Comments

  1. says

    For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-1/#comment-2249787
    The news has covered the multi-million-dollar homes burned in the California fires, and has given air time to some of their famous owners. Adam Mahoney of Capital B News has a different take:

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-1/#comment-2249778
    Tuberculosis rates plunge when families living in poverty get a monthly cash payout

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-1/#comment-2249774
    Republican congressman calls for halting of disaster relief to California

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-1/#comment-2249762
    Connected cars are a “privacy nightmare,”

  2. says

    Rick Wilson describes the convicted criminal’s no good, very bad week

    […] Rick Wilson, at the Lincoln Project, highlights the ways in which tRump’s last week was bad. Now, I know some people don’t trust former members of the GOP. But these days, we need allies where we find them. Besides, I admire Wilson’s pull-no-punches style. [video at the link]

    In case you don’t like clicking on videos (although this one is only about 6 minutes), here are the highlights, with some editorial content.

    tRump was sentenced in court. Yeah, he’s not getting fines or jail time, but the convicted criminal label will not be going away anytime soon. Not going to be pardoned by a New York governor. The stench will last forever.

    tRump’s own hand-picked Supreme Court did not save him. Emphasizes that John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett did the right thing. […]

    tRump went to President Carter’s funeral, where most other presidents, vice-presidents and their spouses ignored him. Wilson waxed on about how Karen Pence totally ignored tRump (but Mike Pence did not).

    Also talks about how Jack Smith’s report will come out (note I am not sure of the status of this as it keeps changing). Points out that the very corrupt Aileen Cannon could be impeached at some point. (Note we have not done that well with impeachments, but heck, why not work on it)

    Maga base starting to get upset as they realize tRump not planning to keep his promises (one reason he’s talking so much about Greenland). Bringing down inflation is hard!

    The groups who support tRump are not getting along with each other, fighting over positions, jobs and policies. […] [PZ pointed this out as well in his post: It’s all Kilkenny Cats out there ]

    It’s easy to promise great things, but much harder to get them done, especially in a DC this divided. […]

    Wilson said something interesting. He thinks tRump’s second term, even though he will not be inaugurated for another 8 days, has already peaked.

    We need to savor the Schadenfreude, and talk about his weaknesses. Because the more talk there is about his weaknesses, the weaker he will become. These are opportunities.

    Now, for those who did not watch Karen Pence ignoring tRump, you can see it here (and this is a time where, I must warn you, tRump appears — because he has to). Skip over it if you don’t want to see the convicted criminal. At least the still only shows the criminal’s back! [video at the link]

  3. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/you-dont-have-justin-trudeau-to-kick

    […] There’s a last-minute scramble to find a replacement [for Justin Trudeau] to turn the sinking ship around but whoever gets the gig is more likely to end up like Kim Campbell, Canada’s first and only female female prime minister. Campbell, a Conservative who took office after Brian Mulroney skedaddled ahead of schedule, was also the country’s first female justice minister but only lasted roughly a dozen Scaramuccis at the new job before leading the party into such a resounding clobbering in the 1993 election, the surviving Cons could’ve carpooled in a convertible to commute to the House of Commons.

    But at least probable PM Pierre Poilievre seems unlikely to start sabre-rattling about seizing the wee specks of technically France off the coast of Newfoundland or turning Turks and Caicos into our own private Hawaii. Or to rage-tweet at Santa Claus for not pulling his economic weight on Arctic sovereignty despite his long history of giving better Christmas presents to the one percent.

    You’ve probably heard by now Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last week he’s stepping down. On January 6 no less, which is becoming a bit of a portentous date for significant North American political developments.

    “My friends, as you all know, I’m a fighter,” said a sad-looking Trudeau while announcing he was hanging up his gloves. “Every bone in my body has told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians. I care deeply about this country, and I will always be motivated by what is in the best interest of Canadians. And the fact is, despite best efforts to work through it, Parliament has been paralyzed for months after what has been the longest session of a minority Parliament in Canadian history. […] This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.” [Photo of Trudeau in a boxing ring.]

    […] Not that he’s going away right away. Governor-General Mary Simon agreed to prorogue Parliament until March 24 to give the Grits time to get their shit together and pick a new boss, meaning the federal government will essentially be AWOL when the world collectively steps into the Twilight Zone on January 20 thanks to America’s stupidest citizens.

    […] Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously made his own decision to step down after taking “a walk in the snow.” […] His son made the same call after taking a walk in the snow of his own after going on a ski vacation with his family (including his estranged wife), which made international headlines after he was ambushed by an anti-LGBTQ dumb-dumb named Emily Duggan who urged him to “please get the fuck out of B.C.”

    Canadians are so stereotypically polite we say “please” even when cussing people out in front of their children. Trudeau usually hits the slopes at flashier Whistler, a two-hour drive from Vancouver, but opted instead to reflect on his situation at remote Red Mountain in the Tory-held southern Kootenays, where his younger brother Michel worked as a liftie when he was killed in an avalanche while backcountry skiing 27 years ago. His body was never recovered, and this is the closest thing the family has to visiting his grave. Not that the haters would care about that sort of thing.

    […] I’ve always wished Trudeau the best as the alternatives have invariably been worse. It was a bummer when he reneged on the promise to abolish the first-past-the-post electoral system in favor of proportional representation, but at least we got slightly cheaper daycare out of him. […] The SNC-Lavalin affair was a doozy, where he shitcanned the country’s first Indigenous justice minister because she wouldn’t give Liberal corporate donors a break with corruption charges and he lied after the Globe & Mail reported on it, but we still got legalized weed. Even if it’s much cheaper, stronger and without all the stoner-proof packaging when bought off the street. […]

    Plus he got us through the plague in reasonably decent shape and did as well as could be hoped when dealing with That Awful Man [Trump] the first time around.

    […] he was smart enough to surround himself with much smarter people. […]

    (Fun fact: Trudeau began his career in Vancouver’s public education system as a substitute high school teacher […]

  4. says

    Washington Post link

    “Supreme Court to hear case challenging Obamacare’s preventive coverage”

    “At issue is a provision requiring health-care plans to cover no-cost preventive care, including cancer screenings, immunizations and contraception.”

    The Supreme Court said Friday it will review the constitutionality of a provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires health plans to provide no-cost preventive care, including cancer screenings, immunizations and contraception, to millions of Americans.

    The case puts the law, commonly known as Obamacare, in the crosshairs once again and follows several challenges in recent years by conservatives hoping to overturn it, as well as a landmark 2012 ruling by the justices upholding its legality.

    In Becerra v. Braidwood Management Inc., a Christian-owned business and six individuals challenged the preventive-care provision because it requires health-care plans to cover pre-exposure medications intended to prevent the spread of HIV among certain at-risk populations. The plaintiffs argue that the medications “encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior,” which conflicts with their religious beliefs.

    The plaintiffs also contend that an expert committee that mandates the preventive care health-care plans must offer is unconstitutional because its members are not appointed by the president with Senate approval, in violation of the appointments clause.

    A Texas district court [Texas courts … sheesh] sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — which set the coverage requirements — was unconstitutional because its members had not been confirmed by the Senate and that all mandates it had imposed since 2010 were invalid. […]

    The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral arguments in the case later this year.

  5. says

    NBC News:

    What to know about the California wildfires

    The Santa Ana winds are expected to strengthen today, after a brief reprieve yesterday, with gusts of 30 to 50 mph in coastal areas, and up to 70 mph in the mountains of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.

    The wind-fed wildfires have killed at least 16 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area, destroying entire communities and more than 12,300 structures.

    Evacuation orders for the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, have expanded as it sweeps east and threatens Brentwood, Encino and Westwood. It is 11% contained.

    At least 153,000 L.A. residents were under evacuation orders overnight. […]

    Los Angeles County declared a public health emergency, warning that smoke and particulate matter could pose immediate and long-term threats. […]

    Though residents are eager to return to their homes, officials warn that the wreckage remains dangerous for civilians and requests for police escorts are overwhelming Los Angeles’ already strained resources.

    Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna spoke about the frustrations of those who are at barricades trying to go back to their neighborhoods, warning that the debris left behind resemble “war zones.” Officials said they are working on a solution that would allow residents to view their homes online to assess damage instead of returning in person.

    “There are downed power poles, electric wires,” Luna said. “There are still some smoldering fires. It is not safe.”

    The city’s officers initially worked with citizens to provide police escorts for people to go back to recover medications and pets, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. That came to an end as “the numbers became overwhelming” for the department.

    “Today, we need to suspend that practice effective immediately — we have search operations now beginning,” McDonnell said. “We will have cadaver dog deployment, and that will result in crime scene preservation efforts and then the recovery of remains, working closely with the L.A. County Coroner.”

    […] 14,000 people are working the fire line, and Governor Newsom has doubled the National Guard to help with logistics. Support is coming from Mexico and other states. […]

    Link

  9. says

    What an unregulated school voucher program looks like

    Arizona’s acclaimed voucher program provides zero transparency into private schools’ history, academic performance or financial sustainability to help parents make informed school choices.

    by Eli Hager, for ProPublica

    One afternoon in September, parents started arriving for pickup at Title of Liberty Academy, a private Mormon K-8 school in Mesa, Arizona, on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix.

    Individually, the moms and dads were called in to speak to the principal. That’s when they were told that the school, still just a few months old, was closing due to financial problems.

    There would be no more school at Title of Liberty.

    Over the course of that week, more parents were given the news, as well as their options for the remainder of the school year: They could transfer their children to another private or charter school, or they could put them in a microschool that the principal said she’d soon be setting up in her living room. Or there was always homeschooling. Or even public school.

    […] Many of them had been disappointed by their local public schools, which some felt were indoctrinating kids in subjects like race and sex and, of course, were lacking in religious instruction. […]

    An LDS member herself, [one mother] was soon ready to start paying tuition to the school from her son’s Empowerment Scholarship Account — a type of school voucher pioneered in Arizona and now spreading in various forms to more than a dozen other states. ESAs give parents an average of over $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds, per child, to spend on any private school, tutoring service or other educational expense of their choice.

    Yet Arizona’s ESA program provides zero transparency as to private schools’ financial sustainability or academic performance to help parents make informed school choices.

    [Snipped details of the school’s past financial trouble, and of the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools recommendation that it should be shut down. The school changed its name and reopened. Sounds like a scam.]

    […] found a way to keep existing and being funded by the public anyway, just without the standards and accountability that would normally come with taxpayer money.

    Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)

    […] President-elect Donald Trump has prioritized the issue, most recently by nominating for secretary of education someone whose top priority appears to be expanding school choice efforts nationwide. […]

    These programs are where the U.S. education system is headed.

    In our stories, we’ve reported that Arizona making vouchers available even to the wealthiest parents — many of whom were already paying tuition for their kids to go to private school and didn’t need the government assistance — helped contribute to a state budget meltdown. We’ve also reported that low-income families in the Phoenix area, by contrast, are largely not being helped by vouchers, in part because high-quality private schools don’t exist in their neighborhoods.

    […] Private school parents can speak at public school board meetings, and they vote in school board elections. But public school parents can’t freely attend, let alone request the minutes of, a private school governing body’s meetings, even if that school is now being funded with taxpayer dollars.

    […] The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank associated with Trump, has maintained that in such a system, schools would have “a strong incentive to meet the needs of their students since unsatisfied parents can take their children and education dollars elsewhere,” which the group says would create “direct accountability to parents.”

    Yet in a truly free market, opponents say, consumers would have information, including about vendors’ past performance, to make purchasing decisions in their own best interests.

    […] Several ESA parents across the Phoenix area said in interviews that they absolutely want educational choice and flexibility, but that they also want the sort of quality assurance that only government can provide. […] many local private schools and other educational vendors have started advertising on Facebook and elsewhere that they are “ESA certified,” even though there’s no state “certification” beyond simply signing up to receive the voucher payments. […]

    Doug Nick, spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Education, responded that state law “makes it clear that we have no authority to oversee private schools,” even ones receiving public dollars.

    […] [snipped history of Edwards, the woman that had founded ARCHES, which was subsequently changed to Title of Liberty.]

    […] we had to have teachers in order to be able to get students.” She ended up hiring mostly her own family members, both for teaching positions and to do much of the school’s financial paperwork.

    […] Calls for school transparency and accountability used to be a feature of the center-right education reform movement. No Child Left Behind, one of President George W. Bush’s signature legislative achievements, mandated that public school students in certain grades undergo standardized testing in core subjects, on the grounds that schools should have to prove that they’re educating kids up to state standards and, if they’re not, to improve or else risk losing funding.

    That testing was often rote, providing incomplete information as to the varied lives of students and pressuring many teachers to “teach to the test,” critics alleged. But it did offer a window into school performance — which, in turn, gave the voucher movement ammunition to criticize failing public schools.

    Still, early voucher efforts too included basic transparency and accountability measures. When vouchers were first proposed in Arizona, for instance, a state task force said that “private schools must also participate in the same accountability process as public schools in order to qualify for state funding.” Louisiana’s voucher program, similarly, required participating private schools to administer state student achievement tests just like public schools did.

    But voucher advocates changed course between 2017 and 2020. By that time, several academic studies had found that larger voucher programs had produced severe declines in student performance, especially in math.

    Asked about a set of particularly negative findings out of Louisiana, DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education, blamed the state’s voucher program for being “not very well conceived.” Part of the problem was that it was overregulated, she and other advocates said. [LOL, what bullshit.]

    In the years since, fully unregulated universal ESA programs have become the favored program design of many school choice supporters.

    […] Arizona private schools receiving public funding have to do no public reporting at all. If they want, they can self-report their enrollment and performance numbers to be published on websites like Niche.com, but they are free to exaggerate. [Ideal environment for scams.]

    […] even minimal efforts at transparency and accountability have been opposed by big-money voucher supporters.

    Walmart heir Jim Walton, for instance, gave $500,000 this year to defeat a proposed Arkansas state constitutional amendment that would have required private schools receiving state funds to meet the same educational standards that public schools do. At the Ohio Legislature, provisions of a proposed bill that would’ve made voucher schools submit an annual report showing how they’re using state funding were recently removed under pressure from voucher advocates.

    And in Arizona, Republicans in the Legislature have opposed every effort by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to increase oversight of private schools that receive ESA money — except for one reform: They decided that such schools must fingerprint their teachers.

    But the new law doesn’t require the ESA schools to run those fingerprints through any database or to use them in any way.
    […]

    Wanting to make triple-sure that I wasn’t missing something, I drove over to the strip mall a few weeks ago to see if anything was still going on there.

    What I found inside was a scene of school choice in its endstage. A sort of zombie voucher school, with dozens or possibly hundreds of books and papers scattered across the floor. Student records, containing confidential information, had been left out. There was food in the cafeteria area, molding.

    Under quotes from the Book of Mormon painted on the walls and a banner proclaiming that Title of Liberty would strive to be a “celestial stronghold of learing [sic],” a document was sitting on a table. It offered guidance for parents on how to select the right school for their little ones, including this line: “You might be surprised how many schools are just flying by the seat of their pants.”

    And on top of a file cabinet next to that was a stack of postcard-sized flyers that had been printed off at Walmart, reading, “Sign up your student for ESA.”

  10. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/ron-desantis-turning-another-florida

    “Ron DeSantis Turning Another Florida College Into Wingnut Diploma Mill”
    “New College was a warm-up”

    Remember New College of Florida, the tiny school that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his merry band of grotesqueries took over in 2023, turning what had been a well-regarded, left-leaning liberal arts college into a right-wing cesspool, the kind of place that puts an emphasis on the study of “western civilization” and dumps books its conservative masters deem double-plus-ungood into giant dumpsters […]

    Well, get ready for “New College of Florida II: The Newening.”

    The unlucky school that has landed in Florida Republicans’ crosshairs is the University of West Florida, located in the bustling Pensacola metro area. UWF is a medium-sized state school with a little over 14,000 students, both graduate and undergrad. It is your average American university, as best we can tell. The school offers majors in the arts, engineering, education, business. Its athletic programs play Division II sports and there is an active Greek system.

    DeSantis recently named five new people to the school’s Board of Trustees, including a couple of dips with ties to right-wing think tanks. This was on top of the state’s GOP-controlled Board of Governors getting rid of three trustees and replacing them with what the local NPR station called “Tallahassee insiders.”

