Viral Lies 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Viral Musings:  In 2000, the US declared that it had eliminated measles but that was before the anti-vaccine movement succeeded in stoking fears about vaccines, falsely linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to autism and cancer so now we have measles again.  Yesterday, an unvaccinated child in Texas died from measles, but according to Health Secretary RFK Jr, the author, or more likely the front man, for the anti-vaccine “The Measles Book” published by the misleadingly named Children’s Health Defense organization, that’s not a problem, it’s just something that happens. RFK was so blasé about the death that he actually raised the death toll to two even though so far, “only” one child has died. During yesterday’s televised and somewhat demented Trump cabinet meeting hosted by guest attendee Elon Musk, RFK went on to say that the twenty or more children hospitalized in Texas are just there to be quarantined. That’s another lie, measles patients aren’t quarantined in hospitals, the patients are hospitalized because they are suffering from severe respiratory issues like pneumonia. It’s also a lie to say that measles outbreaks and related deaths are just inevitable facts of life. It’s been at least a decade since the last measles death in the US. The outbreaks, severe illnesses and death are happening now because in response to anti-vaxx lies, fewer children are getting vaccinated and since measles is so contagious, vaccination rates above 95% are needed to achieve the herd immunity that protects those who are too immune compromised or too young to get vaccinated.  Unfortunately, in lots of communities around the US vaccination levels have fallen below the 95% threshold. Keeping with the lying theme, Elon Musk also told more than a few of his own. He admitted that he and his DOGE 🐀s had made a few mistakes here and there cutting off funding for essential and lifesaving programs, like Ebola prevention but he said not to worry because he’s reinstituted that funding.  That’s another lie, like the funding spigot for the anti-AIDs PEPFAR program, the money designated to detect and fight Ebola has not been switched back on and even if it is turned on, the staff that previously worked on those projects have mostly been fired or put on unpaid leave.  For those America first types who think that helping Africa contain Ebola isn’t a US responsibility, think again because even if you don’t care about Africans it takes only one Ebola infected person on a plane landing in the US to cause an outbreak here.  On the subject of money, the cost of administering an MMR vaccine is miniscule, far cheaper than the cost of treating a child for pneumonia in a hospital, not that the Republicans in Congress who’ve just voted to make cuts in Medicaid funding appreciate that avoiding hospitalizations through preventive care is an effective way of controlling health care costs because hospitals are legally mandated to treat sick kids regardless of the expense or their insurance status, at least for now.

Flu For All?  In other virus news, bird flu is still gaining ground but yesterday Bloomberg reported that the administration, presumably RFK and his team of anti-vaxxers, are “reevaluating” a $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna because why would we want a vaccine for bird flu anyway, especially, one of those “evil” mRNA vaccines?  Also, the FDA has cancelled a scheduled meeting to choose the flu strains to be included in next year’s flu shot because with more people dying this year from flu than from COVID, maybe as many as 65,000 according to the high range of a CDC estimate, why would we want to make sure that the country is protected from next year’s flu?  Just a reminder that flu disproportionately impacts the very young and the elderly, two groups who rely on Medicaid for some or all of the health care coverage, a reason that nursing homes push for all their patients and staff to be vaccinated. So maybe let’s kill the old and the young is part of the MAGA philosophy.  It certainly feels as though it is. By the way, if you haven’t gotten your flu shot yet this year, it’s not too late.  While it might not prevent you from getting the flu, the shot will make it less likely that you’ll end up in the hospital or worse.        

And More:  The White House warns that mass firings are on their way which is scary because it feels like they are already here. Eric Prince, the founder of the Blackwater private military company and brother of Trump’s last Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who you may remember from Trump 1.0 has proposed to Trump that he be hired to help with mass deportations. His plan includes using military processing camps, a fleet of 100 private planes and a 10,000 strong private police force to forcibly remove 12 million immigrants by the November 2026 midterms. Maybe he can hire some of those pardoned January 6 thugs including the one who just got off again because the grenades and other weaponry found in his home were discovered when he was being prosecuted for breaking into the Capitol building and his pardon covers all that.  Or maybe one of Elon Musk’s recently deputized armed security guards would like a side job. Lastly, last night Chief John Roberts paused an appeals court-imposed midnight deadline that would have required the administration to release $2 billion in frozen foreign aid.  Roberts’ order does not resolve the underlying questions raised by the case but gives SCOTUS a few days to review written arguments.

Fog:  The bodies of four more Israeli hostages, Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi and Shlomo Mantzur, all of whom were taken on October 7, were returned to Israel yesterday.  Their return marks the end of phase one of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. According to the AP, a total of 59 hostages are still in Hamas custody, sadly, Israel believes that only 27 of the remaining hostages are still alive.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

Rogue State 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Doge Days:  Yesterday, the White House revealed that Amy Gleason, a Tennessee based health care “expert” from the first Trump administrator who is currently on vacation in Mexico, rather than billionaire Elon Musk who sleeps in the Old Executive Office building adjacent to the White House when not residing at Mar a Lago and spends his days shadowing Trump is the head of DOGE. That’s bull💩 but the White House assertion about Gleason’s role is just another example of how Trump, Musk, and their mutts and minions, especially Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, lie and get away with it, or at least get away with it with the too large crowd that buys everything Trump says.  Yesterday Musk and his mutts and maybe Gleason but probably not because she’s probably downing margaritas quietly admitted that much of the savings that they earlier bragged about achieving was phony.  Specifically: the $8 billion Immigration and Customs enforcement contract they claimed to have canceled, it was worth only $8 million; three $655 million cuts at US AID, a duplication error, there was only one $655 million almost finished contract and the actual savings by DOGE is closer to $18 million; a $232 million technology contract cut at the Social Security Administration, they only cut a tiny piece of the contract so the actual savings just $560,000; and that $1.9 billion cut at the Treasury Department, it was from a contract that was canceled by the Biden administration. While the savings cuts are minor in the context of the total US budget, the disruptions that Musk and his mutts have created are real and significant especially for the many who’ve lost their jobs or have seen them put in limbo pending the outcomes of the legal cases wending their way through the courts.  Then there’s that “what did you do last week” email.  Over the past few days, federal employees have been told to respond to the email or else, to just ignore it, to respond if they want to, and my favorite, advice from nepo RFK’s Health and Humans Services, that if they respond they should be careful about what they include because their emails may be read by “malign foreign actors.” Many stunned federal employees have responded as have thousands from the general public who have flooded the DOGE mailbox with spam.  So much for government efficiency.

State of Play:  Yesterday, US District Judge Amir Ali granted a motion to enforce his previously issued temporary restraining order, requiring the State Department and USAID, to restore foreign-assistance funds for contracts and other awards.  That’s good news except that almost all USAID workers have been fired and it’s not clear whether anyone in Trump-land cares about court orders anymore and whether anyone at the top will care if some lower-level minions are hauled off to jail in contempt.  As former US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in the NY Times, we now have a rogue president. And while Musk’s continues to serve as a deflector shield, last night with no Democratic support and only one Republican, Thomas Massie, in opposition, the Republican led Congress voted 217 to 215 for a budget resolution that calls for $880 billion of budget cuts. House budget resolutions are just starting points, they are instructions to House committees, but those cuts can’t and won’t be achieved by Musk cutting phantom contracts, firing lots of federal employees, and disrupting government services, they can only be achieved by cutting the social safety net, and the net targeted is Medicaid. The reason those cuts are “needed” is so that Trump can renew and add to the expiring tax cuts that were put in place during his first administration.  Cutting $880 billion will leave millions of poor Americans without health care, including many of the working poor, who can’t afford to buy insurance without Medicaid funded subsidies.  It’s not just the poor who will be impacted, more than 60% of the elderly rely on Medicaid to pay for their nursing home care. Cutting Medicaid will also irreparably harm community health care providers including hospitals and clinics, but billionaires need more yachts, and Musk wants more government contracts so there’s that.  And to help push their message while drowning out all others, the Trump White House announced yesterday that it is stripping the responsibility for determining which press organizations get to closely cover Trump away from the White House Correspondents Association because that’s what Viktor Orban would do.

