Fatty's anal expulsion of a gold gewgaw nightmare. As Blow up doll Boy sez, of COURSE, he's talking about the Obama library in Chicago. Because why talk about Fatty's atrocities when you can turn the spotlight on the much despised black guy who hasn't been in office for almost 20 years.
Admittedly, in its current stage of construction, the Obama complex looks like what it is: a work in progress. The renderings of the finished project look much better, but why wait for it to be completed, and why bother concentrating your piece about the latest public architecture atrocity on Fat Hitler's odious Ozymandias abomination when you can spend time whacking Obama and progressives because they don't create buildings in your favorite style: Art Deco. Sure. Let's make everything look like it's 1930. Why not?
Here again we find the effect of Murc's Law, that only liberals have any responsibility. Blow up Doll Boy insists that progressives should make sure every building in what he suggests are Democrat controlled cities, maintain a specific and required level of beauty and appeal to conservative eyes. Republicans, of course, have no such responsibility in areas they control.
But think of what he's saying here. He's suggesting that Democrats institute a kind of State Architectural Policy that will ensure all buildings meet certain criteria. But were that to happen, he'd be among the first to scream SOCIALISM RUN AMOK!'' And this sort of thinking completely ignores the fact that there are plenty of builders out there like Trump, with taste up their ass, who do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of state or city ordinances, just like Fatty did when he demolished the Bonwit Teller building to erect his gaudy tower extolling his personal greatness.
But never mind all that. Whenever there's a Party of Traitors outrage afoot, it's time to attack Democrats.
Three words for the Times:
WASTE OF SPACE.
If you really want a right-wing perspective, surely there are other options beside this fucker. But then again, maybe not. (see, Brooks, Our Miss)
So anyway, OBAMA SUCKS!
Yeah. We heard you the first 10,000 times.
Hannah Miao for CNBC on the profitable companies that benefit from federal aid programs like SNAP and Medicare
"Walmart and McDonald’s are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
The question of how much taxpayers contribute to maintaining basic living standards for employees at some of the nation’s largest low-wage companies has long been a flashpoint in the debate over minimum wage laws and the ongoing effort to unionize these sectors.
....
Other notable companies with a large number of employees on federal aid include Amazon, Kroger, Dollar General, and other food service and retail giants.
About 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time, the report found.
“U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America,” [Bernie] Sanders said in a statement Wednesday evening. “It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald’s and other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage.”"
Natasha Sarin, for The New York Times on a new thing to keep us up at night: Finance’s Cockroach Problem
"It was early last month when observers noticed ominous cracks in the facade of one of America’s most important financial markets. Tricolor, one of the largest used-car retailers in Texas and California, abruptly declared bankruptcy. Federal investigators are reportedly looking into whether the company committed fraud by promising the same collateral to multiple lenders.
Shortly after Tricolor cratered, something similar happened to First Brands, a company primarily known for making car parts. Its investors discovered roughly $2 billion in loans not on its balance sheet.
....
Giving voice to a widespread sense that the losses had only just begun to pile up, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, warned, “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”
It was a remarkable glimpse of the way financial institutions of vastly different statures have become interconnected — tangled up in complex webs of indebtedness and exposure that can multiply the damage when something goes wrong."
I've been noticing the revival of a comment made by the American philosopher Richard Rorty back in the late 90's in his book "Achieving Our Country" (the line comes from James Baldwin).
I've been fascinated by Rorty for years, since I first read his breakout book in 1979, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", with which Rorty turned the philosophy world upside down almost overnight. Pretty much everything I had been reading up until then, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, the Scholastics, the Analytics, were subjected to an overriding question: does any of this help me in the real world? That's being a tad overly simplistic, but it explains why Rorty became an instant sensation for some and a pain in the butt to others.
Anyway, being 25 at the time and not yet immersed in a single school of thought (wandering about with lots of questions; still in that general state), I found his work cathartic. But what kept me coming back to later works was his insistence on the importance of social justice. Just at a time when the pricks, the preeners, and the righteous pretenders on the right and much of the MSM were making "liberal" a dirty word, Rorty was unrepentant. His book "Philosophy and Social Hope" is a mainstay on my nightstand.