    The governor’s office provided National Review with a statement about the change:

    Under the leadership of Ron DeSantis, Florida made a commitment to refocus the state’s universities on their classical mission: promoting academic excellence and preparing students to be citizens of this republic. Bringing in these new board members will break the status quo and help refocus the university on the core mission of education. We look forward to seeing the new board members hit the ground running.

    Mm-hm. This is anodyne babble. The bit about refocusing “the university on the core mission of education” is wingnut code for “the university is too woke,” which itself is code for “the university teaches stuff that conservatives disagree with and must be crushed under our fascist bootheels.”

    [snipped details, including past inclusion of a Women and Gender Studies program.]

    The DeSantis appointees are a hodgepodge of winger loons. One of them is Scott Yenor, a Boise State professor who has served as a fellow at the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation. That’s the double espresso shot of reactionary conservatives […]

    Yenor appeared in our pages once before, back in 2021, when he gave a stemwinder of a speech full of not-at-all-retrograde ideas such as “independent women are more medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome than women need to be,” [!!!] feminism is “a fundamental threat to strong, fruitful families,” [!!!] and that old chestnut about how men need to step up so that women will “be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children.” [!!!] [He seems nice and reasonable.]

    […] How are any women engineering students supposed to think about a lunkhead with views that could best be described as “Neanderthal-adjacent” being on their school’s Board of Trustees? […]

    The rest of the new trustees are a grab bag of conservative indoctrination. One dude has a law degree from Regent University and also served as a Claremont fellow. Another was also a fellow at Heritage. One is an instructor with the National Rifle Association. […]

    Sure, this is part of DeSantis’s assault on higher education in Florida. But it is also emblematic of the Right’s assault on higher education in general, which is only going to get worse in the next four years. […]

    Additionally, Scott Yenor himself has referred to colleges as “indoctrination camps,” which he won’t mind when it is right-wing indoctrination, but for the moment means more attacks on funding […]

    Remember that New College had a little under 700 undergrads in the last semester before DeSantis and his cronies began their takeover. So clearly that whole experiment was, as many suspected, always intended to scale up. Watch your asses, large-sized schools in the State of Florida University System, the legislature has already outlawed DEI programs and you’re probably next for a makeover.

  11. says

    Washington Post link

    “Xavier Becerra, who has led the Department of Health and Human Services, says federal agencies are outmatched in a world of ‘instantaneous information and disinformation.’ ”

    As they entered office at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2021, Xavier Becerra and his allies had a plan to restore Americans’ faith in the nation’s beleaguered public health agencies.
    Becerra, tapped by President Joe Biden to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, empowered career government scientists and experts muzzled under the Trump administration. Biden officials took on social media posts they said spread disinformation about coronavirus vaccines, urging Facebook and other companies to remove them. The White House mounted a nationwide vaccination campaign, convinced the results would win over skeptics.

    Four years later, the pandemic has receded. But trust in America’s health agencies has not recovered. The percentage of adults who regarded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “excellent” or “good” fell from 64 percent in April 2019 to 40 percent in October 2021 — a rating that has stubbornly refused to budge in the subsequent three years, according to Gallup polls, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to rebuild confidence. Other surveys found similar declines in trust and approval for federal health agencies, and the people who lead them, driven by GOP skepticism. [graph at the link]

    “I can’t go toe to toe with social media,” Becerra said in a wide-ranging interview Wednesday, arguing that even a Cabinet secretary can be hemmed in. As examples, Becerra cited the lawsuits the Biden administration faced after urging social media companies to take down posts the White House considered disinformation. And he noted that officials can’t formally disclose many details about negotiations to lower prescription drug prices. “I don’t get to write whatever I want,” he said.

    The health secretary never mentioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but the longtime anti-vaccine activist’s shadow hung over Becerra’s answers. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run HHS has relentlessly criticized the agencies he soon may lead, amplified false claims about vaccines and offered alternatives to what he called government misinformation. […]

    If Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate, he will be the first HHS secretary whose personal celebrity arguably eclipses the agencies he oversees. The scion of the Democratic political dynasty has 4.5 million Instagram followers — more than HHS (about 200,000 followers) and its subagencies combined. His bid for the presidency won him millions of supporters […]

    The health secretary contended that the government is outmatched, suggesting that Congress should set aside more resources for his nearly $2 trillion agency.

    “I don’t have a budget that Pfizer has to do marketing and advertising,” Becerra said, invoking the pharma giant that spends billions of dollars to promote its drugs. “Will [Congress] give me some money to compete out there with all the disinformation?” […]

    More at the link.

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    Burglary suspects dressed as firefighters arrested in L.A. fire zone, officials say

    Los Angeles authorities said they arrested 29 more people overnight in the fire zones, including one burglary suspect who was allegedly dressed as a firefighter.

    Of the arrests, 25 people were apprehended in the Eaton fire zone, four in the Palisades fire zone, authorities said.

    “We have people who will go to all ends to do what they do,” Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said of a man dressed in a fire jacket and helmet burglarizing homes.

    One man, who was driving a truck, was arrested in the Palisades area, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and LAPD said. Other suspects were found inside the vehicle. The men pretended to be associated with a fire station but a quick check with the L.A. Fire Department proved that not to be the case, officials said.

    Sheriff Robert Luna said those arrested were not from the area and that some had firearms and drugs.

    About 20 similar arrests were made earlier last week…

  14. says

    New Yorker link

    “The Inauguration of Trump’s Oligarchy”

    “Certain business titans have made Mar-a-Lago a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope.”

    Excerpts from a longer article by David Remnick.

    In modern terms, a Presidential Inauguration is an open-air branding opportunity. John F. Kennedy, a hatless Cold Warrior, placed his Administration at the vanguard of a new generation “born in this century,” and delivered an internationalist vow to “pay any price, bear any burden.”

    On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump set a distinctly different inaugural tone, delivering a sunless stem-winder of populist fury in which he vowed to heal the hellscape of “American carnage.” No longer would the country bow to self-serving élites and rapacious foreigners: “America will start winning again, winning like never before.” Upon leaving the reviewing stand, George W. Bush was heard to say, “That was some weird shit.” [Accurate.]

    […] Joe Biden, whose Presidency is now grinding to its conclusion, had hoped to render Trump’s Administration a historical fluke—a fleeting, if ugly, interregnum. […] Once more, the music of apocalypse is in the air: “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” Trump declared recently.

    He will return to the Oval Office with a résumé enhanced by two impeachments, one judgment of liability for sexual abuse, and a plump cluster of felony convictions. […] Trump soldiers on, as if all the legal accusations against him are badges of merit, further proof of his anti-establishment street cred.

    Since the election, he has proposed so many advisers of low character and dubious qualification that he has overwhelmed the circuitry of the confirmation process and the public sphere. […]

    Across the land, a willing suspension of disbelief has taken hold. […] Certain titans of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and (God forgive us) the media have hustled off to Mar-a-Lago, a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope. […]

    One of Trump’s most effective political maneuvers might be called “whacking the beehive,” a propensity to unleash so much buzzing menace into the air that it’s impossible to maintain calm, much less focus. Will he set up detention camps for undocumented immigrants? Will he split with nato and cut off Ukraine? Are we about to send the 82nd Airborne to descend on the good people of Nuuk?

    […] Perhaps what is most striking about the ascendant Trump Administration, which takes pains to cast itself as the champion of a forgotten working class, is its own oligarchic features. […] the 2010 Supreme Court decision that equates money with speech, resulting in an ever more corrupt system of campaign finance.

    […] Musk’s influence, unlike that of his Gilded Age predecessors, is amplified by his gargantuan following on a social-media engine in his possession. When Trump steps up to the lectern next week to recite the oath of office, he will stand beside his wife. But he will have a great deal of other company—multibillionaires who have shamelessly dispensed with principle to seek an indulgent new President’s favor and enhance their fortunes.

  15. says

    Mike Pence GPT:

    […] PenceGPT as an example of how the A.I. works:

    User: What’s your favorite color?

    PenceGPT: I enjoy a wide range of colors, including pearl, ivory, eggshell, and, when I’m feeling really wild, wheat.

    User: Do you have any classified documents at your house?

    PenceGPT:

    User: Is that a yes or a no?

    PenceGPT: “For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” That is Jeremiah 29:11.

    User: Are you planning to run for President in 2024?

    PenceGPT: As the Bible says, Mike Pence is a good and politically relevant man.

    User: I’m not sure the Bible says that, but I’ve got to go now. I’ll come back and chat with you later.

    PenceGPT: Please don’t leave me.

    New Yorker link

  17. StevoR says

    Launch of the New Glenn rocket scheduled for lift off in under 2 houyrs time from now – live footage here – Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Attempts to Launch and Land for the First Time by NSF NASA Spaceflight.

    See also its wikipage here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn

    Plus :

    A quarter century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is finally ready for its maiden orbital voyage with a brand new rocket the company hopes will shake up the commercial space race.The launch initially scheduled for Sunday was pushed back a day due to “unfavorable” sea conditions, Blue Origin posted on X.

    Named New Glenn after a legendary astronaut, the rocket stands 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building—and is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a launch window that now opens at 1:00 am (0600 GMT) Monday.

    Souce : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn

  19. StevoR says

    It’s official — 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first calendar year in which the earth was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times. That’s a significant number, because it’s the target that world leaders agreed to under the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, to try to limit global warming. But, while the hot year certainly isn’t good news, this breach of 1.5C doesn’t mean we’ve broken the Paris Agreement. Let’s break down why that is, what it means for our climate and weather, and where 1.5C marker came from in the first place.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-13/a-year-above-1-5c-what-does-it-really-mean/104774364

  21. Reginald Selkirk says

    Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound

    This year (2024), superconductivity — the flow of electric current with zero resistance — was discovered in three distinct materials. Two instances stretch the textbook understanding of the phenomenon. The third shreds it completely. “It’s an extremely unusual form of superconductivity that a lot of people would have said is not possible,” said Ashvin Vishwanath (opens a new tab), a physicist at Harvard University who was not involved in the discoveries…

  22. Reginald Selkirk says

    Chinese university applies for undersea cable cutter patent — device developed by coastal university located across the sea from Taiwan

    A team of engineers from Lishui University, located in the coastal Zhejiang province in China, applied for a patent for a “dragging type submarine cable cutting device” in 2020. According to Newsweek, which reviewed the documents, the patent application is based on another device developed in the late 2000s by marine engineers the State Oceanic Administration of China (SOA) in the South China Sea described as an “ocean towing type cutting device.” However, records reveal that both applications were either turned down or retracted, although no reason was given for these actions…

  23. Reginald Selkirk says

    Phishing texts trick Apple iMessage users into disabling protection

    Cybercriminals are exploiting a trick to turn off Apple iMessage’s built-in phishing protection for a text and trick users into re-enabling disabled phishing links.

    With so much of our daily activities done from our mobile devices, whether paying bills, shopping, or communicating with friends and colleagues, threat actors increasingly conduct smishing (SMS phishing) attacks against mobile numbers.

    To protect users from such attacks, Apple iMessage automatically disables links in messages received from unknown senders, whether that be an email address or phone number.

    However, Apple told BleepingComputer that if a user replies to that message or adds the sender to their contact list, the links will be enabled.

    Over the past couple of months, BleepingComputer has seen a surge in smishing attacks that attempt to trick users into replying to a text so that links are enabled again.

    As you can see below, a fake USPS shipping issue and a fake unpaid road toll text were sent from unknown senders, and iMessage automatically disabled the links…

  24. Reginald Selkirk says

    Two Arrested For Flying Drones Above Eaton Fire, Sheriff’s Department Says

    Two people have been arrested for flying unauthorized drones in the areas affected by the Eaton Fire, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Captain Jabari Williams said, per CNS. The news comes after an air tanker was grounded Thursday following a collision with a civilian drone.

    The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told Deadline it had no additional information on the matter save confirmation of the report…

  26. says

    Followup to comment 4.

    Associated Press:

    The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider reinstating some preventative care coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act that were struck down by a lower court. The federal government appealed to the high court after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with employers who argued they can’t be forced to provide full insurance coverage for things like medication to prevent HIV and some cancer screenings.

    Commentary:

    […] It was nearly two years ago when Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas — a judge who has earned a reputation as one of the judiciary’s most far-right jurists — blocked enforcement of the ACA’s preventative health care requirements, jeopardizing everything from cancer screenings to vaccinations, prenatal services to HIV prevention, pap smears to heart disease screenings.

    Last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, generally seen as the nation’s most conservative appellate bench, predictably agreed with O’Connor and rejected the ACA’s health task force and its authority to require insurers to cover an array of preventive health interventions and screenings. [Sigh. Conservative judges running in packs and shredding good government programs.]

    It’s worth emphasizing that in the first three ACA cases at the high court, the law known as Obamacare faced existential threats: The plaintiffs were trying to tear down the entire system, root and branch.

    That’s not the case in this new dispute. That said, as The New York Times’ report explained, the impact of a potential defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court would be dramatic for millions of Americans.

    The new challenge is directed at a task force that decides which treatments are covered. It has determined that insurers must pay for, among other things, screenings to detect cancer and diabetes; statin medications to reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes; physical therapy for older adults to prevent falls; and eye ointment for newborns to prevent infections causing blindness. The law’s requirement of coverage for lung cancer screenings alone saves more than 10,000 lives each year, the Biden administration told the justices.

    This comes against a backdrop of otherwise excellent news for the Affordable Care Act: The reform law’s enrollment totals have reached all-time highs, and public-opinion research has found that the ACA has never been more popular.

    But as congressional Republicans eye measures that would make health security far more expensive, and Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices consider the future of preventive care policies, there are ominous clouds on the horizon.

    Link

  27. says

    Donald Trump and his defense attorneys did everything they could to derail sentencing in the president-elect’s criminal case, but in the end, they failed. As last week came to an end, the incoming Republican president avoided meaningful punishment, but he’ll nevertheless soon become the first convicted felon to serve in the Oval Office.

    The New York Times published an analysis noting that a rap sheet “was once a pretty-much-guaranteed disqualifier for the presidency,” which was true. […]

    Indeed, in the wake of Friday’s sentencing, it was hard not to think of something former Ambassador Nikki Haley told NBC News last February, at the height of the fight for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

    “I know the American people are not going to vote for a convicted criminal,” the South Carolinian said. There was simply “no way” this could happen, Haley added.

    […] but GOP primary and caucus voters rallied behind Trump — seemingly indifferent to his laundry list of scandals, controversies, civil disputes and criminal indictments — and just under half of the electorate endorsed the party’s nominee soon after.

    […] even after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of the his hush money scandal, and even after he was sentenced, Republican officials continued to rally behind Trump — who turned his criminal case into a fundraising opportunity.

    A few days before the president-elect’s sentencing, former Rep. Matt Gaetz told The Tampa Bay Times that he’s “starting to think about” running for governor in 2026, which followed weeks of related comments about his electoral ambitions. At face value, that seemed patently absurd given the devastating recent findings of the House Ethics Committee, which accused the Florida Republican of “regularly” paying women for sex during his tenure on Capitol Hill, using or possessing illegal drugs, accepting improper gifts, and even helping a woman he was having sex with obtain an expedited passport. (Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing and was never charged.)

    But a wide variety of Florida Republicans and prominent MAGA voices shrugged off the findings and said Gaetz might still be a viable GOP candidate for statewide office in the Sunshine State.

    Meanwhile, as this week gets underway, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice to lead to Pentagon, is poised to receive his first Senate confirmation hearing. The prospective nominee is a scandal-plagued former television personality, who has never led a large organization, who has written bizarre and conspiratorial books, and who has been burdened by a highly provocative ideology, but by all accounts, most Republican senators are prepared to vote to confirm him anyway.

    […] time to reassess what constitutes “career-ending” developments as the Republican Party enters its post-scandal phase. Jonathan Bernstein published a smart piece on this a couple of weeks ago:

    … I do not believe that Republicans or conservatives are any more prone to [scandals] than Democrats. What has changed, however, is the incentive structure. Once upon a time both parties were equally likely to rid themselves of bad actors; now Republicans are far more likely to tolerate, and in some cases even celebrate, behavior they once would have shunned.