Justice?  We also have a rogue Justice Department, particularly in Washington DC where, because the capitol is not part of any state, the US Attorney is responsible for both federal and local law.  Washington DC’s interim soon to be permanent US Attorney is a “save the steal” lawyer named Edward Martin.  Martin who posted on social media that US Attorneys are Trumps’ (sic) lawyers and as such are “proud to fight to protect his leadership” as opposed to representing all of us, what’s supposed to be their real job, has announced his intention to go after Trump’s opponents, including Democratic members of Congress, and media outlets like the Associated Press (the AP). Another indication of his MAGA affinity, in his capacity as DC’s top attorney, Martin refused to sign off on an arrest warrant against Republican Congressman Cory Mills of Florida who last week was accused of physically assaulting his 27-year-old girlfriend. Mills is married, the abused girlfriend had fresh bruises on her arm and shared a tape of a phone call with the responding police in which he’d told her to lie about the situation but nothing to see because Mills is all in on MAGA, abusing women is apparently a good thing, and anyway Mills supports Trump changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America unlike those obviously criminal AP reporters.  

Fog:  Three years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine but according to the US that’s not Russia’s fault because Putin couldn’t help himself.  On Monday, the US opposed a UN resolution backed by Ukraine and major European countries that called for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, voting instead with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Sudan and 13 other countries.  Sadly, Israel which should know better, was one of those 13 other countries. While it’s true that given its dependence on US support, Israel votes in lockstep with the US at the UN, payback for the US vetoing most of the UN’s anti-Israel votes, this vote was particularly awful to see but then again Bibi Netanyahu is the Eric Adams of world leaders, he needs US aid and also needs Trump’s support to continue on as Prime Minister because like Adams he’s got lots of legal problems. As to New York Mayor Adam’s legal problems, they’ve gone nowhere. On Monday, Judge Dale Ho delayed issuing a ruling on the Justice Department’s request to drop the corruption case against him, instead Ho took the unusual step of appointing an outside lawyer to present independent arguments on the motion.  His appointee is Paul Clement, a widely respected conservative who served as solicitor general during George W Bush’s administration.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

Marching to Autocracy 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

You’re Fired:  The downward spiral continues.  Over the weekend, Trump fired General Charles Q Brown, Jr,  the well respected and impressively credentialed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had years remaining on his “term” of service, replacing him with a little known retired lower ranked officer Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan "Razin" Caine whose most notable credential is that he’s been known to wear a MAGA hat while telling Trump that he’s awesome.   Also, he’s white, while General Brown is Black. At the same time, Trump, through Defense Secretary Hegseth, fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti the Navy’s top officer whose obvious failing is that she’s a she, the Air Force vice chief of staff James Slife, and the judge advocates general (JAGs) of three service branches. Replacing smart, experienced, and competent military generals and admirals while firing JAGs is what a leader does when he doesn’t want to hear anything that doesn’t affirm his views or rubber stamp his orders, no matter how crazy, but does want to do illegal things without pushback. Think of it as another chapter in Trump’s “How to become an Autocrat” handbook.  Also, over the weekend, after Trump said that he wanted his Rasputin Elon Musk to act more forcefully, Musk sent an email to all federal employees informing them that they had until Monday to send an email to their managers with five bullet points describing what they had done last week.  On X, Musk then said that anyone who failed to respond would be fired. Presumably a large number of those responding will also be dismissed, with their “inadequate” responses used as justification. The “what did you do last week”  email/threats were even sent to federal judges, a group that can’t be fired by Musk edict. Though many of Trump’s senior appointees like nepo RFK and the acting US attorney for DC told their employees to comply with Musk’s missive or else, some others like the FBI’s Kash Patel, DNI Tulsi Gabbard and leaders at State were so surprised by the email edict that they told their employees to “pause” their responses for now. The judges who’d received the emails, were directed to ignore them altogether. The bottom line is that just about every Federal employee, including many of those responsible for ensuring national security, the safety of the skies, the reliability of the federal payment system, the operation of national parks, the safety of our water, tax payments and refunds, virus detection and so on are now spending more time panicking about their continued employment and how they are going to pay their rent than doing their jobs. Rich guy Musk is gleeful and Trump is playing golf. And since there is always one more thing, late yesterday after FBI Director Patel (just typing that is painful) had assured his FBI agents that he would promote someone from within to serve as his Deputy Director because even he appreciates that he needs a competent second in command, Trump announced that he was appointing Dan Bongino who has never been employed at the FBI to serve as its Deputy FBI.  That’s a job that typically goes to a long time FBI Agent with extensive management experience rather than a conspiracy and hate spewing Trump fawning podcaster but then again, to state the obvious, typical and normal exited the stage on January 20. Also, it’s like not a coincidence that the federal employees responsible for regulating Musk’s cars, space company, and brain implants are among those being fired.  As to stages, a whole bunch of performers due to appear at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have either cancelled or been cancelled for being gay and/or woke but not to worry because new head Ric Grennell promises that a celebration of the birth of Christ is coming.

Flip Flops:  The bad news is that Trump and his Rasputin continue to act erratically, the somewhat good news is that some of their pronouncements are being walked back at least for now and, for what they’re worth, polls are starting to show that a lot of us, not just Democrats, aren’t happy with Trump and surrogate Musk’s actions. The cuts to the health program for 9/11 first responders and survivors have been walked back, restoring research grants and the jobs of workers who’d been laid off, not because Trump or Musk care about the suffering of the first responders but because of bipartisan pushback including from some New York and Pennsylvania Republicans in swing districts.  Trump’s plans for the Post Office, they appear to be up in the air too.  Now instead of saying that he’s taking it over all together, he’s “looking into” moving it to the Department of Commerce.  He’s going to have to “look hard” because the Post office which was established by the Constitution, is also quite popular.  If anything people want their mail to come faster, especially the large number of people throughout the country who rely on the USPS to deliver their life sustaining prescriptions.  As to the Consitution, that’s the same document that protects birth right citizenship, another one of Trump’s edicts that at least so far has been getting judicial pushback. Also, on Friday, the Supreme Court declined to let Trump immediately fire Hampton Dellinger the head of the government ethics watchdog agency while a challenge moves forward through the courts.  That’s not to say that they won’t ultimately say it’s okay, they’re just not expediting the process.  Unfortunately some of the flip flops have been in the wrong direction so remember how nepo RFK convinced Louisiana Senator/Medical Doctor Bill Cassidy to vote for his confirmation by promising that he’d leave childhood vaccine schedules alone, well he was lying.  Similarly, in addition to cancelling a critical vaccine conference during a particularly severe flu season RFK’s CDC has cancelled its flu shot campaign. Also, worth mentioining that the measles outbreak in Texas keeps getting worse, so far more than 100 cases have been reported and since many cases go unreported the actual number of sick is much higher. Though, the anti-immigrant crowd keeps blaming the outbreak on “diseased” migrants, it turns out that most of the cases are among US citizens who opted against vaccinating their children.  According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases about 1 in five who get measles end up hospitalized, a bit of a problem given that Republicans are very keen to cut health care funding.  Funny how dissing vaccines leads to higher health expenditures, kind of like the way that cutting back on maternity health care while outlawing abortions leads to more sick moms and babies who also need more health care.      

Fog and Politics:  Germany held its elections yesterday. The Conservatives won the most votes; party leader Frederich Merz is expected to become the next Chancellor once he puts together his coalition.  Though the far right AfD party came in second and did better than it has in the past, it turns out that Trump, Musk and Vance’s efforts to help them do even better did not pay off as they performed about the same as polls indicated they would weeks ago before the disruptive US trio weighed in on their behalf. It’s hard to tell what’s going on with Ukraine or its minerals. Trump and Musk are on the pro-Putin page, some in Trump’s administration not so much.  The US and Ukraine are either on the verge of agreeing on a mineral deal or not with Musk threatening to turn off Starlink satellite coverage if Ukraine doesn’t sign on.  In any case, those minerals are deep in the ground and will be costly to mine, so the fruits (ores?) of any deal will take years probably decades and many administrations to show up in any batteries so the deal and any payments that Trump is seeking to extort may be more about smoke, mirrors and face saving than anything else.  Of course, echoing Putin Trump continues to insist that Ukraine is responsible for the war, probably in the hopes that if he repeats that lie often enough more and more of the gullible will believe him and why not, that’s a strategy that has worked for him before.  On the subject of lies, the body that Hamas tried to pass of as Israeli Shiri Bibis, was not Shiri. Very late Friday, Hamas finally delivered her body to Israeli authorities. Forensic experts have determined that the Bibas family including the family’s two young children, were tortured and killed by Hamas rather than by Israeli rockets. On Saturday, Hamas released six more hostages, including the two who’ve been held for ten years.  The four who were abducted on October 7 and Avera Mengitsu, who had been held for ten years, were subjected to another despicable orchestrated ceremony before being turned over. All were frail and some report having been force fed in the run up to their release so that they appeared less so.  Notably, Israeli Bedouin Hisham Al-Sayed was released separately and with no fanfare. Hamas claimed they did that to respect his family, but more likely they didn’t want anyone to see how much his mental state had deteriorated while in custody. His family reports that his eyes are vacant and he can’t speak.   After all six were returned to Israeli territory,  Hamas released a video showing that two additional Israeli hostages, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who had been captured on October 7 had been brought to the ceremony to watch their fellow countrymen’s release, further torturing them and their families. #WTF  Their releases haven’t been scheduled and won’t be, if they ever are, until the terms of a future ceasefire phase are worked out.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow          