As he always has, Rorty courts controversy among the chattering classes who either pooh-pooh his ideas or find him either alarming or pretentious. But there's no getting around the prescience of this short bit from the aforementioned book "Achieving our Country". Check it out.
"Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words [slur for an African-American that begins with “n”] and [slur for a Jewish person that begins with “k”] will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."
Sound familiar? A lot of effort has been spent trying to wrestle Rorty's ideas into submission saying there's no way he could have predicted Donald Trump. But he wasn't trying to do that. He was suggesting that conditions were ripe in the late 90's for just this sort of outcome. And he was right on every count, try as they might to sniff that he didn't know what he was talking about. This bit from his book was first making the rounds when Fat Hitler was first elected. The prediction, if you want to call it that, has become even more clear today, almost a year into the Fat Hitler Reich.
Wendy,
The "Cockroach problem" illuminated in the article you link, and its indication that even far-flung businesses are interconnected in dangerous ways, is reminiscent of the AWS internet outage last week. Without many Americans noticing it, some of our most vital social elements are tied together like climbers on a single rope. The rope breaks, everyone falls. Some die, some survive, but everyone gets it, hard.
Fat Hitler's temper tantrum tariffs are just one example. It's a bit like Chaos theory, which states that what seem like small changes in random systems, can lead to a cascade or wave of larger and larger changes that ultimately have enormous consequences. Fatty sez 50% tariff on you! and soon millions of Americans pay more for many items, some lose their jobs, their homes, their entire lives change because an ignorant fool has no idea how to handle problems and flippantly makes a stuid decision that affects millions around the planet.
Fatty has a “framework of a deal” with China. Is that like a “concept of a plan”?
Trump is notoriously uninterested in details, preferring splashy, hagiographic headlines to small print safeguards to any “deal”.
Unfortunately for us, the Chinese are not flibbertgibbets or MAGA fools. They pay close attention to details which is a clear sign that Fatty could be easily had on any kind of deal, framework or not.
Akhilleus,
Confess I dipped into the Douthat rabbit hole, too, just not all the way down before I climbed back out and sent this comment:
So, you need a ballroom, Ross? How about a Rolex or six? Or a fleet of Rolls Royces? A bushel of diamonds?
No one needs these things. Pathetic people may want them, but they don't need them.
People do need food and medicine and a place to sleep.
What's the matter with you?
As far as I know, the comment is still pending.
Sarah Taber discusses farm bankruptcies. She also points out the much brought up suicide rate of farmers is in line with the rest of their age demographic. It's a societal problem, not a farm specific problem.
Digby discusses the latest unified theory on what is happening in our societal breakdown, "Everyone Is 12 Now".
He's The biggest
Faster is better, right?
"Earlier this month, Tesla rolled out a new firmware update that added a pair of new driving modes for the controversial full self-driving (FSD) feature. One, called “Sloth,” relaxes acceleration and stays in its lane. The other, called “Mad Max,” does the opposite: It speeds and swerves through traffic to get you to your destination faster.
And after multiple reports of FSD Teslas doing just that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to know more.
These days, the company is evidently feeling less constrained; despite having just lost a federal wrongful death lawsuit that will cost it hundreds of millions of dollars, it described the new mode as being able to drive “through traffic at an incredible pace, all while still being super smooth. It drives your car like a sports car. If you are running late, this is the mode for you.”"
They called it Mad Max mode because they know what a dangerous, stupid idea this is. But because "genius" Elon told them to put it in they did. The number of accidents, some inevitably fatal, this is going to cause is trivial to the drugged up moron running the place and the sycophants and people afraid of losing their jobs to the erratic dumbass. How many red lights will be run and how many road rage incidents will be incited by this stupid and reckless programming? And our government is not currently in the job of protecting us from these kind of reckless decisions.
No free speech and no freedom of the press. Got a twofer.
"British journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.
A statement from Cair said it was “a blatant affront to free speech” to detain Hamdi for criticizing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza while he engaged on a speaking tour in the US. A Trump administration official added in a separate statement that Hamdi is facing deportation.
McLaughlin’s post about Hamdi’s detention was shared by Trump administration ally Laura Loomer, who took credit for his being taken into custody."