    I don’t doubt that some observers will be quick to make “both sides” characterizations of the larger dynamic, but those assessments will fall short. When then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and then-New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez faced scandals, there were no efforts by the Democratic Party to look the other way, target prosecutors, or excuse their criminal allegations. Instead, Democrats showed them the door.

    Similarly, it’s inconceivable that Democrats would consider a presidential candidate with Trump’s background, a gubernatorial candidate with Gaetz’s record, or a defense secretary nominee burdened by the kind of controversies surrounding Hegseth.

    But in 2025, as the GOP becomes a post-scandal party, the informal partisan rules that define our politics have changed.

    Link

  28. says

    […] the larger “DOGE” endeavor [Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy] is apparently moving forward — in ways that are increasingly discouraging. The New York Times reported:

    An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting. As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.

    […] a group of private-sector executives will station themselves in actual federal agencies — working on a voluntary basis — for six-month stints.

    As for how the executives will be chosen, the Times’ report, which was based on “interviews with roughly a dozen people who have insight into DOGE’s operations,” added: “Mr. Musk’s friends have been intimately involved in choosing people who are set to be deployed to various agencies.”

    Collectively, they will effectively function as “a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats and share a loyalty to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy.”

    It’s worth pausing to appreciate just how bizarre these circumstances are. The world’s wealthiest individual and his pals will, according to the reported plan, deploy unpaid volunteers — who will apparently be accountable to no one — to hang out inside federal agencies for several months. The nature of their responsibilities remains murky, but their ostensible goal will be to look for ways to cut costs and make the actual departments more “efficient.”

    Why would federal employees and civil servants give these volunteers — private citizens with no legal authority — the time of day? Or let them into meetings? Or let them roam the halls? Your guess is as good as mine.

    What’s more, just to reemphasize, even if these unpaid billionaires, tech executives and Thiel disciples made dramatic recommendations about firing parts of the workforce and/or streamlining departmental work, “DOGE” isn’t a real department, so there’s no reason to believe the suggestions would amount to much.

    Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, spoke to a senior Republican aide last month who described Musk and Ramaswamy as “two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars.” The same aide predicted that the entire endeavor will likely end in “disaster.”

    The more the “DOGE” plan comes into focus, the easier it is to take that prediction seriously.

    Link

    Musk and Ramaswamy certainly seemed to be determined to stick their fingers into all the governmental pies.

  29. says

    Questionable tactics, as usual:

    Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders are reportedly discussing plans to connect relief funds for victims of the California wildfires to a plan to raise the federal debt ceiling. If the party goes through with this strategy, it would politicize the response to one of the worst natural disasters in recent history.

    Politico reports that the idea was discussed on Sunday during a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property during a meeting between Trump and Republican congressional caucus leaders and appropriators “with major influence.”

    The debt ceiling is the limit set by Congress on how much money the federal government can borrow from the U.S. Treasury to meet its financial obligations. Trump attempted to pressure Congress into eliminating the ceiling in December when a congressional spending bill was being debated but the provision was not included. Senate Majority Leader John Thune recently said Trump is upset about it and is pressuring congressional Republicans to make it happen. […]

    Tying California relief to debt ceiling demands echoes Trump’s approach to blue states when he was in the presidency. He and other Republicans attacked Democratic governors asking for federal help during the COVID-19 outbreak, and officials in his administration lobbied against helping those states during deployment of the COVID vaccine.

    By contrast, President Joe Biden deployed federal assistance to Republican-voting states who were hit by hurricanes at the end of 2024 and lobbied Congress for aid for those regions.

    Just days before he is inaugurated for a second term, Trump and Republicans are making clear that they intend to put partisanship ahead of uniting the country—even as catastrophic events unfold.

    Link

  31. says

    UPDATED numbers on the personnel currently battling the firestorms in Southern California:

    🧑‍🚒 15,000+ Personnel
    🪖 2,500+ California National Guard members
    🚒 1,390+ Fire Engines
    🚁 80+ Aircraft
    💧 160+ Water Tenders
    🚜 170+ Dozers

    Text quoted above is from:
    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pdzodi25542rh7boqoqwijqb/post/3lflalvxb722c

    Jonathan V Last, writing for The Bulwark:

    The Insurance Apocalypse

    Fire, money, and who gets burned.

    When California is finally able to start rebuilding from this disaster, it will probably require a wholesale reinvention of its current approach to property insurance. Here’s Noah Smith explaining the state’s recent evolution:

    In 1988, California voters passed a ballot proposition called Proposition 103, which says that if insurers want to raise their premiums, they have to get the raise approved by the government first. This means that if premiums go up, California voters will blame the insurance commissioner, who is democratically elected. So naturally, the commissioner tries to keep voters happy by forbidding insurance companies from charging higher premiums. In recent years, insurance companies have been begging California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to let them charge higher premiums in order to account for the increased risk of large fires, and for the reinsurance premiums they now have to pay. But Lara forbid them from doing so.

    What happened? Predictably, the insurance companies couldn’t afford to insure a lot of the people they used to insure. So insurers like State Farm started dropping tons of people in high-risk areas, including lots of the people who lived in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles—which just burned to the ground.

    California’s solution to this problem was to cover uninsurable people with a state plan called FAIR. FAIR can pay for big claims—like the ones about to come out of the L.A. fires—by charging insurance companies a surcharge based on their market share in the state of California. But this creates an incentive for insurers to just leave California entirely—or shrink their coverage in the state by a lot—in order to avoid getting charged by FAIR when there’s a huge disaster. So California homes are becoming increasingly uninsurable.

    This fire is going to stress-test FAIR. In order for the program to pass the test, it will have to (a) raise enough money to pay for the claims and (b) not burden insurance companies to such a degree that more of them leave the state. Because every time an insurer pulls out, it makes FAIR more vulnerable down the line.

  32. says

    Setting up a worsening situation:

    […] According to a Monday report from the Associated Press, these specialists [career civil servants who work on the National Security Council] have faced questions ranging from their political allegiances to whether they’ve ever made social media posts that could be seen as incriminating to Trump’s team. These experts are also reportedly getting grilled on who they voted for in last year’s presidential election and their past political contributions. This comes after the bureaucrats were told they’d be asked to continue their work under a new president.

    These loyalty tests are preposterous, in part, because Trump himself wouldn’t even pass muster—particularly the note about not having incriminating social media posts. Among other examples, in an August 2023 indictment that alleged Trump and his associates conspired to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, prosecutors cited Trump’s social media posts as evidence.

    […] the evidence suggests that Trump is hellbent on surrounding himself with MAGA loyalists.

    But the nonpolitical NSC officials, who are usually plucked by federal agencies and loaned to the White House temporarily, aren’t having this. In fact, according to AP, many have quit in response to the alleged tests.

    There’s been a push to, at the very least, keep these employees in place until Trump’s administration has a better handle on its far-ranging policy goals. But their leaving might be exactly what Trump’s new team wants.

    The president-elect’s choice for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, suggested in a recent interview with Breitbart he wanted to axe all nonpolitical appointees and career intelligence officials on the NSC by Inauguration Day, or Jan. 20. He said that this would help ensure that the department is staffed with people who are “100% aligned with the president’s agenda.” [JFC]

    […] Waltz was merely doubling down on a promise he’d made at least once before. In another post to social media last week, he wrote that “anyone” working in the NSC during Trump’s second White House stint would be “fully aligned with his America First Agenda.”

    […] Statements like this certainly aren’t a good look for Team Trump. After all, they’re already falling short of hiring goals. And it’s likely that the incoming administration’s […] vetting process, geared toward ensuring loyalty to Trump, will continue to slow the speed at which his administration can bring on fresh blood.

    Plus, a mass exodus of national security experts might not be a good look for the NSC or Trump, whose team is already tempering expectations regarding the president-elect’s once-promised foreign policy agenda.

    Link

  33. says

    […] CNN reports that Jennifer Rubin is the latest writer to leave the Washington Post: Jen Rubin exits Washington Post, joins Norm Eisen to launch new outlet countering ‘authoritarian threat’

    – Veteran opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin is becoming the latest in a long list of Washington Post figures to leave the troubled institution.

    – Rubin is partnering with former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen and launching something new: a startup publication called The Contrarian.

    – The startup’s tagline, “Not owned by anybody,” is a pointed reference to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other moguls who, in Rubin’s view, have “bent the knee” to President-elect Donald Trump.

    – “Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face,” Rubin told CNN in an interview ahead of the publication’s introduction.

    Rubin is not the just the co-founder, she will be editor-in-chief!

    And yes, that cartoon was the last straw:

    [Rubin] said a major factor in her exit was the Post’s recent refusal to publish a satirical cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes showing Bezos and others on bended knee.

    When I saw this, I immediately signed up (there is a free option; later on I will probably become a paid subscriber). Here’s a bit from their press release:

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Jen Rubin and Norm Eisen launched The Contrarian, a new independent media project unencumbered by corporate interests. The Contrarian will feature both political and cultural commentary in defense of democracy with multiple daily Substack columns, a YouTube channel, podcasts, and more. . . .

    “Our vision for The Contrarian is a defiant and uncompromising platform free from false equivalence,” said Eisen. “The voices we’ll be featuring are diverse across parties and generations, connected by the shared belief that we need an unshackled media in order to meet this moment, as we face an existential threat to American democracy.”

    In her first column, Jen explains why she quit the WaPo:

    Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post.

    […]

    https://contrarian.substack.com

  34. says

    Vance pisses off Jan. 6 apologists with comments on pardons

    Vice President-elect JD Vance promoted a debunked conspiracy theory about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, while trying to prove to Trump supporters that he is in agreement with those sympathetic to the attack.

    The problem began after Vance appeared on Fox News Sunday and said that Trump would not apply a blanket pardon to everyone involved in the riot.

    “If you protested peacefully on January the 6th, and you’ve had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member? You should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vance said. [X post and video are available at the link]

    This prompted a reaction from conservative commenters who are upset that Vance seemed to be backing away from Trump’s earlier promises.

    A typical response in this vein came from […] conservative podcasters The Hodge Twins, who wrote, “Video gets released of cops shooting innocent J6 protesters and @JDVance goes on Fox News and tells the world that only non violent protesters should get pardoned. Better rethink what you just said JD.”

    Vance responded and noted, “I donated to the to the J6 political prisoner fund and got ROASTED for it during my senate race. I’ve been defending these guys for years.”

    The incoming vice president then asserted, “There were federal informants in the crowd. Do they get a pardon? I don’t think so. The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback.”

    This is false: A December report released by the independent Justice Department inspector general’s office examined the agency’s response to Jan. 6 and determined that there were no FBI employees on the scene nor were any FBI informants authorized to participate in the attack.

    Conservatives—almost since the day of the attack, have sought to push the narrative that the people who attacked the Capitol were not Trump supporters, or that the so-called “deep state” was involved in provoking the attack. In fact, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has pushed similar conspiracies.

    Vance has a history of promoting fake stories that resonate with pro-Trump conservatives. During the recent presidential campaign, Vance joined Trump in alleging that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats. Both men pushed the claim even after it had been debunked by local officials and law enforcement.

    Vance’s decision to pander to Jan. 6 apologists by pushing this conspiracy again illustrates the likely problems he and Trump will have in the White House of trying to keep their extremist base happy. [I snipped details of Musk vs. Laura Loomer fight.]

    Despite the apparent conservative unity behind Trump, he and Vance will have to walk a tightrope with the increased scrutiny that will come from holding the presidency.

  35. says

    Rachel Maddow returns to MSNBC five nights a week for Trump’s first 100 days

    Rachel Maddow is returning to the anchor chair five nights a week.

    The MSNBC prime time star is expanding her on-air presence for the first 100 days of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, the network announced Monday, injecting what may be a much-needed ratings boost into the progressive outlet’s lineup.

    Maddow’s show, MSNBC’s highest rated program, has only aired once a week since 2022 when she stepped away to focus on other projects, including films, books and podcasts. Her temporary return to the anchor desk weeknights at 9 p.m. ET will see Alex Wagner, who currently anchors the timeslot Tuesday through Friday, deployed on special assignment to cover the impact of the president-elect’s policies.

    Starting next week, Wagner’s coverage will be featured across MSNBC’s shows and platforms, the network said. Maddow will also lead the network’s live special inauguration coverage on Jan. 20.

    “The moment we’re in requires us to cover the early days of the new administration from all over the country — from the nation’s capital, where policy is being implemented, to talking to those in key communities and constituencies impacted by those policies,” MSNBC President Rashida Jones said in a statement. “No one is better equipped to bring those stories from the field to MSNBC viewers than our intrepid Alex Wagner.”

    n an interview with USA Today, Maddow said the decision to shuffle the network’s prime time schedule was made by Jones, adding that Wagner “has been itching to get out there in the country and to cover what’s coming and the impact of what Trump is going to do in the second term on the ground, from a front-line perspective.” After the 100-day window, there will be a “hard stop,” Maddow said, with both returning to their previous schedules. […]

  37. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/gavin-newsom-launches-site-to-debunk

    “Gavin Newsom Launches Site To Debunk Wildfire Lies. Elon, Mel Gibson And MTG Launch More Lies.”

    As we have been tracking here at Wonkette, the misinformation or disinformation or whatever we’re calling it — oh hell, let’s just say “bullshit” so we don’t confuse anyone with technical distinctions — about the California wildfires has been flying around at the speed of light. Real journalism takes time and effort, particularly with a situation this chaotic. It is much more fun to sit on social media, retweeting every rumor that some rando made up on an obscure subreddit […]

    This is how you get the likes of intellectual voids like Elon Musk and LibsofTikTok and Donald Trump Jr. implying that of course these fires are historically destructive, the Los Angeles fire chief is a woman. And kind of butch at that! Also, the state insurance commissioner is gay! And California governor Gavin Newsom uses hair product like some sort of unmanly metrosexual! [ummm … Trump uses massive amounts of hair products]

    Partly to combat all this misinformation, Newsom’s staff set up a webpage on his site called “California Fire Facts,” and we find it utterly enraging that the likes of Musk and Republican Senator Mike Lee […] even made it necessary. [Screengrab at the link]

    […] Frankly, the city probably would be well-served to change zoning laws to allow for more density, it would help ease its housing crunch.

    But that’s not what Newsom is doing: [Screengrab at the link]

    Dinesh D’Souza is going to burn in hell for so, so, so very many things he has done in life.

    Something else Newsom’s team has done to try and counter the bullshit Musk has been spreading at levels that could fertilize all of America’s farmland is to actually let the giant baby have some one-on-one time with fire officials who can explain to him in very simple sentences why he is so goddamn wrong, and then hop on his own website, X, to reinforce that he’s wrong: [Screengrab at the link.]

    You can go watch the video if you want, but allow us to paraphrase it for you:

    ELON: I heard that water wasn’t available in the Pacific Palisades.

    FIRE DEPARTMENT PERSON: Untrue. Here’s how much water we had. It’s a large number. The demand was just so high due to reasons that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could easily learn if they are so inclined, which we know isn’t your thing, so here we are having to take time out away from this crisis to entertain your crap, you giant baby.

    ELON: Okay, thanks. (immediately goes back to tweeting that Gavin Newsom sucks)

    Musk was so impressed, he offered up a bunch of Cybertrucks outfitted with Starlink to re-establish internet in the area of the Palisades. Given how frequently we hear about Cybertrucks catching on fire, we think this was probably a less-than-ideal solution!

    On the other hand, Musk thinks the Cybertrucks are bulletproof in case any looters get any ideas: [Screengrab at the link.]

    Tommy guns! This is bad news for any LA thieves who are working for Bugsy Siegel or Jack Dragna in 1933.

    Beyond Musk, though, you have all sorts of idiots on TV spreading absurdities. Mel Gibson, for example, a guy who used to make kind of fun movies back in the 1980s and has since lost his mind, was on Fox News over the weekend hinting that California had deliberately limited its water supplies as part of a Democratic plot to depopulate the state:

    Speaking on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle on Friday night, the controversial actor told the show’s host there were any number of unanswered questions about the “convenient” circumstances surrounding the inferno in the Los Angeles area, wondering aloud whether the fires had been “commissioned” as part of a nefarious effort to move tenants off otherwise valuable land and property.