  

 
Mountains of💩  😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

💩Tsunami:  On Wednesday Trump announced that “his” Department of Transportation was cancelling NYC’s congestion pricing program.  The program, approved under President Biden, is controversial but much to the surprise of many it’s actually working; the roads are less congested, commuting times are down, more people are using mass transit, and the air is cleaner. For now, despite Trump’s announcement, congestion pricing isn’t going anywhere except to court where Trump and NY’s Governor Hochul will duke out its survival. The congestion pricing brouhaha was the least of it, what was more outrageous was that in his social media post trumpeting his faux for now congestion cancellation, Trump referred to himself as a king, establishing his “royal” status by including a mock-up of a Time magazine cover with him wearing a crown.  Also on Wednesday, the wannabe king responded to Ukraine President Zelenskyy’s accurate but probably impolitic jibe that Trump has been caught in a “web of disinformation,” a reference to Trump’s belief in and use of his idol Putin’s talking points, by calling Zelensky a dictator. Trump, the self-appointed king, who adores a Russian dictator, envies China’s ironfisted leader, models his policies on a Hungarian autocrat and counts the despotic leader of North Korea as one of his besties justified calling the duly elected President of Ukraine a dictator by pointing out that Zelenskyy, in the midst of a brutal war and like Churchill before him hasn’t held a new election. Maybe that’s because he’s been busy fighting the war started by Russian invaders? To add to the absurdity, Trump who inherited his wealth and was saved from financial ruin first by his rich dad and then by a distorted reality TV show, further slammed Zelenskyy for having been just a modestly successful comedian.

More💩:  We are living through truly 💩ty times and things aren’t getting any better because here on the home front, Trump is still firing people willy nilly, eviscerating FEMA, stripping funding from national parks, cancer, and Alzheimer’s research, and forcing out thousands of IRS employees during tax season. His Homeland security people have sent shackled Chinese and Iranian migrants of all ages to Panama where they’re locked in hotels, flown others on expensive military flights to Guantanamo only, upon releasing that using Guantanamo is illegal, shipping ship them on to Honduras, and so freaked out one 11-year old American born Texan that she committed suicide after being taunted by red pilled schoolmates that her parents would be deported next.  His health secretary, the former heroin addict with a brain worm problem, has “postponed” an upcoming CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting and is now investigating the usage of commonly prescribed and likely needed now more than ever anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medicine while also “looking into” vaccine schedules, something he promised during his confirmation hearings that he would not do. His Department of Justice is considering opening an investigation into President Biden’s “crimes,” and has sent letters to Democratic members of Congress warning that they might be brought up on charges for saying not nice things about presidential advisor Elon Musk who yesterday appeared under the influence of recreational drugs while hiding his pupils behind dark glasses and cosplaying with an electric saw at CPAC, the organization led by Matt Schlapp who was once again accused of grabbing another man’s crotch after having a few too many drinks at a Washington DC area bar. Oh, and late yesterday, while the rest of us were still shaking from the confirmation of Konspiracy Kash Patel as FBI Director, wannabee king Trump announced that he plans to dissolve the leadership of the US Postal Service, absorbing the “independent” mail agency into his administration.  How much do you want to bet that his newly configured postal agency will refuse to accept mail-in ballots or deliver mifepristone, because both bans would fulfil the stated objectives of his Project 2025 overlords and who needs elections anyway, especially ones which make it easy for people to vote.

People and Politics:  Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against confirming Konspiracy Kash but Mitch McConnell did not despite having no primary to worry about since earlier in the day he announced, as expected, that he will not be running for reelection. Because he’s termed out Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won’t be running again for governor but he was planning to meet with Trump to ask him to endorse his wife Casey but that meeting has probably been scotched because last night Trump endorsed Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, one of those who attended Trump’s African American Month festivities last night, you know the type of gathering that Trump has told all his cabinet secretaries to ban in their departments.  The guest list included such notables as Herschel Walker and Tiger Woods. No confirmed reports of Eric Adams being in attendance.  He’s still Mayor of NYC but going forward he won’t be making decisions on his own.  Instead of booting him, NY Governor Hochul says that she’s establishing an oversight board to keep him in check.  Although many would have preferred that she just fire him, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out on Wednesday night the process for ridding New Yorkers of a troublesome mayor isn’t straightforward and would likely end up being litigated so oversight and a short leash is what we’re getting instead.  Republicans in the House and Senate are working up dueling budgets.  Because the Senate’s version includes funds for Ukraine, Trump is throwing his support to the House’s version which makes more drastic cuts in social programs including Medicaid which you may remember he promised he wouldn’t touch.  The problem is that Speaker Johnson’s moderates, or what passes for moderates in the Republican Party, have already expressed concerns about cutting the social programs that lots of their swingier districts rely on and his budget hawks are insisting on larger cuts. As to the Democrats, if he loses three or four votes, Johnson will need their help, and they’re not inclined to step up right now.  The government is due to run out of money in March so Johnson will also need help there. March Madness is going to take on new meaning this year.

Reproductive Health: Abortions are once again available in Missouri; the result of November’s referendum votes and a recent court decision that ruled against the inappropriately burdensome requirements that the state had been foisting on Planned Parenthood facilities. Elon Musk has thirteen kids by various and sundry women including a conservative influencer who recently went public with the birth of “their” child, one who he doesn’t talk to because she is transgender, and another one with musician Grimes who reached out to him over X this week for help with one of their children’s medical emergencies, using X because he’s been ignoring her calls.  If reports are true only one of his children was conceived naturally which may explain why Trump who during the campaign called himself the “Father of IVF” signed an executive order that purports to expand IVF’s availability. That looks good on paper but don’t count on it really happening because, many of his supporters including the Project 2025 guys, oppose IVF and because providing expanded access would cost bigly bucks, money that would otherwise go to billionaire tax relief. But the king loves optics, so he signed that order.

Fog:  Yesterday, in a macabre staged ceremony Hamas handed over four coffins, claiming they contained the bodies of the two Bibas family babies, Ariel and Kfir, their mother Shiri, and peace activist Oded Lifschitz who among other activities used to drive Gazans to doctors appointments.  Last night Israel announced that two of the coffins did contain the Bibas children while another contained Lifschitz but that the fourth was an unidentified woman, not Shiri Bibas. The evil knows no bounds.

#BringThemAllHomeNow  

   

 

We Are All Zelenskyy Now 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 😱

🌻 😭 🌻 😭 🌻: Yesterday, Trump blamed Ukraine for being invaded by Russia. He then justified excluding Ukraine from the preliminary peace talks between Secretary of State in name only Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov by saying that since Ukraine’s Zelenskyy had failed to stop the war, and by stop the war Trump meant had failed to fully capitulate to Russia, he wasn’t entitled to have a seat at the table. The talks were held in Saudi Arabia and hosted by bone saw guy Mohmmed bin Salman while Putin’s forces launched a particularly viscous attack on Odessa. Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, an outspoken critic of Putin and Trump, reports that the talks were fruitful for Putin, not so much for Zelenskyy. McFaul’s sources say that Trump’s “negotiating” team offered Russia’s team all the Ukrainian territory they want, an assurance that Ukraine would never be invited into NATO, an assurance that US troops would be withdrawn from Europe, including from all those frontline states that Putin wants folded back into Mother Russia, and sanctions relief to help bolster his failing economy.  In exchange Putin’s team offered up three things: nothing, nada, and zilch. Trump also insisted that Zelenskyy who he claimed has only a 4% approval rating immediately hold elections, presumably with a dose of interference from Putin’s crowd. For the record, Zelenskyy’s approval rating stands at 52% and fair elections aren’t a thing in Putin’s Russia but why quibble about details like that?  Zelenskyy is seeking help from Europe’s stunned leaders who are trying to figure out how to deal with the impending disaster that’s more than likely to spill into Europe’s eastern countries. Sadly, right about now we are all frustrated Zelenskyy’s and stunned Europeans, trying to figure out how to escape this hellscape. Worth mentioning, Trump has put all of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) professionals responsible for ensuring the integrity of US elections on administrative leave because who cares about fair elections here at home anyway?