"Bird Flu Hikes Turkey Costs 40% Ahead Of Thanksgiving
The nation’s turkey flock has shrunk to its smallest size in 40 years, and a fall rebound in avian flu cases is adding fresh strain ahead of Thanksgiving.
Wholesale turkey prices are now about 40% higher than last year, driven by disease losses and tighter production, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Nearly 514,000 turkeys have been impacted by fresh bird flu outbreaks this month alone, mostly in Minnesota, per USDA data."
MAGA! I'm sure Scott Bessent feels our pain.
If I'm a member of the opposition party (or parties) in Argentina who got swamped by Fat Hitler's pal Milei, I would be calling my lawyer to sue for foreign election interference. Fatty dangling billions in front of voters with a promise to bail them out as long as they vote for his guy is clear interference, even worse than the kind of help Vladimir Putin handed Trump (in both elections).
Marie: I don't get the Washington Post pieces-- can you post a list of the ways we can avoid toxic chemicals? No need to elaborate, but I am curious as to what they are...thanx...
You people who just can't resist Douthat are looking to be burned! I am usually able to avoid him, Brooks, Marc somebody, Megan McCardell, Zito, etc.-- our paper is constantly taken to task by idiot MAGA-roids who are so upset if ONE liberal column is in the paper that week-- I usually just figure I can get to Dear Abby sooner if I ignore the people who cause frothing of the mouth. I guess that makes me uninformed, but after so many years of this (constant BS starting at 9/11...)I will take the bad hopefully very little and enjoy the lesser good. A guy whose letters have appeared regularly just died at 91-- he was a professor, an author, a great community person, and I never knew personally anything about him-- I will miss his opinions. There are too many of us on antidepressants to stop the stomach roiling and screaming now. Mine are both personal and political, and no one needs that much angst. (Did I mention George Will and Marc Theissan?) I now look at the name at the bottom of the letter to the editor and skip it if I am not feeling sturdy enough to read it and forget it. And I know whose columns would contain nothing valuable and everything toxic and skip those also. I do thank those who are sacrificing and telling us when there is something we should know-- AK, Ken, Marie, RAS and all you others. I'm off to the recycling center now with a box of newspapers, a bin of coated cereal and other boxes, and junk mail. The pickup each week takes cans, bottles, plastic if it has a neck, some cardboard and that's about it-- luckily, we have an additional place. Oh, and Dart container for styrofoam! Sadly, no one takes takeout and other containers/clanshells. Hello trash...
clamshells...
Numero none-O
I've been bookmarking a number of sites with articles on the destruction of data by the regime, a practice well known to and seriously practiced by fascist and authoritarian leaders. No numbers, no accountability. There's also another less obvious casualty in such eradication efforts, history itself. A recent very fun read for me has been a book on what life was like in England in the year 1000. Time and again, the writers stress how lucky they were to have come across scant records which provided hard contemporary data on farming techniques, taxes, illness, mortality, foodstuffs, military service, ecclesiastical influences, governance, and even forms of recreation, the stuff of life and death. Without records, historians have nought but their own imagination and the occasional third and fourth hand accounts from which to base any serious accounting. Science has often provided the data historians use to get a better picture of prehistoric life, what people ate, the tools they used, where they lived, etc.
Data is a bridge to truth. Which is why Trump and his apparatchiks have taken a wrecking ball to that bridge. Luckily (for me) a writer in the Nation has collected the myriad disparate ways the Fat Fascist and his fantasy goo-goo numbskulls like RFKJ are working to destroy the collection of data that will, in both the short and long runs, help to inoculate them from the consequences of dangerous and even fatal policy decisions (who says vaccinations don't work?).
"The Trump administration... is erasing the means by which the consequences of its increasingly eugenicist health policies can be seen, counted, and judged. The logic is straightforward, and it is evident not only in the Trump administration’s approach to health but also to essential economic, environmental, immigration, and crime statistics: If you destroy the systems that measure harm and appoint corrupt functionaries to invent your desired figures, you destroy the evidence of your responsibility. If you make truth unknowable, accountability becomes impossible.