    “Do they want the state empty? I dunno,” Gibson told Laura Ingraham, who nodded along and said something about the state wanting to get rid of single-family homes and build high-density housing. How building more housing fits in with the idea that the mysterious forces that run the state are trying to depopulate the place remains unexamined, of course.

    Washed-up movie stars and ignorant industrialists don’t have a corner on the market of dumb. They have to share the space with elected officials who are not from California and also are dumb as rocks. Like Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who asked the most important question this weekend: why isn’t science rushing to make it rain? [Screengrab at the link.]

    Sure, cloud seeding is an idea, if there were any fucking clouds to seed. Part of the reason these fires have been so bad is because southern California has been in such a drought that it is drier than Ben Shapiro’s concept of the ideal vagina. (We read one day last week that the humidity over Los Angeles was eight percent, and even that sounded high.) No moisture in the air means no clouds containing water molecules that particles injected into said clouds can join with to make the droplets heavy enough to fall to Earth.

    Our question is why Marge isn’t simply praying to the Lord for rain. Isn’t that the usual solution?

    Or maybe Marge could get whoever is running the weather machine that threw a hurricane at western North Carolina a few months back to gin up another one? And if they can only spin it up on the East Coast, maybe Donald Trump could nuke the hurricane to nudge it to California so it can do the work of putting out the fires?

    Or maybe everyone could just shut up and let the people on the ground do the work. It’s a bold strategy that we happen to favor. There will be plenty of time for grandstanding congressional hearings later.

  38. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/pentagon-debates-what-to-do-about

    “Pentagon Debates What To Do About Illegal Orders From Cadet Bone Spurs”

    When cooking up an authoritarian stew, unpredictability is a key ingredient. Nobody knows what the fuck That Man will actually do once he gets into office in a week, maybe not even him. But the Pentagon has been trying to game out every possibility.

    What a goulash of contradictory mutterings! On the campaign trail and in his victory speech: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.” But, and, now he’s also said he won’t rule out using the military to take over allies Panama, or Greenland.

    And, he’s also vowed to use the military to deploy troops for mass deportations after declaring a “national emergency.” AND, he’s talked about using the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act to use the military to go after domestic “enemies from within,” like journalists, Democrats, and Liz Cheney, musing that “radical left lunatics” should be “very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

    Handled very easily, maybe not. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from being used as a domestic police force, and using the military to shoot American citizens would be an illegal order. But there are big loopholes: the Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military domestically under certain circumstances, and there’s seemingly no place for Congress or courts to intervene if he does, even if he decides to call up the National Guard for something plainly illegal like busting down every door looking for undocumented immigrants. And the Supreme Court has already said that anything he does is legal, by virtue of his office.

    National Guard troops are in principle under the command and control of a state’s governor, or under the command of the president in DC. But they’re paid from federal money, and can also be called up in “support of operations or missions undertaken by the member’s unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense.” A governor is not obligated to acquiesce to that request. But, some governors would, leaving open the real possibility that, say, National Guard troops under the control of governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia would agree to a request from Trump and SecDef Pete Hegseth to invade Maryland, and start a very real Civil War, 1861-style. That would not be technically illegal, and then what entity would stop it? Does the Pentagon have a plan for that? Let’s hope so!

    So what would be the review process if That Man orders the National Guard to open fire on protestors, as he was slobbering to do in DC during the protests over the murder of George Floyd? Who would conduct the review of the lawfulness of that order? The military has lawyers for this sort of thing, but lawyers don’t have the authority to demand anything. And does breaking the law even matter anymore, with a commander-in-chief who is a felon?

    Who would be the person give the order to disobey the order from the commander-in-chief? Certainly not Hegseth, should he be confirmed. Hegseth, who as Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth points out has managed fewer people than the manager of “the average Applebee’s,” has also been hot and horny to bring about a purge of the disloyal within the military and itching to start a civil war. From his book American Crusade: “The military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”

    Using the military for mass deportations would also be a big fucking problem, even if the target is not technically US citizens. The military is trained to pew pew pew at foreign enemies. It is not trained to keep domestic order, or to go door-to-door pulling undocumented abuelas out of their beds to go to camps and await deportation. This would involve a whole different rulebook, and training that the military doesn’t have. During the Senate hearing on mass deportations last month, retired General Randy Manner helpfully summarized some of the many other problems: you’re going to have a hard time recruiting for the military if the job description starts to encompass terrorizing one’s neighbors. You’ll have a tough time protecting the US from foreign adversaries if all of the soldiers are busy domestically trying to hunt down every person who overstayed a visa.

    So what could the military do to resist these orders that are illegal, but maybe also legal, because they are coming from the commander-in-chief? (A commander-in-chief who also would not be eligible to join the military because he is a felon, by the way.)

    The military is already quietly debating these questions, but the answers are not as settled as those of us who like to sleep at night would prefer. Military officers are already obligated to not follow illegal orders to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That would presumably apply even if the enemy of the Constitution is the commander-in-chief himself, and/or greasy Pete Hegseth, but things sure could get murky. There’s 1.3 million active military members, so there’s not going to be any such thing as an internal consensus on how to handle these kinds of questions. Hegseth would like to toss out all disloyalists from the military, but even the secretary of Defense couldn’t just up and dismiss half of the military.

    Military.com also reached out to Pentagon officials to ask what might happen if the military gets an illegal order, and the response was not reassuring, summed up as: “a landscape where few concrete legal protections exist to prevent an abuse of power by a president.”

    Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder emailed Military.com a statement that “lawyers are available to advise military leaders — including the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders — regarding the legal and prudential impacts of orders, as well as the legal effects and consequences such orders may have.”

    But, again, nobody’s under any kind of obligation to take the lawyers’ advice, the Supreme Court has made clear that no laws apply to the President, and even having Seal Team Six assassinate Liz Cheney in her bed would be legal.

    This is all setting up to be a real civil war inside the military, and hopefully not on on the streets, too, again. It’s fucking scary, man.

  39. says

    […] As the world moves ahead, America’s sinking into meanstupidness: Idaho Republicans have filed a resolution to repeal marriage equality. It carries no legal weight, they just want everybody to know they disapprove. Whatever, assholes. (Advocate)

    And Montana legislators heard the first anti-trans bill of the year, HB 121, which would ban transgender individuals from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identity in all publicly owned facilities across the state, from schools to libraries to museums and the capitol. Who’s going to be going around checking the genitals of people with short haircuts who go in the girls’ room? The bill does not say. The state has two trans legislators, Representatives SJ Howell and Zooey Zephyr. (Erin in the Morning) […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/girl-from-ipanema-goes-walking-tabs

  40. says

    […] Well this is nice! Starting on Jan. 22, Thailand will become the first South Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage […]

    Same link as in comment 39.

  41. says

    […] After years of demanding the cleanup of radioactive uranium waste on the Navajo Nation, the EPA will finally remove more than 1 million cubic yards of waste from sites about 20 miles northeast of Gallup, New Mexico, and is set to remove a million more. (AZ Central)

    The neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honour has earned the distinction of being the first extreme right-wing group to have its assets frozen by the UK government. The group was founded in 1987 by the lead singer for the skinhead rock band Skrewdriver, because he thought the other skinhead groups were not racist enough, fucking yikes. (BBC) […]

    Same link as in comment 39.

  42. says

    […] Charles Person, the youngest of the Freedom Riders, has died at 82. The Klan beat the shit out of him for not sitting at the back of a bus, he got his head bashed in with bats and pipes for not sitting in the colored section of an Alabama bus terminal, scarring him for life. In 2020, he co-founded the Freedom Riders Training Academy, an initiative to “teach people how to protest legally, effectively, peacefully.” (Washington Post archive link)

    There’s brave heroes, then there’s Heart-of-Markness Zuckerberg, who picked an $895,500 watch to wear when he announced all the new hate speech Meta is gonna allow now. (GQ)

    That Man’s [Trump’s] junk drawer of assorted under-qualified Putin suckups, greedy billionaires, and yeehawing Project 2025 villains begin their Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, here is the schedule. (AP)

    Oh boy, a New York appellate court said that Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News can go on ahead! Poor […] (NPR) […]

    Same link as in comment 39.

    Embedded links are available at the main link.

  43. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/hope-all-these-companies-canceling

    “Hope All These Companies Canceling DEI Policies Are Ready For The Lawsuits”

    Over the last few weeks, several corporations — McDonalds, Walmart, Ford, Meta, Amazon and more — have announced intentions to kill their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statements, programs, initiatives, etc., in hopes of winning over the hearts and minds of the [people] who elected Donald Trump president of the United States of America for a second time.

    DEI, of course, is just the latest in an endless series of moral panics over poorly understood civil rights-related terms and ideas and likely would have blown right over as soon as these creeps latched onto something new. Especially because, again, they don’t really know what it is. Most of them think it’s the same thing as affirmative action, which it is not. The people who start these hysterias, like Christopher Rufo, have openly admitted that they just want these terms to be a stand-in for everything that makes ignorant [people] mad.

    […] enough people have said “We would very much like to go back to living in a blatantly racist and segregated society” that corporations have decided they ought to be appeased.

    Meta announced several new developments last week, mostly centered on becoming more hostile to transgender workers and customers. They not only eliminated DEI, but got rid of tampons in the men’s room, deleted trans and non-binary themes from Messenger and announced they will no longer bar hate speech against transgender people or calling women “property,” the latter of which feels unsettlingly specific.

    Naturally, all the worst people in the world are rejoicing over this, thinking they’ve finally won the culture war against other kinds of people who insist on existing and having jobs where they don’t have to deal with rampant discrimination and harassment.

    Except the thing is, DEI […] programs weren’t implemented simply because these corporations actually gave a damn, or because they were virtue-signaling or even because they wanted to appease the Left. They were implemented because they helped the companies’ bottom lines in a variety of ways, including by helping them avoid discrimination lawsuits.

    […] Big, soulless corporations were not earnestly fighting the good fight for minorities, but rather trying to make and keep more money. Just like they always are.

    As Costco board member Jeff Raikes has explained, “Attacks on DEI aren’t just bad for business—they hurt our economy. A diverse workforce drives innovation, expands markets, and fuels growth.”

    That’s not bullshit, actually. According to several studies cited by LinkedIn:

    – 60% of respondents in a LinkedIn study said that diversity within their sales team has contributed to their teams’ success.

    – Organizations in the top quartile for gender diversity have a +25% likelihood of financially outperforming their peers.

    – Organizations in the top quartile for ethnic diversity have a +36% likelihood of financial outperformance.

    – Diverse companies earn 2.5x higher cash flow per employee.

    – Inclusive teams are over 35% more productive.

    – Employers that posted about diversity saw 26% more applications from women than employers who posted less.

    None of this should be especially surprising. Obviously diverse workplaces are going to come up with more diverse ideas and obviously people are going to perform better when they feel included […]

    Then there are the lawsuits. Now, granted, there has been an increase in so-called “reverse discrimination” lawsuits in the wake of the DEI hysteria, but the vast majority of them have been deemed unfounded and were not successful. The fact is, even with DEI initiatives, many of these companies have been successfully sued for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, LGBTQ+ discrimination and racial discrimination.

    Amazon, in particular, has a truly startling number and variety of discrimination and harassment lawsuits against it. Ford had to settle a $10 million racial and gender discrimination lawsuit in 2017.

    McDonald’s, which announced last week that it would be ending its use of DEI programs, initially implemented them in response to sexual harassment and racial discrimination lawsuits from both employees and franchisees.

    Diversity in and of itself actually reduces the likelihood that discrimination or harassment will occur. […]

    The things that make people angry about DEI are the reasons these programs need to exist to begin with. […]

    One of the most common forms DEI efforts take is requiring that companies interview a diverse slate of applicants — which makes sense, given the fact that it remains true that people with white-sounding names are more likely to be called in for interviews than those with Black-sounding names. […] while the anti-DEI crowd cries about “merit,” these programs actually ensure that merit is what matters. They also ensure that companies don’t lose good workers because those workers don’t want to deal with harassment or discrimination.

    On the bright side, corporations eliminating DEI initiatives will really help out those who are suing their employers for discrimination or harassment, as doing so is blatant evidence that the company actively does not want to create a workplace culture that is diverse, inclusive and in which people are treated equally and fairly. […]

  44. says

    Judge to allow release of Jack Smith’s report on Trump election interference case. Video at the link.

    “The section of Jack Smith’s report that deals with Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss could be released as soon as Tuesday.”

    Federal Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday denied a request to extend an injunction banning the Justice Department from releasing a volume of a report former special counsel Jack Smith issued on President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

    The ruling from U.S. District Court Aileen Cannon means that the Justice Department could release the portion of the Smith report that deals with Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss as soon as midnight, barring future legal action from Trump or his team. She kept in place a prohibition on releasing the portion of the report about the classified document case, which the Justice Department said it didn’t intend to release at this point.

    The Justice Department still has a pending motion before the 11th Circuit asking to release the portion of the report about Jan. 6 immediately, but the court has yet to rule on that motion.

    Smith resigned from his position on Friday, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has told Congress he will release the volume of the report that deals with Trump’s 2020 efforts when he is legally allowed to do so. The volume of the report that deals with Trump’s handling of classified documents will not be released because two co-defendants are still facing charges.

    The long-awaited report into Trump’s election interference efforts in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is expected to come out just days before Trump takes the oath of office.

    Trump was indicted on four federal felony charges in connection with his attempts to overturn his election loss, but the case was stymied by delay tactics and was ultimately dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

    As for the portion of the report about classified documents, Cannon said she would hold a hearing on Friday about whether that section of the report can be shared with select members of Congress.

  45. says

    What to know about the California wildfires
    – Santa Ana winds are set to cause critical fire conditions over the next three days across parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, as the region continues to battle historic and deadly blazes.

    – The wind-fed wildfires have killed at least 24 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the Greater Los Angeles area, destroying entire communities and more than 12,300 structures.

    – The largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, has burned over 23,000 acres and was only 14% contained as it threatened Brentwood, Encino and Westwood.

    – Evacuation orders are in effect for 92,000 L.A. residents, and 89,000 are in evacuation warning zones, which means they may need to leave at a moment’s notice. […]

    Financial analysts at Wells Fargo Securities say they are now estimating insured losses of about $30 billion from the Los Angeles County wildfires.

    […] This weekend, evacuation orders for the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, expanded. It was 14% contained as of Monday morning and threatens Brentwood, Encino and Westwood. […]

    President Biden said he has been “frequently briefed” on the recovery efforts in Southern California and has “directed our team to respond promptly to any request for additional federal firefighting assistance.”

    The statement added that under Biden’s direction, “hundreds of federal personnel and unique federal aerial and ground support” have been sent to help firefighting efforts and communities suffering from the fires […]

    Link

  46. JM says

    Institute for the Study of War: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 12, 2025

    The Ukrainian General staff reported on January 12 that Ukrainian forces conducted a high-precision airstrike on the command post of Russia’s 2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA] (Central Military District) in Novohrodivka, Donetsk Oblast.
    South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed that Ukrainian forces captured two North Korean soldiers during combat operations in Kursk Oblast on January 9.
    Russian forces recently advanced in the Kupyansk, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Kurakhove directions.

    The Ukrainians continue to advance slowly in Kursk but the Russians simply have more troops to throw at the line and are making more slow advances across multiple fronts. Both sides are short of troops but Russia can afford to lose more. Both sides are obviously preparing for the transition in power in the US and the uncertainty over what happens after. Ukraine may be forced to depend on Europe more. Russia is trying to tidy things up so they can impose an abusive settlement on Ukraine.

  47. Reginald Selkirk says

    Skull long thought to be Cleopatra’s sister’s was actually a young boy

    Scientists have demonstrated that an ancient human skull excavated from a tomb at Ephesos was not that of Arsinoë IV, half-sister to Cleopatra VII. Rather, it’s the skull of a young male between the ages of 11 and 14 from Italy or Sardinia, who may have suffered from one or more developmental disorders, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Arsinoë IV’s remains are thus still missing…

    Archaeologists have been excavating the ancient city of Ephesus for more than a century. The Octagon was uncovered in 1904, and the burial chamber was opened in 1929. That’s where Joseph Keil found a skeleton in a sarcophagus filled with water, but for some reason, Keil only removed the cranium from the tomb before sealing it back up. He took the skull with him to Germany and declared it belonged to a likely female around 20 years old, although he provided no hard data to support that conclusion.