Quit:  Yesterday, Denise Cheung, the head of the Department of Justice Criminal Division, a 24-year DOJ career official, resigned, after refusing to comply with a demand from her retribution minded bosses, Emil Bove and former January 6 protester/stop the steal lawyer, soon to be the US Attorney for Washington DC  Ed Martin,  to open an unfounded criminal investigation into a Biden era environmental grant initiative.  She was also asked to freeze and start clawing back the 💰 💰 that that had already been transferred from EPA to Citibank and then on to the smaller financial entities tasked with awarding the funds to environment related projects for the types of save the planet things that new EPA Chief Lee Zeldin wants to halt. Cheung essentially told her DOJ bosses that she had no interest in prosecuting a crime that didn’t exist. Cheung’s departure followed that of another long-term DOJ veteran, Ryan Crosswell, who worked in the public integrity section.  Crosswell resigned on Monday, telling AG Bondi that he “can no longer serve the department I love.” He appears to be another one protesting Trump’s efforts to extort cooperation from NYC Mayor Eric Adams. As to Mayor Adams, the charges against him have not yet been dismissed.  Instead of just okaying the request, Dale Ho, the US District judge overseeing his case has scheduled a hearing for this afternoon to learn more about the “reasons” for the DOJ’s dismissal.  Clearly the judge knows the reasons are all about Trump pressuring Adams to jump when told, especially onto the Trump INS wagon.  Ho said that while the DOJ is “the first and presumptively the best judge” of action on whether to drop a prosecution, the courts have an “independent responsibility” to make sure its actions are being taken in the “public interest.” Governor Kathy Hochul who’d rather shuffle off to her hometown Buffalo to shovel snow is now trying to figure out how to get Adams to resign because though she, like many in New York, want him out, she’d rather not be the one to hit the eject button. She held a bunch of meetings with New York politicians yesterday, including Reverend Al Sharpton who despite, or maybe because of his own history, is thought to have enough sway over Adams to help him conclude that he should exit “voluntarily.”

Quit, Quit: While Elon Musk’s rats continue to infest government agencies, the heads of a few of them have also resigned rather than turn over the log-ons to their computers.  Michele King, the acting commissioner at the Social Security Administration is now out because she refused to cooperate in giving the musk🐀s the keys to the “internal data repository” that contains extensive personal information about Americans including the financial data, employment information and addresses for anyone with a Social Security number, so basically everyone.  Social Security has a remarkably good track record at controlling fraud, but you wouldn’t know that if you were only paying attention to Musk who while seeing that anyone who ever regulated any of his companies is fired keeps repeating lies about the thousands of 150-year-olds receiving Social Security payments. For the record, that’s not true, what is true is that the Social Security system uses a “plug” birthdate as a stand in for missing data while that data is properly sourced, something that the DOGE team either failed to understand or more likely thought would make for a “fun” talking point.  Likewise, all of Musk and Trump’s claims about how much DOGE has saved the government so far, they are also made up.  A quick perusal of the DOGE claims turned up lots of mistakes, either typos that threw their “savings” assertions off by billions like the $8 million dollar savings that they misrepresented as an $8 billion savings or more likely some intentional sleights of hand so that Musk and Trump would have talking points and by talking points think lies to push out on Fox and Friends and to Sean Hannity.  As to Musk, Trump’s DOJ lawyers told a judge that he wasn’t really the head of DOGE, just some nice nerdy ketamine fan who hangs around. Another lie, he’s neither nice nor just hanging around. The lawsuits continue, some of the firings are now on hold but, though she said that she might rule otherwise once she receives additional information, federal Judge Chutkan refused for now to grant a temporary restraining order barring DOGE from accessing federal workforce data. In other highly disturbing legal news, Trump signed an executive order yesterday saying that only he and AG Pam Bondi “can speak of what the law is” because he’s the king, and therefore the Constitution means nothing.  As if that wasn’t enough seizing for one night Trump then signed an executive order giving himself greater authority over regulatory agencies that Congress had established as independent from White House control.  Affected agencies include the SEC, the Federal Trade Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board, among others.  Remember Trump’s promise to be dictator but only for one day.  Forget about the one-day part.  In other fun news the US Department of Agriculture is scurrying around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to hire back the people monitoring bird flu who were “accidentally” on purpose fired because bird flu, like measles is a real thing.  Also, Kash Patel has moved one step closer to becoming FBI Director.

Fog:  Hamas says that it will be releasing four bodies tomorrow. Though the Israeli government has not confirmed the names of the dead, Hamas claims that the bodies will include some, maybe all of the remaining members of the Bibas family: Ariel and Kfir, the red-haired children who were 4-years and 9-months old respectively, and their mother Shira, who was 32.  The three were kidnapped during the October 7 massacre. Their father was freed earlier this month.  On Saturday, Hamas plans to release six live hostages including Avera Mengistsu, Hisham al-Sayed, Omer Wenkert, Tal Shohem, Eliya Cohen, and Omer Shem-Tov.  Both Mengistsu, an Ethiopian Israeli, and al-Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli, have been held in Gaza for over ten years.  It’s believed that both men who suffer from mental illness were captured by Hamas after crossing into Gaza on their own.     

#BringThemAllHomeNow  

 
Nuked 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 😱

All Hail the King? It’s Presidents Day, the day that was initially meant to celebrate the life of founding father and first US president George Washington who wasn’t a king and, unlike the current one who posted this weekend on Truth Social and X that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” didn’t want to be one. Don’t be surprised if next year, the president part is changed because we know that’s something that Trump would like to do, after all he moves hurricanes by Sharpie, has altered the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and aspires to be carved into Mount Rushmore. Sadly, that’s the least of what he’s been up to. With his blessing, his largest contributor and designated wrecking ball, Elon Musk, continues to do irreparable harm to the government.  Examples of that damage include Musk’s mucking around in crucial and until now secret data bases, a list of which is about to include the one belonging to the IRS, and the across-the-board firing of a large number of government employees, probationary or otherwise. Worth noting that the probationary employee category doesn’t just include new hires, it also includes those recently promoted into new positions, like experienced air traffic controllers.  Musk and by extension Trump’s position is that if you work for the government, you are by definition expendable so what if your job involves securing or upgrading nuclear weaponry or making sure planes don’t fly into each other or monitoring the spread of killer viruses. Over the weekend, it was reported that one result of their willy nilly firing activities included the dismissal of hundreds of essential employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration which resides in the Department of Energy. In his book The Fifth Risk, author Michael Lewis wrote that officials in Trump’s first administration were clueless about the functions of many of the departments of government they were appointed to oversee. Apparently, they still are because neither Musk, his rat squad nor even Trump realized that an across-the-board firing of Department of Energy employees would leave the nukes exposed. Reports are that they’re now trying to hire back many of those nuked nuke employees but are having a hard time locating them because when they were fired, their email accounts were also nuked.  No one, least of all nepo-RFK is all that interested in rehiring any of the virus guys.  We know that because over the weekend information about the benefits of flu shots were taken down from the CDC website.  We’re currently experiencing a particularly bad flu season, if you haven’t gotten a shot, its not too late, not that the brain worm guy would tell you that.  We’re also experiencing an uptick in measles cases, not just in Texas but also in New Jersey.  Funny thing about measles, banning Froot Loops or halting infectious disease research, two of RFK’s top priorities, won’t stop the highly contagious measles virus from spreading nor will it cure any of those already infected, but you know what does, the MMR vaccine. And, in case you are wondering, the bird flu is out and about too, spreading among cats, cattle, and even people.  If we’re lucky it won’t be lethal, if not there’s always ivermectin. 