Trump built his career on fraud: cooking the books, inflating assets, falsifying ledgers. Now he governs the same way. But still, many are responding to Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s myriad misleading health claims by emphasizing the importance of debate. This plays straight into Trump’s hands, because Trump and his cronies aren’t, despite surface appearances, actually trying to claim authority over truth; they’re trying to make belief in truth itself untenable. In this context, debate is a ruse. It’s absurdist theater masquerading as bureaucratic seriousness, with transparently fabricated (and meaningless) numbers like the “650 percent discounts” on some medications that Trump claims to have delivered."
The first Hitler was a pro at data destruction. As early as 1942, the Nazis began erasing as much of the records of death camp murders as possible. Stalin, when the data of his first five year plan indicated a total disaster, arrested and murdered the fact checkers and statisticians, and like Trump, appointed flunkies who made up numbers he was more comfortable with. We don't even need to go that far back in history to uncover evidence of cooking the books:
"When Israel began carrying out acts of acute genocide in Gaza in late 2023, among its first strategic targets marked for destruction were—alongside its hospitals—the buildings housing Gaza’s public records and archives, rendering verification of mortality and property claims all but impossible." One reason the death toll in Gaza is so frustratingly weird. After two years of incessant night and day attacks, bombs, bullets, missiles, forced starvation, refusal to supply medicine and even water, the official count, although staggering (65,000) seems ridiculously small. Less Bibi-friendly counts put the total at almost ten times that amount, but we'll never know.
Continued...
Part the second...
RAS, in an earlier comment about Elon Musk's latest drug fueled insanity wondered "How many red lights will be run and how many road rage incidents will be incited by this stupid and reckless programming? And our government is not currently in the job of protecting us from these kind of reckless decisions."
How many? The answer, who knows? Cuz they ain't counting. See how great this is for all of these assholes? Discounting data, eradicating factual information is existential for authoritarians and hacks alike.
"Trump and RFK Jr. are not just weakening essential government systems and undercutting public health; they are about dismantling the conditions of reality itself. Just as public health depends on measurement, democracy depends on shared fact and collective acts of meaning-making. Without those, there is no common world to deliberate from within nor any new world to be made together. There is instead only chaos, overwhelm, and violence in which crude power is the only currency left that matters."
James Thurber used to say "You could look it up". Trump wants to make sure you can't.
Meant to post this a few days ago...
Bari Weiss, the so-called "independent" person CBS has installed to run its news organization so as not to incur further law suits from the Orange Monster for reporting true things about his authoritarian takeover of the nation, has begun her Foxification of CBS:
"CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is eyeing Fox News anchor Bret Baier – among others – to potentially helm the CBS Evening News, according to sources inside the network.
Weiss, who took charge shortly after media mogul David Ellison’s acquisition of CBS, has been working to reconfigure day-to-day operations at the network, reportedly ordering staff to submit detailed memos outlining their roles ahead of expected layoffs and personally intervened in the network’s booking process, calling guests and weighing in on coverage priorities – which include a spot for her sister, Free Press co-founder Suzy Weiss."
Last week, Weiss stunned 60 Minutes staffers when she called them on being biased, a clear indication that a severe push to the right will be imminent.
The fact is, there is no "liberal media". There IS however, a very real hard-core right-wing media which has become increasingly supportive of fascism and authoritarian moves by the Dear Leader.
I guess we'll be seeing Project Veritas hack and liar James O'Keefe doing "investigative" reporting for 60 Minutes any day now, him or someone very like him. Also...some good old fashioned nepotism too, so there's that.
I'm expecting to see a raft of resignations from serious journalists at CBS. Can't imagine the number of RPM's going on in Ed Murrow's casket right now.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/bari-weiss-eyes-fox-news-star-bret-baier-to-anchor-cbs-evening-news-report/
Fatty sez he had an MRI, then lied, "I gave you all the information", which he did not. An MRI is used to check the progress of dementia and any damage caused by strokes.
Then he sez "I'd love another term" like he's asking for a fifth helping of ice cream or another Big Mac.
Maybe the docs are looking for another brain worm, à la Polio Bob. If they found any brain matter at all, there must have been surprise, bordering on shock, in the imaging lab.
Okay, I'm officially starting a new chant, something I hope filters up to whomever decides to run as a Democrat in 2028:
"Tear it down!"