    It was Hilke Thur of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who first speculated that the skull may have belonged to Arsinoë IV, despite the lack of an inscription (or even any grave goods) on the tomb where it was found. Old notes and photographs, as well as craniometry, served as the only evidence. The skull accompanied Keil to his new position at the University of Vienna, and there was one 1953 paper reporting on craniometric measurements, but after that, the skull languished in relative obscurity. Archaeologists at the University of Graz rediscovered the skull in Vienna in 2022. The rest of the skeleton remained buried until the chamber was reopened and explored further in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was no longer in the sarcophagus…

    Anthropologist Gerhard Weber of the University of Vienna led this latest analysis of the skull, as well as a recovered femur and rib believed to be from the original skeleton…

    The team was able to date the skull to between 36 and 205 BCE, consistent with Arsinoë IV’s death in 41 BCE. And the genetic results confirmed that the skull and femur samples were from the same individual, although the results for the rib were inconclusive. But those results also showed a Y chromosome, meaning that the individual was male and, therefore, not the Egyptian queen. The boy’s genetics are consistent with Italian or Sardinian lineage…

    The CT scan and morphological analysis showed that the boy was between 11 and 14 years old when he died, based on dental roots and a skull base that was still developing. There were also several distinctive abnormalities, such as a closed cranial suture that typically only fuses around age 65. This gives the skull an asymmetrical shape. The upper jaw was underdeveloped and had a downward angle that would have made it quite difficult to chew effectively. One of the two remaining teeth showed no wear at all, while the other was cracked and worn down from overuse. There were no signs of illness in the femur and rib…

  48. says

    Texas governor abandons federal code to raise flag for Trump

    Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced on Monday that he is ordering flags to be flown full-staff on Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, a blatant disregard of federal code that says flags should be flown half-staff for 30 days after a current or former president dies.

    Adhering to flag code, President Joe Biden ordered the flags to be flown half-staff on Dec. 29, the day former President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100. That means the flags should be lowered during Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

    But Trump has whined about the fact that flags will be lowered when he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office […]

    “The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration,” Trump moaned on Truth Social on Jan. 3, incorrectly using the “half mast” term, which applies to flags on ships. “They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves. … Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    In that statement, the “nobody” Trump is referring to is likely himself, as the narcissist in chief can’t handle not being the center of attention.

    And now Abbott is appeasing his Dear Leader Trump by raising the flags in Texas on inauguration day.

    “On January 20, our great nation will celebrate our democratic tradition of transferring power to a new President by inaugurating the 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. As we unite our country and usher in this new era of leadership, I ordered all flags to be raised to full-staff at the Texas Capitol and all state buildings for the inauguration of President Trump,” Abbott said in a statement. “While we honor the service of a former President, we must also celebrate the service of an incoming President and the bright future ahead for the United States of America.”

    In the announcement about his decision, Abbott cited a part of flag code that said flags should be “displayed on all days,” including Inauguration Day. But flying a flag half-staff is still displaying the flag, so there’s no need to raise it fully and ignore Biden’s proclamation.

    There’s also precedent for flags being flown half-staff during an inauguration.

    In 1973, Richard Nixon was sworn in with the flags half-staff following the death of former President Harry S. Truman.

    By raising the flags when Trump is sworn in, Abbott is just trying to remain in the good graces of his buddy Donald. We’ll see if other GOP governors follow suit.

    How about the disrespect shown to Jimmy Carter?

  49. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/gop-swears-pete-hegseth-is-clean

    “GOP Swears Pete Hegseth Is Clean As A Whistle Ahead Of Confirmation Hearing, And Would They Lie? (Yes.)”

    […] Pete Hegseth gets his turn in the confirmation barrel on Tuesday [tomorrow], when the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a hearing about whether or not the United States should put this (reportedly!) drunk […] in charge of the world’s largest bureaucracy, the Department of Defense, with its three million often heavily armed employees.

    Considering that Hegseth’s previous management experience in any organization had him overseeing about as many people as Wonkette managed as a shift leader at Starbucks 30 years ago, the answer would seem to be an obvious, loud, giant, emphatic NO.

    There are innumerable other clear reasons why Hegseth shouldn’t be in charge of anything larger than a tandem bicycle, which we won’t rehash here. (Though you can read some of the reasons here and here and here. And here. And don’t forget here. [Embedded links are available at the main link.]) But as befits the seriousness and size of the job, he is getting the same vetting that Cabinet nominees always get.

    Ha ha ha, like hell he is. The FBI did produce a background check that as of Monday, had only been read by the Republican chair and Democratic ranking member of the SASC. Normally all the senators on the committee would get to read whatever goodies the FBI turned up on the nominee […]

    Not to fear, however, because Punchbowl is ON IT:

    Republicans on SASC who have been briefed say that the report is unremarkable. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told reporters on Friday that she doesn’t expect other senators will be permitted to read it before the hearing.

    Tammy Duckworth also said that Hegseth has less management experience than a person running your average Applebee’s. […]

    But hey, if the Republicans who haven’t read the report but have only been briefed on it say it is “unremarkable,” that’s good enough for us! It’s not as if these guys have any reason to lie! And it’s not as if Republicans have ever short-armed an investigation on a controversial nominee for a high government position, cough cough Brett Kavanaugh cough.

    […] a nominee normally fills out questionnaires and other paperwork meant to turn up ethics and financial issues and conflicts of interest. Plus this:

    Typically, a nominee meets first with the committee chair, then the ranking member from the minority party, then other members of the committee, before moving outward toward other important senators. Hegseth has done barely any of this.

    Hegseth and his team have only just turned in those questionnaires a few days ago. If it seems like a red flag that Hegseth, despite all the resources at his disposal, needed two months to turn in this paperwork, and now Republicans seem to be rushing to confirm him while giving senators and their staffs almost no time to read through it, well, that’s because it is a red flag.

    […] One “moderate Republican” told Traister that he didn’t think Hegseth would get confirmed if the vote was a secret ballot. But it is not a secret ballot, and it has been made crystal clear to senators what will happen if they defy Trump and don’t give him every nominee he wants without delay:

    In November, a senior Trump adviser told ABC News that the president’s message to Republican lawmakers was “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary” and that “there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.” [Joni] Ernst’s receptivity to Hegseth came in the same days that Musk visited Capitol Hill with Vivek Ramaswamy and crowed about keeping “naughty” and “nice” lists of Republican lawmakers. “The Musk money, that’s real,” said one Senate aide, describing the bind that Republicans are in. [Corruption is real.]

    Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa and actual combat veteran, was at first not shy about saying she had some serious concerns about Hegseth as secretary of Defense. Now she seems to have relented quite a bit based on absolutely nothing other than her own political survival instincts […]

    Some in MAGA world are celebrating that some Republicans told Punchbowl that Hegseth’s background check was “unremarkable.” Well, again, if those guys said it, by all means go ahead and start spiking the football, there’s absolutely no chance it might bounce back up and slam you […]

  50. Reginald Selkirk says

    Elon Musk Promotes Video Claiming He Saved ‘Thousands of Lives’ From Wildfires

    Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest human being, has enormous resources at his disposal to provide relief for those struggling around the world. So when Musk saw the good people of Los Angeles enduring wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people, he jumped into action. Well, he did the billionaire oligarch’s version of jumping into action.

    Musk sent eight Cybertrucks with some Red Vines, bottled water, and oranges to local police stations. The Cybertrucks included Starlink internet to provide some service to people in the immediate area. And the billionaire shared a video on X about how he supposedly saved “thousands of lives” from the wildfires. Seriously.

    “Apologies to those expecting Cybertruck deliveries in California over the next few days,” Musk tweeted Sunday. “We need to use those trucks as mobile base stations to provide power to Starlink Internet terminals in areas of LA without connectivity. A new truck will be delivered end of week.” …

  51. says

    Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai decried the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan as “gender apartheid” on Sunday and urged Muslim leaders to speak out against the Taliban government’s repressive policies on women and girls’ education.

    “Simply put, the Taliban in Afghanistan do not see women as human beings,” she said, speaking in Islamabad during a summit on advancing girls’ education in Islamic countries, organized by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Muslim World League.

    The Pakistani education activist added there was “nothing Islamic” about the government’s policies, which ban teenage girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and women from attending university.

    Yousafzai, 27, also urged the attendees, which included dozens of ministers and scholars from Muslim nations, to “openly challenge and denounce” the Taliban by recognizing gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under international criminal law.

    “In Afghanistan, an entire generation of girls will be robbed of its future,” she said. “As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voice, use your power.” […]

    No foreign government has formally recognized the Taliban due to its restrictive stance on women, while the United Nations has repeatedly denounced the government.

    While gender apartheid has not yet been formally codified in international law, women activists, experts and the women’s movement in Afghanistan contend that the Taliban’s rule over the past three years has shown clear characteristics of the practice, Yari said.

    Legal experts define gender apartheid as the “systemic, institutionalized discrimination and segregation of individuals based on their gender, designed to maintain male dominance by controlling women.”

    In September 2023, the international legal expert and civil society representative Karima Bennoune told the U.N. Security Council that “what has been tried since the Taliban returned to power is not working” and urged the U.N. to wield all available measures to induce the Taliban to reverse its course.

    She added that codifying the crime into international law would be one of the most effective ways to do so.

    Link

    Photos and more details are available at the link.

  52. says

    USA Today:

    […] January’s full wolf moon reaches peak illumination Monday, Jan. 13 at 5:27 p.m. EST.

    As a bonus, on the night of the full Moon, the moon will pass in front of Mars and be visible to most of the continental United States, NASA says. […]

  54. Reginald Selkirk says

    Creation Museum/Ark Encounter Ex-Staffer And Church Worship Leader Arrested On Child Sex Charges

    Cincinnati’s NBC affiliate reports:

    A Northern Kentucky man is facing dozens of charges, including sexual abuse and sodomy. According to the Boone County Sheriff’s Office, a victim reported in late December that he had been sexually abused for several years by an adult male.

    Investigators alleged that Michael Howard, 36, of Burlington, sent text messages of a sexual nature to the victim in the spring of 2020, before multiple occasions of sexual abuse and sodomy began. The sheriff’s office said the victim, who was a minor when the alleged abuse began, worked for Howard starting in the fall of 2019.

    Howard was arrested on Thursday. He is facing 40 counts of sexual abuse and 40 counts of sodomy. Howard was taken to the Boone County Jail and held on a $250,000 bond.

    The Roys Report reports:

    A Kentucky worship leader associated with Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky is in jail after confessing to sexually abusing a teenager for several years, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said.

    Howard is listed on social media as part of TrueSong, the resident artist of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, founded by Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham. The sheriff’s office said Howard and the victim also attended the same church.

    Social media sites show Howard attended Florence Baptist Temple in Burlington, Kentucky, where he served on the worship team. When contacted and asked if Howard was still affiliated with the church’s worship team, a church official declined to comment.

    Anti-LGBTQ hater Ken Ham blocked me on Twitter ages ago or I’d be asking him about this today.

  55. Reginald Selkirk says

    Hamas expected to release 33 hostages in first phase of emerging deal, Israeli officials say

    Hamas is expected to release 33 hostages during the first phase of an emerging ceasefire agreement being finalized by negotiators in Doha, two Israeli officials said.

    Israel believes that most of the 33 hostages are alive, a senior Israeli official told reporters on Monday, but the bodies of dead hostages will also likely be among those released during the initial 42-day ceasefire. Hamas and its allies still hold 94 hostages taken from Israel during the attacks of October 7, 2023, at least 34 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli government.

    The senior Israeli official said that the parties appear to be on the verge of an agreement and that Israel is prepared to immediately implement the deal once it has been inked…

  56. Reginald Selkirk says

    Oil tanker sabotage crew were poised to cut more cables when caught, Finland says

    Crew on board an oil tanker accused of sabotaging undersea power and communications cables in the Baltic Sea were poised to cut other cables and pipelines when Finnish authorities boarded the vessel last month, the head of the Finnish investigation said…

    The head of the investigation, Risto Lohi of the National Bureau of Investigation, told Reuters the vessel was threatening to cut a second power cable, Estlink1, and the BalticConnector gas pipe between Finland and Estonia at the time it was seized.

    “There would have been an almost immediate danger that other cables or pipes related to our critical underwater infrastructure could have been damaged,” he said.

    Lohi said a ninth crew member from the ship had been added to a list of those being treated as suspects and barred from travelling. Finland announced earlier this month that eight of the 24 crew members were being barred from travel. The captain of the ship is Georgian and the crew are citizens of India and Georgia…

  58. Reginald Selkirk says

    Climate activists deface Darwin’s grave at London’s Westminster Abbey

    Climate activists from Just Stop Oil painted over the grave of British naturalist Charles Darwin at London’s Westminster Abbey on Monday.
    Two activists entered Westminster Abbey – Britain’s site for royal weddings, coronations, burials and a major tourist attraction – on Monday morning and used spray chalk on Darwin’s grave, the campaign group said in a statement…

    The church confirmed the incident in a statement.
    “The Abbey’s conservators are taking immediate action to clean the memorial and do not anticipate that there will be any permanent damage,” a spokeswoman said.
    “The police were called to the scene and dealt with the incident. The Abbey remains open for visiting and worshipping.”
    London’s Metropolitan Police said two women had been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage at Westminster Abbey and taken to a central London police station…

    These sorts of protest are ineffective. The only thing they are convincing me of is that they are out of touch assholes.

  59. Reginald Selkirk says

    Alien-like US spy drone dodges Russian jamming, powering Ukraine’s defense

    United States-based defense technology firm Shield AI has announced that its alien-like vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) V-BAT drone demonstrated its ability to electronic warfare countermeasures in Ukraine.

    Shield AI also stated that the V-BAT has crossed 23 deployments, including the ones operational in Ukraine, as it delivers “Group 5 capability at Group 3 costs.”…

    “In Ukraine, V-BAT demonstrated resilience against electronic warfare, showcasing autonomy in the toughest conditions and completing the first successful long-endurance, long-duration ISR and targeting mission while GPS and comms were jammed,” the company said in its year-ender newsletter published on December 31, 2024…

  63. says

    New York Times:

    Canada is sending air tankers and dozens of its own battle-tested wildland firefighters to Los Angeles, its government said. […] Mexico quickly followed, dispatching a crew of firefighters early Saturday to help the huge deployment already underway. […]

    Sounds to me like Canada and Mexico are being good neighbors.

  64. JM says

    Reuters: Tougher US sanctions to curb Russian oil supply to China and India

    Chinese and Indian refiners will source more oil from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, boosting prices and freight costs, as new U.S. sanctions on Russian producers and ships curb supplies to Moscow’s top customers, traders and analysts said.
    The U.S. Treasury on Friday imposed sanctions on Russian oil producers Gazprom Neft (SIBN.MM)
    , opens new tab and Surgutneftegas, as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, targeting the revenues Moscow has used to fund its war with Ukraine.

    China has already turned away some Russian ships. As an export economy they can’t afford to anger the US and EU at the same time so have to at least loosely go along. There are ways around the restrictions but they have limited capacity and China doesn’t want to pay too much when they can get oil from the middle east.
    This will be bad for Russia as they need the money. They are showing signs of running out of money to finance their war in Ukraine. Russia has hit the point that one of the most likely way they lose in Ukraine is economic collapse.

  65. says

    NBC News:

    President Joe Biden announced Monday that his administration had approved student loan relief for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the total number who have had their student debt cancelled under the Biden administration to over 5 million, he said in a White House release.

  66. says

    New York Times:

    After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases have been dropping. Nationwide, the rate of kindergartners with complete records for the measles vaccine declined from around 95 percent before the pandemic to under 93 percent last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox fell similarly.

  67. Reginald Selkirk says

    NATO’s newest member comes out swinging following latest Baltic Sea cable attack

    Sweden has committed to sending naval forces into the Baltic Sea following yet another suspected Russian attack on underwater cables in the region.