Diplomatic Disaster: Trump’s international wrecking team, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Veep JD Vance spent the last few days spreading Vladimir Putin’s message across Europe.  After Hegseth told an audience at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels that a return to Ukraine’s pre-war borders and NATO membership would be “unrealistic,” Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker said that he’d made a “rookie mistake.”  Wicker who voted for Hegseth’s confirmation because of course he did, went on to question who had written Hegseth’s speech, adding that it was the kind of thing that Tucker Carlson, who he then called a fool, would have written.  Hegseth and Carlson are former Fox colleagues so it’s not a stretch to believe that Carlson, maybe with the help of a Putin scribe, actually worked on that speech. Hegseth later pulled back some of his comments but then Trump who plans to go to Saudi Arabia for a meet up with Putin to “end” the Ukraine-Russia war, without Ukraine’s Zelensky or anyone from Europe, said that he was cool with everything Hegseth had said, so the comments stand.  He was also cool with the effort to extort mineral rights from Ukraine, an outrageous effort that wasn’t received well by Zelensky.  As to Veep JD, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference he attacked our European allies, or maybe now our former allies, for squelching free speech and by squelching he means not being more hospitable to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He told them that the greatest threat facing the European continent wasn’t Russia or China but from within.  His speech was met with disdain by Europe’s leaders but was gleefully received by Putin and his allies including former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev who complimented him for delivering such a “bold critique of Europe.” As to free speech, the AP is still banned from the White House briefing room and from Air Force One because it still calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico.  There’s been some protest from other media companies, just words, no actions. Even worse, over the weekend Axios announced that they’ll go with Trump’s Gulf of America order, so much for press solidarity.

Legal or Not?  Eric Adams remains the nominal Mayor of New York.  The fraud charges against him will likely go away this week, at least go away for as long as he complies with Trump’s orders to cooperate with the INS even when those orders violate local law. On Friday, after Hagen Scotten, a highly respected, decorated military veteran and conservative Republican Attorney at the Southern District of New York resigned writing that only a “fool or a coward” would obey Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s direction to drop the charges against Adams, twenty one attorneys from the Department of Justice’s Washington DC based Criminal Division were shepherded into a room and told that they’d all be toast if two of them didn’t agree to sign the Adams dismissal paperwork.  Ultimately Edward Sullivan, a senior litigator who is close to retirement agreed, saying that he did to protect the jobs of the other members of the unit.  He was joined by Antoinette Bacon, a supervisor who the NY Times described as someone who was always going to carry Trump’s water. The charges haven’t been dropped yet but the paperwork has been delivered to the judge overseeing the case. The lawsuits against all Trump and Musk’s freezing, firing and infiltration of crucial data bases continue to percolate through the courts.  One of those cases related to Trump’s firing of Hampton Dellinger, the federal official responsible for overseeing the enforcement of workplace protections for federal employees is expected to make it to the Supreme Court shortly.  As to the information that Musk’s rats have accessed, some classified information about the size and staff of the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal intelligence agency that designs, builds, and maintains US intelligence satellites, has been posted for all to see on the DOGE website. Alarm bells are ringing in US intelligence offices while champagne and vodka flow at the Kremlin.

Fog:  Three more Israeli hostages were released on Saturday morning. Somewhere around seventy remain in captivity although some of those are no longer alive. Secretary of State Rubio visited Israel over the weekend, where he shared platitudes with Bibi Netanyahu. Rubio has moved on to Saudi Arabia presumably to discuss what’s next for the region but also maybe to get a thrashing from the Saudis who aren’t pleased with Trump’s plans to turn Gaza into a Palestinian-free beach resort.     

#BringThemAllHomeNow     

 

 

The City That Doesn't Sleep ❤️💩✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 💩❤️

A Woman of Principle: Danielle Sassoon, who until yesterday was the Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) is eight months pregnant but has more cojones than most of those in and around Washington.  Yesterday, Sassoon, a conservative Republican, Federalist Society member, Harvard College and Yale Law School graduate and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia offered up her resignation, saying that she couldn’t comply with an order to seek a dismissal of the charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams who’d been indicted for accepting bribes and for campaign finance violations because he was guilty as sin and because her office was about to seek a superseding indictment, charging him with destroying and instructing others to destroy evidence and for providing false information to the FBI.  She added that she knew a quid pro quo when she saw one and that it was clear that she was being asked to have the charges against Adams dropped because he had promised to “cooperate” with Trump’s migrant deportation plans, even the ones that violate New York law. To no one’s surprise, Emil Bove, who before becoming the acting Deputy Attorney General was one of Trump’s personal lawyers, accepted Sassoon’s resignation while denying that the quid pro quo existed even though everyone knows it does. Bove then reassigned the task of getting the charges against Adams dismissed to the Justice Department’s Public Corruption Unit.  Upon receiving that assignment, John Keller, the acting head of the unit, and Kevin Driscoll another senior prosecutor said hell no and resigned too.  So far three additional prosecutors from the Corruption Unit have resigned with reports that at least one more who was in labor planning to follow suit. Not to be outdone, Bove, with the blessing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, has put two other SDNY prosecutors on leave pending an investigation of them and of Sassoon, because nothing says corruption and retribution better than going after the prosecutors instead of the “alleged” criminal. For his part, Mayor Adams ramped up his cooperation with Trump’s INS officials yesterday because a quid pro quo, acknowledged or not, is after all a quid pro quo. Back in September, when Mayor Adams was originally indicted, NY Governor Kathy Hochul who has the power to remove him, opted to leave him in place, instead pushing him to rid his administration of a number of his corrupt officials/cronies.  Last night on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Hochul more than hinted that she is now considering removing him from office. Hochul also made it clear that she has no plans to cooperate with Louisiana’s prosecution of a NYS doctor who prescribed mifepristone to a Louisiana woman seeking reproductive care.  That case, together with another one from Texas, is likely to make it to the Supreme Court because The Handmaid’s Tale gave up being fiction long ago.  As to the not so principled Attorney General Pam Bondi, on Wednesday, she took to her podium to announce that she had filed charges against Governor Hochul and NYS Attorney General Letitia James.  Though she made it sound like she was about to arrest the two, she is not.  She hasn’t filed any charges, rather she’s pursuing a civil case against New York’s Green Light law, which was signed into law while Andrew Cuomo who is reportedly considering a run for Mayor of NY this year and who is way ahead in the polls, was Governor. The law allows the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a driver’s license regardless of citizenship or legal status.  New York, a helluva a town.

Confirmations:  RFK Jr, the vaccine skeptic who thinks that too much emphasis is put on controlling infectious diseases is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was confirmed on a party line vote with only one Republican, polio survivor, Mitch McConnell voting against his confirmation.  After the vote Trump suggested that McConnell hadn’t really had polio because of course he’d say that. Tulsi Gabbard is now the Director of National Intelligence.  She too was confirmed on a party line vote with only McConnell, who could have rid us of Trump had he done his job during the January 6 related impeachment trial, voting against her.  During yesterday’s hearings for her nomination to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Education, World Wrestling Entertainment’s Linda McMahon said that she didn’t know if African American studies would be allowed going forward because maybe if we ignore Black people, they’ll go away altogether?  Anyway, her testimony may be academic because Trump and his boss Elon plan to eliminate the Department of Education and have already started firing people there.  Imagine contributing bigly bucks to an indicted felon, only to be awarded a cabinet position for a department that may not exist by the time you make it through the gnarly confirmation process. When asked about where the Department’s functions, to the extent any remain, will go, McMahon said that they would mostly go back to Health and Human Services, where they resided back before 1979.  So, RFK Jr, the brain worm infected former heroin addict who doesn’t believe in viruses will soon be responsible for education too?  Fun.  Next up, serial liar and Russian tool,  Kash Patel, whose nomination has made it out the Senate Judiciary Committee.

2026 Senate Races:  Minnesota’s Tina Smith who first became Senator when former Senator Al Franken was forced out of office for what now, and even then, seemed like crass behavior more than anything else, announced yesterday that she like Michigan Democrat Gary Peters, will not be seeking reelection in 2026.  Expect a slew of characters, including Governor Tim Walz, Lt Governor Peggy Flanagan, Attorney General Keith Ellison and maybe even Congresswoman Ilhan Olmer, to consider competing for the slot.  Republican podcaster Royce White who lost badly to Amy Klobuchar in 2024 has already thrown his hat into the ring.  Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer has asked all his up for reelection members who plan not to run to let him know sooner rather than later so Dems can get their ducks in order. All eyes are now focused on New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen who has not yet announced her plans.