By it, I mean Fatty's cheesy, sleazy, gaudy bordello and pool hall (if and when it ever gets built). Let's just tear that thing down. Restore the Rose Garden, toss Fatty's Marred a Lardo umbrellas out in the trash, put Biden's portrait back up and keep Fatty's mugshot as the official portrait of that fucking crook and traitor.
Akhilleus,
The resignations have started. "John Dickerson, co-anchor of CBS Evening News who has been with the network since 2009, said that he is exiting at the end of this year."
Jeanne,
Here is an archived version of the Wash Post chemicals article.
@Jeanne: No. I made the article one of my last gift links because I thought some people could really use it.. Just click on the link and you will be able to read the article.
Thugs
"A running team from Chicago posted that Trump’s federal agents dragged a runner (67 years old) from his car, broke his ribs, and caused internal bleeding"
Re: That snake in the shit hole scheme of having the Dear Leader run as a VP. Nope. Never fly. As Poppy Bush used to say, or maybe it was Dana Carvey playing him on SNL, "Not gonna do it".
Even if this were a lead pipe cinch way to sneak that fat bastard back into the White House through some hippity-hop at the barber shop bullshit after the election, he would never agree to it. A political ticket with his name second? And playing second fiddle to the Couch Abuser or Cancun Ted or Little Marco? Sheeeeeeeeitt...he'd rather release the Epstein Files on the back of his tax returns for the last 20 years, while appearing in public without his makeup and his hair extensions than for voters to see "VANCE-trump" signs.
Likewise that idea of having him named Squeaker. Nope. He looks at Speaker of the House as a servant position, someone to get his slippers, light his pipe, then get on all fours so he can put his feet up while watching Fox (or by then, CBS, which will be Alt Fox).
Nah. He'll go about it the way he usually does things. Criminally and unconstitutionally, with help from Little Johnny and the traitors on the Supine Clot.
"A running team from Chicago posted that Trump’s federal agents dragged a runner (67 years old) from his car, broke his ribs, and caused internal bleeding"
Who does stuff like this? Was the guy robbing a gas station? Mugging an old lady? Jaywalking? Seriously. What is the rationale for this sort of thuggish, bullying, outright illegal behavior?
I knew this kid where I grew up who was a right asshole. If there was a fair fight between two kids on a basketball court or at some other venue, he'd be the one who would jump in and sucker punch one of the kids from the back. But he was also a coward. He'd be the first to run if there was any real danger to himself. We all knew to watch our backs when he was around. He was a nasty racist as well, even worse than the standard sort of stuff at the time. I lost track of him after high school but when I heard a few years later that he had become a prison guard, I wasn't a bit surprised. That was the perfect job for this sadistic piece of shit asshole. He got to beat on people who were chained up and couldn't fight back. We heard that he had been suspended several times for beating prisoners while they were handcuffed.
This is the sort of asshole who would run to join ICE. Unfettered, unaccountable, supreme power to do whatever you want to anyone you deem a good target. I'm gonna say this 67 year old guy didn't look like Dwayne Johnson (the Rock) or anyone who could easily kick their fat asses. But if you have the president backing you up, another cowardly thug, and egging you on to beat on women and children and senior citiizens, why not let your worst instincts take charge?
Oh yeah, he'd also have raced to join up as a guard at a Nazi death camp. So would most of these pricks.
Status Quo Ante?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/us/politics/trump-china-trade-deal-talks.html
The headline, of course, ignores all the headlines the Pretender garnered while pretending repeatedly to declare economic war on China (and American consumers)...
How nice it would be if the media ignored everything but done tariff deals. Another vain hope.
Thanks, RAS and Marie. All those are common sense types of suggestions. I think I can at least suggest these changes in the next year or so, as we may be selling the house and downsizing-- husband is diagnosed with dementia, so we will be moving to a retirement community, a process we are just beginning to access. I can see ditching a lot of stuff. The only thing is the mental picture of landfills stuffed with so much stuff...already the culture is such that no younger people are interested in all the "nesting materials" my generation thought important. I already know that a lot of my most precious belongings will have no home. Life goes on changing, even as we resist...
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