    The deployment of three warships and a surveillance airplane from NATO’s newest member to assist the bloc’s attempts to prevent more subsea cable sabotage marks Sweden’s first such foray, but Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has suggested it may hardly be the last.

    “Sweden is not at war. But there is no peace either,” Kristersson said in a speech over the weekend at Sweden’s annual defense conference in Sälen. “Sweden has changed. From being a little too often a blue-eyed idealist on the sidelines, to becoming a realist in the center of events.”

    While touching on a series of Russia-related issues in his speech, Kristersson’s address centered on damage to two subsea cables in the Baltic owned by Finnish telecom firm Elisa and the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 subsea power line in late December…

    CROWN PRINCESS VICTORIA DOING HER NATIONAL SERVICE IN SWEDEN – 18 MAR 2003

  68. says

    NBC News:

    The Biden administration will hold off enforcing a requirement laid out in an executive order this month that Nippon Steel abandon its $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel, the companies said on Saturday.

  69. says

    New York Times:

    The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of ‘a coordinated, military-style attack’ by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report released Friday.

  70. says

    New York Times:

    There is no maternity leave for members of Congress. While they can take time away from the office without sacrificing their pay, they cannot vote if they are not present at the Capitol. So [Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado] has taken a lead role in a new push by a bipartisan group of younger lawmakers and new parents in Congress to change the rules to allow them to vote remotely while they take up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

  71. says

    Trump Pulls A New Fixation Out Of Thin Air And House GOP Runs Off The Cliff With It

    […] Trump mumbles about something in public (or all caps screams about it on Truth Social). The MTGs [Marjorie Taylor Greene’s] of the world turn his vision into incoherent or impassable legislation. The proposals go nowhere — and often do some work in exposing the Republican Party’s dysfunction in Congress along the way — but they succeed in helping to make a news cycle out of Trump’s most deranged fixations. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    The difference this time is that Republicans have a trifecta and some of the most unserious stuff currently being utilized as a performative loyalty test for Trump’s imperialist hallucinations could actually make a dent.

    Take Trump’s ongoing fixation with the idea that the U.S. could somehow purchase Greenland once Trump is sworn in in a few days. Trump has been raising the idea for some time and recently outlined this and other half-baked visions for an expansive American empire during a “foreign policy” press conference last week.

    Just a few days later, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced legislation that would give the president the authority to “seek to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark to secure the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.” The bill is cartoonishly titled the “Make Greenland Great Again Act” and was first reported by Fox News. Ogles has 10 co-sponsors joining him in proposing the bill.

    While Danish and Greenlandic leaders have vocally criticized, condemned and combatted the notion that the U.S. should acquire Greenland, Trump has not backed down, and has even suggested that using some kind of economic or military force to pull it off may be on the table.

    In the same press conference last week, Trump outlined other imperialist priorities for his administration, like acquiring the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

    In turn, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Dusty Johnson (R-SC) both introduced proposals to legislatively move those fever dreams along. Greene introduced a bill that would change the name of the gulf to the “Gulf of America” on maps and other official documents in the U.S. Johnson introduced a bill that would authorize the beginning of talks about purchasing the canal.

  73. says

    Fox News replaces mild Trump critic with MAGA zealot

    Fox News Channel announced on Monday that the weekday time slot previously held by anchor Neil Cavuto, who had expressed some mild criticism of Donald Trump over the years, would be taken over by conservative commentator Will Cain. Cain has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, attacked Democrats, and expressed racist opinions on air.

    Cavuto abruptly left the network at his longtime 4 PM ET show in December. Cavuto was not much of a Trump critic, but he did promote vaccination after he contracted COVID-19, and had sometimes asserted factual information counter to misinformation offered up by Trump and other conservative figures.

    Fox announced that Cain would take over Cavuto’s old time slot starting Jan. 21.

    “Will Cain brings years of experience to the 4 PM hour as an accomplished broadcaster and a lawyer and we look forward to adding his insights to what will no doubt be another historic news cycle ahead this year,” Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

    Scott did not, however, mention Cain’s track record of falsehoods, attacks, and smears from his time as a commentator and host on the network.

    In 2023, following the right-wing Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in higher education, Cain praised the outcome and said, “I find it affirming today that the Supreme Court of the United States rejected critical race theory.” […]

    On his Fox News podcast, Cain said in 2021 that doctors had been “captured by groupthink” because they recommended vaccination to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

    [I snipped insult directed at Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.]

    In a 2023 discussion, […] he also said Biden was “seemingly pushing us toward a race war.”

    […] In response to the Boy Scouts of America changing their name to Scouting America for the stated purpose of being more inclusive as girls were welcomed into the program, Cain proclaimed, “The Boy Scouts are dead.”

    […] When the Department of Justice announced that they would investigate Ticketmaster for antitrust issues after fans were locked out of purchasing concert tickets for Taylor Swift, Cain claimed—without evidence—that the action was retribution against the conservative CEO of Ticketmaster’s parent company.

    [I snipped Cain’s comments.]

    Fox News, which was created to advance a conservative message, has long been in the tank for Trump. But the move to replace Cavuto with a figure like Cain further cements the network’s reputation as Trump’s most reliable media ally. [and as a purveyor of lies, misogyny, and anti-vaccine misinformation … perfect]

    Cain wears a cowboy hat. Cowboys used to have a reputation as people who tell it like it is when it comes to facts. (Possibly just part of the myth, but still a potent concept.) Cain dishonors the hat he wears.

  75. Bekenstein Bound says

    Anyone else getting a bad feeling about this sudden rash of cable sabotage events? Like, a “World War III is imminent” kind of bad feeling?

  82. KG says

    Musk has called for the overthrow of the UK government, said Starmer should be in prison for covering up the crimes of “grooming gangs” who systematically raped and otherwise assaulted and exploited underage girls, and whose members were in a number of cases men of Pakistani origin (which Starmer did not do – on the contrary, while he was Director of Public Prosecutions he made it easier to charge such men), and called cabinet minister Jess Phillips a “genocide rape apologist” (an even more ludicrous lie), leading to multiple death threats against her. He has also called for the racist thug “Tommy Robinson” (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) to be released from prison, claiming he is there for publicising these grooming gangs (in fact, he’s there for contempt of court, having breached an injunction not to repeat lies about a teenage refugee who was the victim in an assault case) – and Musk himself has repeated the same lies by spreading Yaxley-Lennon faux “documentary” about the case.

    In response, Starmer has said, in a press conference about AI – which he’s now decided is the key to producing productivity gains and hence economic growth in the stagnant UK economy:

    We will work with anybody in this sector, by the way, whether it is Elon Musk or anybody else

    Handing over your lunch money to the bully before he even demands it doesn’t generally stop his bullying.

  84. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scientists Suspect Newly Discovered Mosasaur Fossil Is a Forgery

    In 2021, scientists identified a new mosasaur species upon the discovery of a Cretaceous-period jaw with unusual teeth in a Moroccan mine. There’s only one problem—the remains may have been forged.

    Researchers in Canada have raised doubts about the authenticity of the fossil used to identify and describe a new species of extinct marine reptile, Xenodens calminechari, in 2021. Their analysis, detailed in a December 16 study published in The Anatomical Record, highlights inconsistencies within the previous research and calls for new CT scans of the jaw to confirm its validity.

    If their doubts prove to be true, it “should be established in the published literature that this is a fake,” Henry Sharpe of the University of Alberta, who led the recent study, told Live Science…

  85. birgerjohansson says

    KG @ 82
    The way to stop a bully is to (REDACTED) kneecaps with an iron bar and (REDACTED) his (REDACTED) and (REDACTED).

  86. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: birgerjohansson @85:

    C’mon, this is the fifth time reminding you of Lynna’s rule, after 12-14, 11-18, 02-14, 02-27. Each time, I’ve linked to the one prior.

    I even tried to head off what you just did here: “There’s no specific letter of the law which would allow you to add veils until you find the line to dance on while violating the spirit.” (my words not hers).

  87. says

    Followup to comment 35.

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Maddow is on every evening now. You can find recent segments from yesterday’s show at the link above. There’s a good discussion about to begin recovery from the wildfires in California.

    In a different segment, Rachel covers Trump’s recent comments, including his backing off the claim that he “won on groceries” and his pledge to lower grocery prices (which he now says he can’t do because it is hard); pretty much ditto for his claims that he would end the war in Ukraine “one day after he was elected” (now he says he will try for “six months”); and ditto for a $2 trillion cut in federal spending (which Trump said no one would notice, and now they are talking about cutting funds from health care and social security, policies which Trump did not run on.) Maddow points how how “incoherent” the whole Trump show is.

    There’s also a “blunt” assessment of the transition efforts. And more.

  88. says

    CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @86, thank you.

    birger @86: You should not fantasize about violence when posting in The Infinite Thread, nor should you propose that others do violence. The rule holds even if you are speaking metaphorically or jokingly. The rule holds even if you include “redacted” in place of specifics.

  89. says

    [Trump] made a provocative prediction in 2020. “If he’s [Biden’s] elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump claimed pointing at his Democratic rival.

    Soon after, Biden won anyway. In the years that followed, the stock market fared very well, delivering impressive returns for investors.

    Trump’s rhetoric wasn’t based on anything real or substantive; he apparently just hoped to scare voters into re-electing him. It didn’t work.

    More than four years later, Trump is confronting a related problem. NBC News reported on the fading post-Election Day rally in stock prices.

    Prior to the opening bell Monday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down as much as 1%, while the broader S&P 500 was off 0.65% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was poised to open 0.10% lower. Officially, S&P 500 futures opened below their levels on Nov. 6, 2024, the day after the election, for the first time.

    The same report added that the president-elect hoped his recent victory “would set off a new cycle of business optimism and continue the record-high stock prices seen under the Biden administration.” With less than a week remaining before Inauguration Day, that hasn’t happened.

    […] markets have struggled because of interest rates and Federal Reserve forecasts, not political agendas.

    The trouble for the president-elect, however, is that he can’t have it both ways.

    The week before Christmas 2023, Trump was on the campaign trail in Iowa ahead of the first GOP nominating contest of the 2024 cycle. The frontrunner acknowledged that the stock market was soaring, and he demanded credit: To hear Trump tell it, the “only” reason Wall Street was up was because investors expected him to win.

    In early January 2024, he repeated the boast, insisting that expectations about his eventual electoral victory were pushing the stock market higher. Trump said the same thing in early February. And early March. And mid-March. And early May.

    Over the summer, Trump continued to tell voters that his candidacy was solely responsible for stock market growth, pushing this absurdity in mid-August, mid-September and late September.

    As Election Day 2024 neared, this became a line the GOP nominee repeated on a nearly daily basis, including in early October, mid-October, late October and early November. [That is one helluva lot of repetition concerning the stock market. All Trump lies.]

    The point of the boasts was unsubtle: American voters were supposed to believe that there was a direct correlation between the Republican’s political fortunes and stock market returns.

    After Trump was elected, however, the major Wall Street indexes gradually went down, not up.

    The Republican’s rhetoric was impossible to take seriously before voters cast their ballots, but it’s vastly worse now. […] If expectations about a Trump victory were the “only” thing pushing stocks higher, why have markets struggled as the president-elect prepares to return to the White House?

    Is there a reality check?

    Link

  90. says

    Elon Musk reportedly set to have office space in the White House complex

    “As if the billionaire megadonor doesn’t already have enough access to Donald Trump, Musk is reportedly poised to receive office space near the West Wing.”

    For observers who wonder how Elon Musk has been able to maintain a near-constant presence around Donald Trump, The New York Times published a helpful report a couple of weeks ago. According to the article, after Election Day, the Republican megadonor started using a cottage at the Mar-a-Lago property near the main house where the president-elect resides.

    […] The Times’ report went on to note, “Mr. Musk is unlikely to have such unfettered physical access to Mr. Trump after the president-elect is sworn in on Jan. 20 in Washington. Coming and going in the West Wing is more onerous than at Mr. Trump’s private clubs, as is access to the White House residence.”

    As regular readers might recall, I expressed some skepticism about this point, noting that the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — part of the White House complex and a one-minute walk from the West Wing — has quite a bit of space. It was easy to imagine the billionaire getting an office, ensuring that Musk would maintain his access.

    It’s against this backdrop that the Times published a relevant follow-up report.

    Elon Musk is expected to use office space in the White House complex as he launches the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to slash government spending in the Trump administration, according to two people briefed on the plans. The space anticipated for Mr. Musk’s use is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House.

    […] I heard from a reader last week who suggested that Musk receives far more attention from political journalists than he deserves. If Musk hasn’t been elected to any office, the reader argued, and his “Department of Government Efficiency” isn’t an actual department with any meaningful powers, why bother covering political developments related to the billionaire?

    The answer is that Trump has elevated Musk in such a way as to give the GOP megadonor real influence, deserved or not.

    The president-elect met with foreign officials? There was Musk. The Republican dined with prominent business leaders? There was Musk. Incoming administration officials interviewed prospective job applicants? There was Musk. Trump enjoyed a social gathering at his glorified country club? There was Musk. Trump huddled privately with Republican members of Congress? There was Musk.

    This past weekend, Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee appeared on Fox News and responded to a question about federal aid for Los Angeles by saying he wanted Musk to “take a hard look” at how the government deployed resources in California.

    Now, if the Times’ report is accurate, Musk will even have office space in the White House complex.

    It’s not the press that’s elevating the billionaire; it’s his GOP partners.

  91. says

    Should GOP lawmakers read special counsel Jack Smith’s report in the elections case? Yes. Will Republicans bother to do so? Almost certainly not.

    Late in the afternoon on Aug. 1, 2023, then-special counsel Jack Smith secured a federal criminal indictment against Donald Trump stemming from Trump’s alleged election interference efforts following his 2020 defeat. It was a four-count indictment that charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

    Almost immediately, GOP congressional leaders responded to the indictment by effectively saying they didn’t care.

    Their reactions come to mind anew now that the prosecutor’s final report on the case is available to the public. NBC News’ report summarized:

    President-elect Donald Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6 and knowingly spread an objectively false narrative about election fraud in the 2020 election, special counsel Jack Smith said in a report defending his investigation made public early Tuesday. The 170-page report summarized Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to maintain power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    […] it’s a devastating summary of a thorough investigation and compelling evidence of a president who, as the former special counsel alleged, “resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power.”

    Over the course of the document, the prosecutor pushed back against baseless allegations of partisan interference, fleshed out the details of the president-elect’s alleged crimes, highlighted Trump’s “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” claims, and argued that the special counsel’s office was likely to prevail at trial.

    “[B]ut for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” Smith’s report added.

    Though the president-elect had plenty of time to prepare a carefully worded response to the findings, he did not spend that time well: The best Trump could muster was some clumsily worded middle-of-the-night social media posts filled with obvious lies and falsehoods.

    We’ll learn soon enough how — and just as importantly, whether — Republicans on Capitol Hill respond to Smith’s findings, but hanging overhead is a more foundational question: Is there any chance that GOP lawmakers will actually read the document?

    […] Republican officials didn’t read Trump’s criminal indictments. Or the Mueller report. Or the Durham report. Or the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings on the Russia scandal. Or the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the investigation into the Russia scandal.

    During Trump’s Ukraine scandal, which led to his first impeachment, a variety of GOP officials conceded they hadn’t read documents that were directly relevant to the investigation. Also during the Trump era, many Republicans didn’t read their own health care plan — and soon after they also didn’t read their own tax plan.

    During the Obama era, Republicans railed against the international nuclear agreement with Iran, even as some in the party conceded they hadn’t read the policy they were condemning. (The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted at the time, “This is legislating by reflex — a mass knee-jerk by the Republican majority in Congress. Those who howled ‘read the bill’ during the health-care debate couldn’t be bothered to read the nuclear agreement before sounding off.”)

    About a year ago, when a bipartisan agreement came together on border and immigration policies, a variety of GOP lawmakers condemned the bill while conceding they hadn’t read it.

    With this in mind, what are the odds that congressional Republicans will take the time to examine the Smith report?

    A new level of imperviousness to facts, and to information relevant to policy decisions.

  93. says

    A few revealing excerpts from live coverage of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing:

    Hegseth dodges questions on Greenland, Panama Canal

    Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked Hegseth if he would deploy the U.S. military to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal, referencing President-elect Trump’s expansionist rhetoric.