Fog:  Trump who held one of his now daily deranged pressers yesterday reports that he’s spoken with his buddy Vladimir Putin and that they’re planning to “resolve” that whole Ukraine war thing, possibly during a meeting in Saudi Arabia.  He went on to say that since Russia has lost lots of troops fighting to seize the parts of Ukraine it invaded, they should get to keep those parts and maybe some more.  Ukraine’s Zelenskyy would like to weigh in on that, he also wants a seat at the table as do all those countries in Europe who used to be US allies. By the way inflation is ticking back up but Trump, who this time did not have Lil X by his side picking his nose or telling him to “shush up,” says that the inflation increase is Biden’s fault, not his and so what if his new order to evaluate imposing retaliatory tariffs makes things cost more.  His message to the country, suck it up.  Moving to the Middle East, the WSJ reports that Israel has been dusting off its on again off again plans to attack Iran’s nuclear sites. Oy.  And Hamas has agreed to go forward with this weekend’s planned release of three Israeli hostages, announcing that the three will include Russian Israeli Alexander Troufanov, Argentinian Israeli Yair Horn, and US Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen.  Lastly, Marc Fogel the US teacher who is now free from Russian captivity was released in exchange for Russian cybercrime kingpin Alexander Vinnik because while Vlad and Trump are close, Vlad gives nothing away for free.      

#BringThemAllHomeNow

Twenty-Three Long Days 😱💩✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 💩😱

The💩Show:  It’s been only twenty-three days since the beginning of Trump 2.0, yet it already feels like an eternity.  We’ve got 1,438 more days to go, assuming that Trump doesn’t run for a third term, and given his efforts to shred the Constitution, it’s fair to assume that he’ll try.  Yesterday in the Oval Office, with his four-year-old son X Æ A-12, nickname Lil X, perched on his shoulders, Elon Musk admitted that he makes a lot of things up, including his now viral claim that USAID had sent $50 million of condoms to Gaza, a number that Trump at one point inflated to $100 million while also asserting they were being used by Hamas to make incendiary bombs.  As it turns out the condoms in question were not used to make bombs and were not sent to Hamas but went to Mozambique’s Gaza Province, not for bomb production but to prevent STDs and AIDS.  Musk’s condom confusion and Trump’s bomb claims would be funny, worthy of a classic SNL Emily Litella skit, if it hadn’t been the justification for shuttering all of USAID’s programs. So far, the district courts and, as of yesterday, one appeals court, have stayed Trump and Musk’s actions, halting the breaks in funding, the NIH cuts, the “fork in the road” layoff scheme, the taking down of critical health care websites, the ending of birthright citizenship, some of the erasure of transgender rights, and the infiltration of the US Treasury payment system but despite Trump’s claim that he will “of course” obey the courts, he and Elon aren’t.  We know that because drugs and food are languishing in overseas ports awaiting unloading permits from fired USAID officials, many US social service organizations have lost access to the funding portals that provide their financial lifelines, and red slips keep being sent to government employees including inspectors general, especially the ones who’ve been investigating Elon’s misdeeds.  Also, you may recall that Treasury Secretary Bessent assured everyone that Elon’s musk🐀s had “read only” access to the Treasury’s financial system, well that was a lie too. Their intent was to shut down payments to entities that Elon didn’t want funded and it turns out that at least one musk🐀, Marko Elez, better known for his racist social posts, had “mistakenly” been given coding privileges.  As a result, a team of forensic experts are now evaluating the system to see if he introduced any new code. With Trump’s House and Senate abettors, the people who could rein him in, either too intimidated to constrain him or in agreement with his “tear down” the government activities, we’re either knee deep in a Constitutional crisis or about to be in one.  And just for good measure, the government faces a funding deadline on March 14, Republicans haven’t yet come up with a plan they can all agree to and House Democrats, whose votes are typically needed, aren’t likely to help them get whatever they hobble together passed without first getting major concessions and funding promises.

Human Resources:  Sadly, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr both keep moving closer to being confirmed by the Senate because apparently Republican Senators, including pearl twirler Susan Collins, aren’t concerned about a Kremlin influenced Director of National Intelligence or an anti-vaccine Secretary of Health who advocates the drinking of raw milk and thinks viruses aren’t really a thing. However, FBI Director nominee Kash Patel’s nomination has hit a speed bump of sorts.  Despite testifying that he had nothing to do with the purge that’s currently underway at the FBI, he has been involved, and a whistle blower has leaked the meeting notes that document his involvement. That said, it’s not clear that any Republican Senators will find his obvious lying disqualifying, after all they don’t appear concerned about his Chinese income or that he was paid by a Kremlin sponsored media company for his anti-FBI documentary.  Richard Grenell, who served as US Ambassador to Germany, Special Envoy to Serbia and Kosovo and even did a brief stint as Director of National Intelligence during Trump 1.0, and who’d been hoping for a plum cabinet appointment, perhaps even Secretary of State, didn’t get one but now has been named the interim head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. All’s not lost for Grenell because it’s only a matter of time before Secretary of State Marco Rubio steps out of line, and who knows, that FBI slot could open up.  New York City’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams who has been fawning all over Trump and who earlier this week directed NYC officials to refrain from criticizing Trump and his administration is getting what he’s been begging for. The Department of Justice has directed the Southern District of New York to drop the federal corruption and bribery charges against him, but only without prejudice meaning that if Adams displeases Trump they can be brought back up.  Apparently, accepting gifts from Turkey and violating campaign finance laws are not a problem for Trump if in exchange Adams lets INS run amok in NYC, sweeping undocumented migrants, violent or not, off the streets and out of schools and places of worship.  Quid pro quo?  Adams who is up for reelection this year, is now hinting that he may run as a Republican.  Trump has also fully pardoned former Chicago Mayor Rod Blagojevich whose sentence for corruption he’d commuted during his first term. Blagojevich’s corruption included trying to sell the Senate seat that opened up when Barack Obama became president.  Also, though he pleaded guilty for fraudulently soliciting money from idiotic donors for a phony baloney “Build the wall” charity, Steve Bannon will not be going to jail, nor will he be required to pay a fine.  And keeping with the theme of crime pays, yesterday Trump paused the enforcement of the US law banning the bribery of foreign officials. One thing that doesn’t pay, is questioning Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America; because the Associated Press is still using the Gulf of Mexico moniker, its reporter was banned from the White House yesterday.

Fog:  Trump is still pressing his plan to rid Gaza of all Gazans, now saying they should leave permanently rather than “just” during its rebuilding.  Yesterday he tried to sell that plan to the King of Jordan who despite needing US aid to maintain the stability of his country, isn’t all that interested in upending Jordan’s fragile balance.  Trump is also pressing the not so interested President El-Sisi of Egypt, another ally who relies on US aid, to absorb Gaza’s residents. Egypt  has never been welcoming to Palestinians so it’s unlikely that they’ll step up now to help with Trump’s purge plan which is why El-Sisi has just postponed his scheduled trip to Washington. For their part, the Russians and Iranians have got to be enjoying this charade. As to the Israeli hostages held by Hamas, more were scheduled to be released this coming Saturday but now, asserting that Israel is violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas has put all releases on hold.  In response Trump is now insisting that all the hostages be released on Satruday or else, a demand that Bibi Netanhayu is now echoing. Maybe all of this is just posturing and both sides will back down and the hostage release and ceasefire will continue but then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking. On a positive note, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, took a side trip to Russia yesterday and returned with American teacher Marc Fogel who’d been held hostage in a Russian prison for more than three years. We don’t know what if anything was given to Putin in return for Fogel’s release but at this point we should all be happy that he’s home.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

Fly Like an Eagle 😱💩 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 💩😱 🏈 🦅 

 🏈 🦅: In the run up to the Super Bowl, Trump who has delegated the day to day running of the country to his malevolent, chaos creating co-conspirator Musk and his hate spewing band of musk🐀s made himself the Chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, took away temporary protected status from a lot of Black refugees white offering visas to white South Africans, fired the heads of the National Archives and the Federal Election Commission while reinstating the musk🐀 who’d been ousted for his racist social media posts, revoked the security clearances of a slew of mostly Democratic officials and critics from Joe Biden to Anthony Blinken to Letitia James to Alvin Bragg to Andrew Weissmann and so on, gave new life to plastic straws while killing pennies, and predicted that the Kansa City Chiefs would win the Super Bowl. They didn’t so he pathetically mocked Taylor Swift. Trump’s recently confirmed OMB Head Russell Vought halted the activities of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that actually earns money but is hated by the right because it’s the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Trump more than hinted that this week’s target will be the Department of Education.  Oh, and he promised, to open the week by imposing his oft promised 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Musk who spent the weekend posting a series of mean lies about US AID and a number of his critics took a hatchet to the National Institute of Health’s research funding something that Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt noted is a bigly problem for the University of Alabama’s Medical Center, a major recipient of that funding. Her pearl clutching aside, Katie attended the Super Bowl with Trump where she may or may not have told him of her concern, a concern that likely only extends to red state research centers.

