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