    “Would you carry on an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally, Denmark, by force? Or would you take over the Panama Canal?” Hirono asked.

    “Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander,” Hegseth said, before Hirono cut him off. [Hegseth has obviously been coached to dodge questions.]

    Hegseth then praised Trump for not tipping his hand, and declined to say whether he would invade the friendly foreign territories.

    […] Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in fiery comments grilled Hegseth for his comments on women serving in the military.

    “Please explain these types of statements because they’re brutal and they’re mean and they disrespect men and women who are willing to die for this country,” she told Hegseth.

    Gillibrand said hundreds of women are serving in combat roles.

    “You cannot denigrate women in general and your statements do that,” she said, pointing to his past remarks opposing women serving in combat roles.

    “What a terrible statement. So please do not deny that you’ve made those statements you have. … You’re basically saying women, after they have children, can’t ever serve in the military to combat roles. It’s a silly thing to say [and …] beneath the position that you are aspiring to.”

    She also raised concerns about Hegseth’s opposition to LGBTQ members serving in the military.

    […] The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported that Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) declined to meet with a woman who accused Hegseth of sexual assault.

    Ernst serves on the Armed Services Committee. Collins does not, and her office told the New Yorker that such allegations should be brought to relevant committees.

    NBC News reported Monday night that the FBI’s background check into Hegseth did not include an interview with the accuser.

    […] Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said in opening remarks that he does not believe Hegseth is qualified to lead the Pentagon.

    “Secretary of Defense demands a leader of unparalleled experience, wisdom and, above all else, character,” Reed said. “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”

    Reed raised concerns about several allegation against Hegseth, including sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement at two veterans groups he once led, which Reed said were “extremely alarming.” […]

    Link

  94. says

    Just a few little ‘gems’ to ponder:
    (can you spell lying sack of excrement?)
    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/112668/the-shame-of-hegseth
    The Shame of Hegseth
    by Robert Reich | January 14, 2025

    Well, this clearly explains the fire! /S
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/13/2296242/-Cartoon-The-conflagration

    OOH, a true xtian hero /S
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/13/2296721/-Turning-Point-USA-s-Charlie-Kirk-Religious-Right-s-Enforcer-of-Christian-Nationalism-Trumpism?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/charles-darwin-grave-protest
    ‘I Believe He Would Approve’: Charles Darwin’s Grave Graffitied in Climate Protest
    “We’ve done this because there’s no hope for the world, really,” said one of the activists who participated.
    Eloise Goldsmith Jan 13, 2025

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/did-trump-call-climate-change-a-hoax
    Scientific Community Issues Fresh Warning to Congress as ‘Radical’ Trump Returns
    Over 50,000 scientists and supporters called on Congress to “defend against Trump’s anti-science actions.”
    Julia Conley Jan 13, 2025

  95. says

    Followup to comment 93.

    Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified secretary of Defense nominee in human history, who’s been credibly accused of rape by one person that we know of; who has a Newsmax host calling for his withdrawal because the payoff of that rape accuser shows how susceptible he is to blackmail; whose FBI background check wasn’t that bad but maybe that’s because they didn’t talk to his ex-wives or the woman who accused him of rape; who in the words of combat veteran and Senator Tammy Duckworth isn’t even qualified to run a fucking Applebee’s; who has reportedly made quite a name for himself around the Fox News HQ for showing up to his hosting duties on “Fox & Friends Weekend” totally fucking drunk; who swears he’ll never drink anymore ever again if you just give him one more chance to RUN THE GODDAMNED PENTAGON; whose body is covered with the kinds of tattoos that make white supremacists and Nazis cream themselves; whose Grrr Argh Time To Declare Literal Civil War On The Wokes! books sound like […] make-believe Braveheart fantasy version of the Crusades …

    That guy. That guy’s Senate confirmation hearing in the Armed Services Committee is today. […]

    Refresh the page regularly to see if I have added anything: That is how we liveblog. Starting now!

    […] 9:36: GOP Senator Roger Wicker is introducing the hearing by describing growing numbers of threats around the world and he’s listing so many countries! […]

    Wicker says the nominee is “unconventional.” […]

    9:39: DRINK, Roger Wicker said “DEI.” If you are not aware, “DEI” is the current Republican dogwhistle that means “N-word,” but unlike earlier Republican dogwhistles, it also means “LGBTQ people slurs” and “women slurs.” It is a handy word for them that means everything […]

    9:41: Oh, Roger Wicker says that in his personal conduct, Pete Hegseth has “fallen short, as we all have,” but notes that the accusations came from anonymous sources, which means they do not count! (You know, because they’re not willing to have their lives terrorized or otherwise ruined by MAGA in order to speak out against Hegseth on the record.)

    […] Anyway, Jack Reed, the Democratic ranking member, it is his turn.

    9:44: Reed notes that running the Pentagon is a big, big job. Notes that the secretary needs to have character and be trustworthy. The subtext is that angry GRRRR dumbasses like Pete Hegseth and their sexual assault allegations and their obvious masculine insecurities, who aren’t ready to manage their ass with both hands, are not qualified. Also Jack Reed just said it out loud, so it’s not really subtext.

    9:47: Reed says actually the military is more diverse and more lethal than it’s ever been. Actually.

    Reed is disturbed, he says, by Hegseth’s history of always taking the side of whatever white supremacist in the military with anger issues who’s currently on trial for murder or torture or other war crimes.

    Reed says he’s also concerned by Hegseth’s history of mismanaging the funds of and driving into the ground the two lemonade stands he’s run, we mean conservative veterans’ organizations he’s run, directly into the ground.

    […] 9:51: Reed says it’s “unacceptable” that Hegseth didn’t meet with any Democratic senators besides Reed. [Hmmm. I didn’t know that.] It’s probably because Pete Hegseth is scared of them, AKA a coward.

    9:53: REED: “You lack the character, composure and competence” to be secretary of Defense.

    […] “He has struggled and overcome great personal challenges,” says Coleman [Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota]. This bullshit clownfuck redemption story is going to be a large part of their defense, because Republicans love bullshit clownfuck redemption stories. Don’t be fooled by it, and don’t take their word if they say Jesus has forgiven him. […]

    10:03: Here we go with Hegseth’s opening statement, […] He thanked his third wife and his seven children and said he loves Jesus, DRINK.

    10:08: Hahahahaha, he called Donald Trump “selfless.”

    10:09: There are some protesters. […]

    10:11: Hegseth says all troops will be “equal” not “equitable.” This is part of their DEI woke dogwhistle belief that anybody who isn’t a white straight conservative man with anger and masculinity issues isn’t qualified.

    10:16: Wicker says he wants to give Pete Hegseth a chance to respond to the “allegations” from “anonymous sources in liberal media publications.” Wait, was it the liberal media who said Pete Hegseth raped them in a hotel in 2017 when he was the speaker at a conservative conference? Was it the liberal media who said goddamn, this man keeps coming to work drunk at Fox News? Was it the liberal media who said they were extremely disappointed in the way their son abuses women?

    No that was his mom on that last one.

    Anyway, Pete Hegseth says “smear campaign” and “left wing media doesn’t care about the truth.” He says they want to destroy him because “change agent” and yadda yadda […]

    […] We’ll have Jack Reed the Democrat next. […]

    Reed also notes that the FBI investigation into Hegseth was insufficient (they didn’t talk to literally anyone they needed to talk to, like women Hegseth has been accused of abusing), [!!!] and that all senators should have access to it. […]

    10:27: Reed reads threatening emails serving troops are receiving saying that when Trump comes in, they will be fired because they support “woke” and “DEI.” Does Hegseth support troops getting these threatening emails, and threatening their spouses? Hegseth starts babbling warriors and not answering the question. Also whining about DEI.

    […] 10:31: REED: You’re instrumental in getting war criminals pardoned. Why do you love war crimes so much, as opposed to not loving them?

    HEGSETH: I have been in combat. These rules are fuckin’ bullshit, dude! (Paraphrase.)

    REED: Actually you’ve disparaged the Geneva Conventions in writing. How can you lead a military like that? Also what is a “JAG-OFF?” Oh, you don’t want to answer that.

    HEGSETH: It’s a JAG officer who’s fuckin’ bullshit, man! (Paraphrase.)

    Now we have Republican Deb Fischer from Nebraska.

    […] “What is your plan to revitalize the industrial base in this country?” That’s an actual question. And his answer is bullshit corporate speak. They planned this.

    […] 10:42: OK, now time for Jeanne Shaheen from the Democratic side. She’s pissed no one followed up to meet with her before the hearing. “Do you understand … that you will have a responsibility to meet with all members of this committee, not just Republicans?”

    Says she’d really like to meet with him so she can understand his real views on women in the military. Like back in November, when he said women shouldn’t be in combat, on a wingnut podcast. But that was before he was nominated.

    10:44: She’s reading from one of his idiot books about our unnatural obsession with women warriors. Does he think the women on this committee who have served didn’t serve honorably or whatever?

    He says this is just about STANDARDS, not about him not liking women.

    […] Now it’s Tom Cotton, who wants to reframe this conversation about women in the military.

    Hegseth says the guns and the rucksacks they have to carry are very heavy, and as long as everybody can carry the same stuff it’s fine, but if they’re letting women in to meet “quotas,” then that’s not OK!

    Tom Cotton agrees that there is a lot of heavy stuff in the military. Can girls even carry things the way big strapping Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, Arkansas, carries things?

    10:55: Tom Cotton wants to give Pete Hegseth an opportunity to respond to the critics, like for example about his Christian extremist beliefs, but like not really. […]

    Now we have Kirsten Gillibrand.

    10:59: Gillibrand emphasizes that Hegseth’s most recent disrespectful statements about women were in November. Notes that Tom Cotton was lying a minute ago when he suggested that our current standards for infantry are so woke that you only have to run two miles in 22 minutes. [Gillibrand is good. She has the facts. She has the timelines.]

    Anyway, Hegseth is babbling now about how he’s found some weirdos in the military like him who say the military has been destroyed by woke and quotas.

    “Commanders. Do not. Have to meet a quota for women in the infantry. That does not exist!” Gillibrand is pissed.

    Also pissed that Hegseth wouldn’t meet with her before the hearing.

    […] Hegseth […] is whining that he was not allowed to serve on Joe Biden’s inauguration because he was flagged as an extremist for a “Christian” tattoo. It just happens to be the kind of “Christian” tattoo only Christian nationalist fucking losers get inked on their bodies.

    […] Here is Richard Blumenthal, let’s see if he’s boring.

    11:15: Blumenthal is asking about the conservative veterans’ organizations Hegseth ran into the ground, but he’s asking about it boringly.

    Hegseth says he’s very proud of the work he did at those organizations, and he has some letters from people who say he’s great.

    Blumenthal enters the tax returns from the organizations into the record, boringly. All of this was handled in painstaking detail by Jane Mayer. […]

    11:20: LOL Blumenthal says he’d vote for Hegseth for Pentagon spokesperson, said his communication skills are fine. Ooh, like maybe if there was a “Fox & Friends Weekend” show for the Pentagon!

    Said he’s sure Hegseth would submit to a real FBI background check that included all the abuse allegations, yes? Hegseth says he’s not in charge of such things.

    11:21: Oh, let’s see how much of her own remaining integrity Joni Ernst does away with here. She’s starting by entering into the record letters that say Hegseth is fuckin’ great, so we’re going to guess she’s going to do away with her integrity entirely.

    […] Ernst sets up the question for Hegseth about women in combat roles. As long as they make sure the standards are very high and not woke or DEI, then women can be in combat. She basically fed him every word.

    […] Here comes Mazie Hirono.

    11:30: HIRONO: Have you ever done sexual assault?

    HEGSETH: I was falsely accused and completely cleared!

    HIRONO: Yeah no that’s not accurate to say you were “completely cleared.” Also you made her sign an NDA.

    […] HIRONO: There have been lots of reports about you being drunk at work at Fox News. Do you know it’s not allowed to be drunk at work in the military?

    HIRONO: You promised that you will stop drinking if you become secretary of Defense? Will you resign if you drink on the job?

    […] HIRONO: Would you carry out illegal orders for Trump, like when he asked Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs?

    He starts babbling about how bad those protesters were. She basically says fuck off, says she’s taking his babbling as confirmation that he’ll do illegal things for Trump.

    HIRONO: Will Hegseth use military force to invade Greenland or Panama or another ally?

    He starts babbling about how many people voted for Trump. She doesn’t give a fuck.

    […] Now Dan Sullivan from Alaska.

    11:38: Sullivan’s first question is literally asking for a commitment from Hegseth to come to Alaska with him. Is this speed dating?

    11:39: Sullivan is now giving examples of Joe Biden’s “woke” military.

    He whines that Joe Biden is always acting like our military is full of racists and extremists. (It is indeed a problem. Hegseth was part of it, and will be the biggest problem if he’s confirmed.)

    11:43: Ha ha ha, Hegseth agrees that his secretary of the Navy isn’t going to care about a fake thing like climate change, ha ha ha!

    […] 11:49: Now it’s time for Tim Kaine to ask more about the rape allegations. Kaine notes that Hegseth cheated on his second wife just after he had fathered a child with the person who would become wife number three. Hegseth keeps complaining that the rape accusation was a “false claim,” and lying and saying he was fully cleared.

    “I assume that in each of your weddings you’ve pledged to be faithful to your wife,” says Kaine.

    “I am redeemed by my lord and savior,” says Hegseth, oh go fuck yourself, that is not an answer a real adult man gives.

    […] 11:52: HEGSETH: I’m an open book!

    KAINE: With nondisclosure agreements LOL.

    KAINE: If somebody shows up drunk to work all the time, that’s disqualifying, yeah?

    HEGSETH: All that was anonymous accounts!

    KAINE: One of your colleagues said you got drunk at a bar and yelled “Kill all Muslims!” Another said one time you jumped on stage with strippers. Isn’t this all disqualifying?

    HEGSETH: Anonymous, false!

    KAINE: Nah, not anonymous. Is your mom anonymous?

    Again, read that Jane Mayer.

    11:53: Kevin Cramer thanks Hegseth for loving Jesus so much, because that’s what a serious person says. LOL go fuck yourself.

    Now Kevin Cramer wants to talk about Hegseth’s extremist tattoos. Hegseth begins by lying and saying the Jerusalem Cross on his chest — which extremists love — is why he was flagged as an extremist and kicked out of working the Biden inauguration. For some reason this is a lie Hegseth loves to tell. The tattoo he was flagged for was the “Deus Vult” underneath his bicep, which is HUGELY popular with extremists.

    This is giving Hegseth a soapbox to complain about troops getting kicked out for refusing to take an “experimental vaccine” during COVID, and for acting like white guys like him are the real extremists. Kevin Cramer is yelling that the people who would call Pete Hegseth an extremist are the REAL extremists.

    […] Now we have Angus King from Maine, who reads from one of Hegseth’s books — the one last year — where he says he only believes “boys” should get to fight in wars.

    12:03: Pete Hegseth just really does not like all thse rules of engagement they have to follow. He does not like America having to follow the Geneva Conventions.

    Hegseth babbles out an answer, it’s amazing how out of his league this dude is.

    12:05: KING: Do you like waterboarding?

    HEGSETH: The law says it’s not legal.

    KING: Are we going to abide by Geneva or not?

    HEGSETH: Those are the rules, but also America First!

    Now another very serious person, Rick Scott of Florida. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/live-pretty-early-in-the-morning

    More “love Jesus” stuff than I would have predicted. As for the amount of lies … that was expected.

  96. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/34-things-for-working-people-republicans

    “34 Things For Working People Republicans Will Cut So Trump Can Give Billionaires More Tax Cuts, Again”

    “They hope to slash spending on SNAP, the ACA, TANF, Medicare, Medicaid … and make the banks ‘too big to fail’.”

    For the last couple months, we have never heard the end of how Republicans are totally the party of the working class now. It’s not an entirely wrongheaded assessment, given voting patterns, but it doesn’t mean they’re actually doing anything for the working class or the poor — it just means they’re donning trucker hats while they rip up the social safety net.