 

Viktor and Adolf:  To cap off the weekend, Trump, Musk, and occasional VP JD Vance slammed the judges who have put holds on their plans to shutter US AID and fire most of its staff, eliminate birth right citizenship, publicly shame and fire FBI agents, erase transgender people, and stop funding congressionally mandated programs around the country.  As to the federal judges who now have targets on their backs, it’s growing increasingly obvious that Trump and team aren’t following their orders because community health centers and Head Start facilities continue to report that their funding has stopped flowing and despite reassurances from Secretary of State Rubio, that “essential” USAID programs aren’t being affected by Elon’s cuts, they most certainly are.  Food continues to rot in ports, drugs aren’t being distributed and much to the joy of Russia and China, the US’s reputation is swirling the drain. We also learned this weekend that in addition to planning to continue to earn big bucks from a Chinese based retailer, FBI Director Nominee Kash Patel was paid by a Kremlin associated film maker whose films push anti-US conspiracies.  Also, despite all their kowtowing CNN and the Washington Post are among four more media outlets that are being rotated out of their Pentagon studio posts.  While analogies to Hitler and his Third Reich aren’t wrong, it’s not necessary to go back to 1930s Germany to find a model for Trump’s actions.  He’s aping Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban whose playbook includes a crackdown on “undesirable” immigrants, a purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness,” erosions of academic freedom, limitations on judicial independence and attacking the free press all in alliance with Christian Nationalism.  Hungary has a sputtering, underperforming economy, but so what if economic distress is the penalty for hate and nationalism? Shame on everyone who thinks that normalizing this behavior and taking an axe to our democratic institutions is okay because in exchange they might get tax cuts. 

 

Fog:  Trump’s still talking about turning Gaza into a beach resort, something that Bibi Netanyahu and some of his most right-wing coalition members have latched on to but, again, hold off on booking a suite at Mar a Gaza because it’s not going to happen. Despite all the rhetoric, three more hostages were released on Saturday.  The good news is that the three men:  Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy, are home now.  The bad news is they’d been starved and tortured and according to the doctors who examined them upon their release, they don’t just look like concentration camp victims, they are suffering from the same physical deterioration and maladies. As to their gaunt state, the three were held in a part of Gaza where food has been consistently available throughout the war, so their deprivation had nothing to do with food availability but was all about intentional starvation.  Sadly, upon their release, the three learned for the first time about the death of their family members, hardly the homecoming that they’d hoped for.         

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 
Did Someone Say Nukes 😱💩 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 💩😱

Whack A Mole²:  President Musk and his band of miscreant minions keep mucking around inside the technology systems that keep the government working.  With Trump’s support, he’s cutting programs, sending out illegal “quit now or else” missives, and otherwise wreaking havoc. Musk’s efforts have resulted in lawsuits from Democratic state Attorneys General, employee unions, and various other pro-democracy organizations.  So far, the federal courts are upholding democracy, staying much of Trump and Musk’s illegal endeavors. To that end, federal judges have limited the number of Elon’s junior techno fascists who can access the Treasury payment system, while also ruling that their access be “read” only; they’ve frozen the “quit now or else” program” in part because the promise to provide departing government employees with eight months of severance is unfunded and thus likely illegal; they’ve frozen the freeze on government loan and grant programs; and they’ve ruled against Trump’s plan to eliminate birthright citizenship. The problem is that Trump, who’s been told by the Supreme Court that he’s a king with infinite amounts of immunity, is largely ignoring their rulings even when he pretends to be complying. So, even though Trump’s been blocked from cutting off payments to entities like community health programs, regional hospitals, and head start programs, a number of them report that their access to the Treasury funding portal has disappeared; as a result, they have started to lay off employees and cancel classes and appointments.  While we’ve been told that PEPFAR, the enormously successful Bush era AIDS program, isn’t to be affected by foreign cuts, it has been which has frozen the delivery of lifesaving drugs and, together with research cuts, left drug trial patients hanging in limbo. Similarly, loads of food bought from American farmers, are rotting away in various ports because the USAID workers responsible for getting the food to the organizations that then get it to the starving have almost all been put on permanent leave.  That’s not an exaggeration, fewer than 300 of the approximately 13,000 employed by USAID are expected to remain as a result of Trump’s cuts. Secretary of State Marco Rubio who once was one of USAID’s biggest supporters is, unsurprisingly, totally in Trump’s camp and while he’s paying some lip service to continuing “worthy” aid, he’s not because if he doesn’t stick to the party line, he’ll be kicked to the curb and unlike a lot of Trump’s other appointees, he needs his State Department salary because he’s got a rather paltry net worth.  Theoretically eliminating USAID requires Congressional action.  We’ll know eventually but by then the damage will have been done.

The Minions: As to Musk’s minions, Marko Elez who up until yesterday had access to the Treasury system, resigned after the Wall Street Journal revealed that his social media posts include the following pearls of wisdom: I was racist before it was cool; I would not mind if Gaza and Israel were wiped off the face of the Earth; you could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity; and normalize Indian hate. Good riddance: but has anyone at the WSJ or elsewhere looked at Musk’s X posts because they’re far worse. According to Wired Magazine another one of Musk’s minions, 19-year-old Edward Coristine who goes by the name of Big Balls on LinkedIn, has several Russian websites and has been known to hire “reformed” hackers, is knee deep in the US Government infrastructure right now.  To state the obvious, it’s unlikely he’d ever pass a real security vetting. Nevertheless, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who’s been sipping the Kool-Aid wants us to believe that Musk’s team is totally trustworthy and “highly qualified.”  That sentiment is apparently shared by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy who is totally okay with Musk’s minions “plugging in” and “making upgrades” to the air traffic control system and according to CNN with Energy Secretary Chris Wright who controls our nukes and is giving access to the Energy system to Musk’s team.  Who needs the nuclear suitcase when you have access to the nuke operating system?  Worth reminding everyone that when Musk fired Twitter staff and made “upgrades” to X it repeatedly crashed, a big yawn for X but a total disaster when planes and nukes go awry.  As to Elon’s focus on dismantling USAID, which represented a teeny party of the US budget, apparently, he still harbors resentment for USAID over its role in eliminating South Africa’s apartheid regime.  Moreover, by burning USAID to the ground, he’s getting rid of their investigation into alleged illegal acts by his StarLink company in Ukraine. It’s always personal with these guys which also explains why among her first official acts, newly sworn in Attorney General Pam Bondi has dissolved the FBI’s efforts to combat foreign interference in US elections. Then again, since she’s also now overseeing a purge at the FBI, maybe there would be no one left to staff that effort anyway.   

Confirmations:  After an overnight stalling effort by Democratic Senators, Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, was confirmed yesterday, by a vote along party lines, to head the Office of Management and Budget. During his confirmation hearing Vought said that he would hold up legislatively approved government funding, a clear violation of the Impoundment Control Act. He held up Ukraine aid during Trump’s last administration, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, but we all know that Trump’s Congressional cronies gave him a pass for that so why follow the law now?  I guess we should appreciate that unlike a lot of Trump’s other nominees, including his SCOTUS choices, Vought is honest about his nefarious intentions. The Committee vote on FBI Director nominee Kash Patel has been delayed one week, mostly a stalling tactic by Democrats because no Republicans seem at all concerned by his enemies list or his questionable sources of income, including rather large payments from Trump’s Truth Social and equity in a clothing company that advertises where else, but on Truth Social because money goes round and round.     

Media:  Trump is suing 60 Minutes, upset about how they edited their Kamala Harris interview.  CBS has released the unedited version of her interview, and it’s a nothing burger, just routine editing but CBS’s owner Paramount Global is still close to giving Trump a settlement payoff to make his lawsuit go away to get its sale to Skydance over the finish line.  For his part Trump still wants both CBS and 60 Minutes eradicated.  And why not try, those tactics are generally very productive in autocracies.      

Fog:  There’s still lots of chatter about Trump wanting to turn Gaza into a Mar a Gaza beach resort empty of Gazans,  the announcement that according to the NY Times surprised his staff. Every time someone on his staff walks back or modifies his statement, Trump brings it up again. It’s not happening which isn’t to say that it won’t be discussed endlessly.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow  

 

 

 The Year of the Wrecking Ball 😱💩✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️💩😱

👀 👀😱: Another day with too much devious crazy to detail including one bigly diversion intended to distract attention from the wrecking ball crashing into our democratic institutions and freedoms. Let’s be clear, the US is not going to take over ownership of Gaza and Trump Gaza Resort on the Mediterranean is not going to happen. Sure, Trump is getting a lot of headlines for the statement he made last night, the one where he said that he’s sending the US military to occupy Gaza, evicting the 2 plus million Palestinians who live there and who no other country has any interest in “absorbing.”  He’s going to talk about that a lot, the gullible press, a crowd that should know better but has proven countless times that they don’t is already amplifying his assertion and running headlines, but as Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said last night, it’s a diversion, it’s not going to happen and even saying so is doing nothing to foster peace or bring more hostages home. Saudi Arabia has already weighed in with a loud no and just about every other country in the Middle East and elsewhere will follow suit, so let’s not get distracted from the bad things that are actually happening. President Elon and his puppet Trump are destroying America as we know it, following the Project 2025 playbook, dismantling key government departments and programs, and taking away rights. They’re shuttering US AID, they’re about to go after the Department of Education, appear to have taken control of the US Treasury’s payment system, they’re purging the FBI and are preparing to do the same to the CIA and are even about to take a sharpie to NOAA and the National Weather Service.  All that is on top of the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate accords, two actions that expose all of us to more COVID-like pandemics, new AIDS strains, Ebola, Marburg, and emerging diseases we can’t even contemplate while also endangering the health of the planet.  Those are the issues to focus on, not Trump’s unhinged pipedream plans for Gaza. The good news is that the pushback is beginning, lots of lawsuits have been filed, and Democrats in Congress appear to be shaking off their post-election malaise, the bad news is that percolating through the courts takes time, judges can be unpredictable, and Republicans control all three arms of government.  Still, just despairing isn’t an option.  If you like me had pushed the pause button on political contributions, push the forward button now because we need to loosen our wallets, speak up and act, because that’s what it is going to take.  Playing ostrich and staying quiet is not an option. 

Confirmations 😱:  Sadly, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr are both one step closer to being confirmed.  On a party line basis both received the votes they needed to move out of committee to a Senate floor vote.  Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who knows better but who is up for re-election in 2026 and fears being primaried, voted for nepo RFK despite earlier expressing serious reservations about his anti-vaxx positions and ignorance about all thing’s health. Maybe Cassidy who voted to impeach Trump over the January 6^th insurrection is getting a pass for that act of disloyalty or at the very least thinks that he’s getting one by supporting RFK but it’s so depressing that a 67-year-old Senator, especially one with a career to fall back on, is so desperate to hold on to his seat that he’s willing to sell out his constituents health.   Similarly, Maine’s Susan Collins was one of the Republicans who voted for Tulsi Gabbard.  Like Cassidy, the 72-year-old Collins is up for reelection in 2026 and fears being primaried.  Unlike Louisiana, Maine is a 50-50 state so Republicans would put Collin’s Republican seat at risk if they nominated a candidate to her right. She knows that, but maybe she feels that she used up a chit by voting against Pete Hegseth and maybe, just maybe she plans to vote against RFK on the Senate floor, a nice gesture but one that would only bear fruit if three other Republicans join her and, so far ,that appears unlikely.  The Senate voted to confirm election denier Pam Bondi, who is expected to continue with the FBI purge that has been started by Acting Attorney General/Trump personal lawyer Emil Bove.  Every Democrat but Pennsylvania’s eclectic John’s Fetterman voted against her.  Fetterman is turning into this Senate’s version of Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema. It’s likely that had the FBI purges not begun, more Democrats would have voted for Bondi, not as many as voted for now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the normie who we now know is anything but.  The USAID dissolution is taking place on Rubio’s watch since what’s left of USAID has been rolled into the State Department. Rubio has appointed Pete Marocco, who was seen on film participating in the January 6^th onslaught of the Capitol and who earned a reputation for being disruptive and difficult during the last Trump administration, to run USAID and to perform an internal review of all its programs to determine which if any of them should be continued. Just a reminder that USAID funds programs that feeds the starving, provides drugs key for disease control, and funds flood control programs.  Moreover, the food, drugs, and building parts are largely sourced from US contractors so ending USAID programs results not only in the firing of USAID employees, many of whom are Americans but also hurts US farmers and contractors.  Shuttering USAID programs also hampers the CIA because though no one likes to say it, except Musk who considers them all evil, some of its employees also have or had intelligence functions.  That’s one of the reasons that Russian TV and Russian leaders are so amped by Trump/Musk’s actions and also the reason that USAID leaders were so outraged when Musk’s minions gained access to their top-secret files.  Turning to Treasury Secretary Bessent, who was also supposed to be normie, he wants us all to believe that Musk’s minions’ access to the Treasury payment system is read only but that’s hard to believe since they keep boasting about writing new code and “streamlining.”  Just a reminder that the Treasury system in addition to facilitating and prioritizing government houses all of our Social Security Numbers, banking information, email addresses and more; the information that we’re always told to keep away from prying eyes.

More Stupidity and Insanity:  In the lawsuit they’ve filed, the about to be purged FBI Agents have told the Courts that they fear that Trump plans to release their names and personal information to the January 6^th thugs that he recently pardoned, many of whom have threatened to go after those at Justice and at the FBI who touched any of their prosecutions. Given how much Trump admires Putin, it’s fair to assume the FBI agents and US attorneys have every right to be concerned.  Because irony is long dead, Elon Musk is threatening to sue who ever it is who released the names of his marauding minions to Wired Magazine, that’s Musk whose been publicly targeting and naming government employees on his X site since the beginning of DOGE.  And remember those tariffs against Mexico and Canada, they’re now on hold for thirty days or longer, maybe because the stock markets weren’t happy.  Trump’s claim is that he personally got our neighbors to concede lots of stuff, spoiler alert, he didn’t. Canada’s Trudeau and Mexico’s Sheinbaum agreed to continue doing the things they previously promised President Biden that they would do.  By the way, though we all agree that fentanyl is dangerous, despite Trump’s claims, very, very little of it comes into the US through the Canadian border.  As to the additional tariffs that had been imposed on China, they’re on so expect an uptick in some prices.  Also, forget about getting your Temu, Shein, and even some packages from Amazon. In response to Trump’s orders the US Postal Service has put a hold on them, that’s a result of the elimination of custom exemptions that had applied to packages with contents worth less than $800.  The overwhelmed USPS doesn’t have the capability to do all the customs processing that will result from the need to subject so many more packages to customs examinations.  Wonder if those customs inspectors like so many flight controllers have been offered some of those likely illegal government buyouts to facilitate the downsizing that Trump/Elon keep boasting about?  And now for my favorite stupid news story.  Over the weekend, Trump, ordered the release of 2.2 billion gallons of water from some northern California reservoirs to get more water to southern California.  The problem with that is that none of that water has a path to southern California but what it can and do and did before the flow was stopped was flood valuable farmland while also cutting into the supply of water that will be available to farmers during what’s expected to be a particularly bad summer drought season. Water experts and the US Corp of Engineers knew the release was stupid and pointless, but they were overruled by Trump, who knows everything because of his uncle who was an MIT professor.  Just a reminder that he also controls the nuclear codes. Lastly, the deportations including to Guantánamo Bay have begun and it’s painful to watch.                         

#BringThemAllHomeNow