    […] there seems to be more vocal support than ever for left-wing economic ideas like socialized health care, universal basic income, a strong social safety net, strong labor laws, and strong unions — including on the Right. The “socially conservative and fiscally liberal” contingent has vastly outnumbered the statistically non-existent “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” contingent for basically a decade at this point. [Graph at the link]

    We’ve certainly seen an unfortunate number of economically insecure Trump supporters swear to high heaven that he’d never cut the programs that help them (like he did in his first term). [Embedded links are available at the main link.]

    […] Republicans in the House — specifically the House Budget Committee, led by Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) — are already laying out their plans to gut pretty much everything that helps the poor and bring back all kinds of things that help the rich. […]

    A list of these desired cuts, along with how much they would save over 10 years (all together, about $5.7 trillion), was obtained last week by Politico — so let’s take a look and talk about what they would mean, shall we?

    1. REPEAL MAJOR BIDEN HEALTH RULES ($420B)

    What major health rules you ask? According to a report from Fierce Health Care, this could include a lot of things I’d sure like to think every decent human supports.

    For example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services alone released final rules imposing mandatory staffing minimums in nursing homes, new managed care wait time and quality rating standards, prohibitions of discrimination in Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans, telehealth and AI, increased protections for people with disabilities and restrictions on broker compensation and new network requirements for behavioral health that could all be in jeopardy if the legislation passes, said Dan Goldbeck, director of regulatory policy for right-leaning think tank the American Action Forum. These rules cost more than $85 billion, the agencies project.

    […]

    2. STRENGTHEN MEDICARE FOR SENIORS ($479B)
    Site Neutral – $146B
    Uncompensated Care – $229B
    Bad Debt – $42B
    BCA Mandatory Sequester Extension – $62B

    Gotta love the Orwellian doublespeak here, no?

    The first “cut” is “site neutral” payment, which means that Medicare would stop paying hospitals and hospital-owned physician practices double what they pay other doctors and facilities. Whether or not this would be a good thing would largely depend on how it’s implemented, which we certainly cannot trust Republicans to do. If it were implemented badly, that could mean a lot of rural hospital closures, as they tend to rely on the extra payments to stay afloat.

    Next up are uncompensated care and bad debt. Medicare provides some increased payment to “Disproportionate Share Hospitals” that serve a large number of uninsured patients and therefore incur a lot of uncompensated care costs, including charity care (provided to patients who are too poor to pay) and bad debt (incurred by patients who refuse to pay). Major cuts to this would very likely lead to a lot of hospital closures in underserved areas. […]

    3. MAKING MEDICAID WORK FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE ($2.3T)
    Per Capita Caps – up to $918B
    Equalize Medicaid Payments for Able Bodied Adults – up to $690B
    Limit Medicaid Provider Taxes – $175B
    Lower FMAP Floor – $387B
    Special FMAP Treatment for DC – $8B
    Repeal American Rescue Plan FMAP Incentive – $18B
    Medicaid Work Requirements – $120B

    What does all of this mean? It means that tens of millions of people will lose their access to Medicaid and, thus, their access to healthcare. [!!!]All of this, taken together, would pretty much mean the end of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which made it so that adults making 138 percent of the federal poverty line (about $20K a year for a single person) or less could qualify.

    4. REIMAGINING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT (ACA) ($151B)

    Recapture Excess Premium Tax Credit – $46B
    Limit Health Program Eligibility Based on Citizenship Status – $35B
    Repeal the Prevention Public Health Fund – $15B
    Appropriate Cost Sharing Reductions – $55B

    Incredibly enough, this “reimagining” is just cuts to the ACA that are largely going to hurt the poorest among us [!!!}. […]

    5. ENDING CRADLE-TO-GRAVE DEPENDENCE ($347B)
    Reinstate the Trump-era Public Charge Rule – $15B
    Reduce TANF by 10 Percent – $15B
    Eliminate the TANF Contingency Fund – $6B
    Reform the Thrifty Food Plan – up to $274B
    Eliminate the Social Services Block Grant – $15B
    SNAP Reforms – $22B

    Fun fact about the TANF program — it costs us only $16.5 billion a year, and it’s cost us only exactly $16.5 billion a year since it was first implemented in 1996 (replacing the significantly more helpful Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)). This means it has actually decreased in value by 50 percent since then. And Republicans would like to spend less!

    Not only that, only about 22 percent of the TANF block grants distributed to states actually even go to cash assistance for low-income families anyway. The rest of it is often treated as a slush fund with which the state can do whatever it wants and there is practically zero accountability for how it is used (which is how Mississippi ended up using it to pay NFL player Brett Favre $1 million for a speaking engagement).

    TANF is absolute garbage and I could scream about it all day. We should set it on fire and go back to something closer to AFDC, which was far more successful at lifting families out of poverty and required states to actually be accountable for the money given to them — but the problem isn’t that we’re spending too much on it, it’s that we’re spending too little and there’s no accountability for how it’s used.

    The rest of it is also obviously horrific, especially the provision about reforming the Thrifty Food Plan — the Thrifty Food Plan being the plan on which SNAP payouts are based. So these rich motherfuckers are seriously sitting around, looking at the amount of food deemed the least anyone could live on and still get some nutrition, and going “That’s too much!”

    By the way, the average per-person payout for SNAP is $187 a month. Which is … not very much.

    6. REVERSING BIDEN CLIMATE POLICIES ($468B)
    Discontinue the Green New Deal Provisions in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill – $300B Repeal EV Mandate – $112B
    Repeal IRA green energy grants– $56B

    Sure! Why not destroy the planet while they’re at it?

    7. OTHER: ($917B-$1T)
    End the Student Loan Bailout – $200-330B
    Rescind all Unspent COVID Money – $11B
    Auction Spectrum – $60 billion
    Repeal Orderly Liquidation Authority – $22 billion
    Increase FERS Contributions – $45 billion
    Other federal employee benefit reforms – $32 billion
    Restrict emergency spending to recent average – $500B
    Eliminate the TSP G Fund Subsidy – $47B

    There is a lot that is bad here, but allow me to draw your attention to “Repeal Orderly Liquidation Authority.” Remember in 2007, when we had to bail out the banks because they were “too big to fail”? Well, in order to keep that from happening again, Dodd-Frank included a provision called Orderly Liquidation Authority. This means that when it looks like a financial institution is headed towards failure, the US government can step in and temporarily use tax money to keep everything afloat while they liquidate assets in a safe and orderly manner that won’t topple our entire economy. Get rid of this, and we have to go back to bailing out banks when they fail, which would be bad.

    8. POTENTIAL TAX OFFSETS: ($227-$527B)
    Green energy tax credits – $200 – $500B, depending on political viability
    SSN CTC Requirement – $27B

    Because, again, fuck the planet and also fuck the children — although in this case, recipients of a Child Tax Credit already have to have a child with a Social Security number, so I’m not sure why they think that would save money.

    While one House Republican said it was more of a menu of things they could cut than a definitive list of things they want to cut, the Trump tax cuts for the rich alone are set to cost us about $4 trillion over the next decade — and that money’s going to have to come from somewhere. But hey! When they’re hungry or finding themselves without any health care, low-income Trump voters can take heart in knowing that they really stuck it to trans people, immigrants, and the concept of “woke” and definitely were not tricked into frothing at the mouth over these things in order to ensure they’d vote for people who would cut all of the programs they rely on in order to fund tax cuts for people too rich to even feel the impact of whatever small amount of taxes they won’t be paying anymore.

  97. says

    Wildfire update:

    – Southern California is braced for “extremely critical fire conditions” caused by a new period of Santa Ana winds today through tomorrow across parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, as the battle to contain raging blazes goes on. […]

    – The largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, has burned more than 23,000 acres and was only 14% contained this morning as it threatened Brentwood, Encino and Westwood.

    Evacuation orders are in effect for 92,000 residents of Los Angeles, and 89,000 are in evacuation warning zones, which means they may need to leave at a moment’s notice. […]

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proclamation yesterday expanded the state legislature’s special session to provide $1 billion to augment the FEMA response, help rebuild schools and aid in cleanup and recovery, and $1.5 billion to bolster state preparedness efforts following the firestorm. […]

  98. says

    NBC News exclusive:

    Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to attend Trump’s inauguration.

    The three will be seated together on the inauguration platform with other prominent guests. […]

  99. says

    Thousands of physicians are mobilizing, hoping to derail Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation. Video at the link features Rachel Maddow.

    […] There’s no shortage of questions surrounding RFK Jr.’s prospective nomination, but the one at the top of the list for his reality-based critics is straightforward: How can they convince senators to oppose his confirmation?

    The New York Times reported on a new national coalition of health professionals and scientists who are mobilizing to derail Kennedy’s upcoming nomination, starting with a public letter this week that warns that Kennedy’s “unfounded, fringe beliefs could significantly undermine public health practices across the country and around the world.”

    The coalition, calling itself ‘Defend Public Health,’ includes faculty members from some of the U.S.’s leading academic institutions, including public health schools at Yale and Harvard. Its leaders said they had gathered 700 signatures on the public letter and had generated 3,500 individual letters urging senators to reject Mr. Kennedy, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

    “Mr. Kennedy is unqualified to lead the nation’s health department with a budget of over $1.6 trillion and over 80,000 employees,” the public letter states. “He has little to no relevant administrative, policy or health experience or expertise that would prepare him to oversee the work of critical public health agencies.” [Video featuring Mitch McConnell.]

    If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because this is not the only such effort of its kind. NBC News reported last week on the Committee to Protect Health Care, a physicians advocacy group, which has launched a parallel mobilization campaign.

    “The health and well-being of 336 million Americans depend on leadership at HHS that prioritizes science, evidence-based medicine, and strengthening the integrity of our public health system,” the organization’s public letter read. “RFK Jr. is not only unqualified to lead this essential agency — he is actively dangerous.”

    The document added, “This appointment is a slap in the face to every health care professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death.”

    The joint statement was signed by more than 15,000 physicians, all of whom oppose Kennedy’s confirmation.

    In case this weren’t quite enough, it was just last month when more than 75 Nobel laureates signed a joint statement opposing Kennedy’s nomination. The New York Times reported that the effort was “the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice.”

    […] Democrats [can’t] derail this prospective nomination on their own. That said, some of Kennedy’s opponents have indicated that they’re hoping that a handful of on-the-fence Senate Republicans will hear from so many physicians, medical professionals, hospital administrators and public health officials in their own states that it might put his confirmation in doubt.

    That might be wishful thinking, but given Kennedy’s record as a health menace and GOP senators’ apparent eagerness to act as rubber stamps for Trump’s nominees, reality-based observers don’t feel they have a lot of other choices.

  100. says

    Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    * Americans for Prosperity, a political operation founded by the Koch Brothers, is reportedly investing $20 million into a public relations campaign in support of Republican tax breaks. According to a Fox News report, AFP’s “ad blitz” will target all 50 states.

    * On a related note, The New York Times reported that a coalition of conservative groups has launched a campaign to pressure Republican senators to confirm Pete Hegseth as the next secretary of defense. Some of the efforts, the report added, are being coordinated with Donald Trump’s senior advisers.

    […] * And former first lady Michelle Obama confirmed to the Associated Press that she will not attend Trump’s second inaugural, though Barack Obama will be in attendance. Her statement did not include an explanation.

  101. says

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/americas-infrastructure-crisis-covids-role-in-a-ticking-time-bomb.html
    America’s Infrastructure Crisis: Covid’s Role in a Ticking Time Bomb
    How falling levels of infrastructure maintenance are somewhat, perhaps significantly, due to Covid deaths and disability.

    I know, many think I say it too often: we are in a Death Spiral to the New Dark Ages
    But, as the infrastructure and healthcare crumble and as the MUMP (MUsk+truMP) cult drastically increases inequity, how can you refute what I say?

  102. says

    Newsom makes a groundbreaking move to shield California from Trump

    In a decisive move to Trump-proof California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats have secured a groundbreaking $50 million agreement to bolster the state’s legal defenses. This massive investment is designed to shield state and local governments from President-elect Donald Trump’s potentially harmful policies, with a focus on immigration and deportation.

    Newsom’s proposal designates $25 million for the California DOJ to fight Trump’s policies in court. State Senate leaders also propose that $25 million be used to help immigrants defend themselves against deportation, detention, and wage theft by funding grants for legal nonprofits and immigration support centers.

    This agreement is the first of its kind, and it’s also the latest effort over the past three months that Democrats have taken in an attempt to buck Trump’s second term in office.

    Since Trump was reelected in November, Democratic governors, attorneys general, and members of Congress have expressed plans to use the courts and the other organizations they’ve established to fight the Trump administration.

    Meanwhile, California Democrats are being blamed by Republicans for starting a massive natural disaster, including despicable false claims from right-wing media that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts are responsible for the ongoing wildfires. This has left people worried that Trump will retaliate against Democrats in blue states by withholding aid once he’s in office—similar to what he did during his first term.

    Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have also hinted that they’re planning to withhold California aid.

    “This funding agreement cements California’s readiness to serve as a bulwark against Trump’s extremist agenda,” said Senate Budget Chair Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat.

    A floor vote on the $50 million agreement could come as soon as this week, giving Newsom time to sign the deal before Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

  103. says

    The ‘comic’ below reinforces my comment @101 shermanj
    https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/TimeTravelingIntellectuals.png
    ‘technological progress without social progress only creates more advanced forms of oppression’

    And, the legal fund that Lynna made us aware of @102 is important. But, it is so wrong that they have to setup $50 million dollars to protect the state from what should be a helpful administration (but is, in reality, sociopathic destruction incarnate)

  104. says

    House speaker will ignore Carter’s death to satisfy Trump’s fragile ego

    House Speaker Mike Johnson will raise the flags at the U.S. Capitol to full-staff for Donald Trump’s inauguration, ignoring U.S. flag code in an effort to coddle Dear Leader.

    “On January 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump. The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter,” Johnson said in a statement.

    President Joe Biden ordered the flags to be flown half-staff on Dec. 29, the day Carter died at the age of 100. Biden’s order adhered to U.S. flag code, which says that after a current or former president dies, the flag should be lowered for 30 days—which, in Carter’s case, overlaps with Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

    Of course, displaying a flag at half-staff is still displaying the flag. And there’s precedent for having flags at half staff during an inauguration. The flags were lowered during Richard Nixon’s inauguration in 1973, following the death of former President Harry S. Truman.

    But Trump is enraged that because of Carter’s death, the flags would be lowered when he takes the oath of office. [Snipped Trump’s comments: “Democrats only think about themselves […]” etc.]

    […] Clearly, Trump is the one who was really pissed about something as inconsequential as the position of the flags as he’s sworn in. And his GOP lackeys have listened to his childish complaints and are appeasing him by ignoring tradition and U.S. code.

    Johnson’s decision followed that of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who each announced on Monday that they will raise the flags the day of Trump’s inauguration. They both made the ridiculous excuse that flag code says that flags should be “displayed” on certain important days, such as Inauguration Day, even though a lowered flag is, again, still a displayed flag.

    […] the fact that Republicans are so eager to appease Trump on an issue as minor as this is a worrying sign for how they will react in future situations.

  105. says

    If I commented here what I actually I think about mofo Johnson’s kissing of a sphincter and the flag BS, I am sure I would be banned. And, I have too much respect for Lynna’s rules to be that crude (no matter how honest an expression it would be).

  106. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 104

    I fear this has more to do with dicking over the libs than it does stroking Trump’s dick.

  107. says

    More bad news about RFK Jr.’s past activities:

    On July 10, 2020, Terry Tamminen wrote a letter to the board chair of Waterkeeper Alliance, the clean-water group founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to say that he wanted out.

    Tamminen, a veteran, highly-regarded environmentalist and co-founder and longtime board member of the organization, had become concerned about the outfit’s finances—so worried that he was tendering his resignation. At issue was at least $67 million that Kennedy’s group had received and passed along over the previous six years—an eye-popping amount for a non-profit that prior to this influx of money had annual revenues of about $4 million, according to its tax filings. Tamminen noted in his letter that he had repeatedly asked Kennedy and other top WKA officials for an explanation regarding these funds—the source of the money and its ultimate use—and had received no satisfying response. He wrote that either there was “no proper documentation” covering this large flow of funds or such documentation was being “withheld” by Kennedy and the staff.

    Tamminen’s […] letter was prompted by a legal complaint that claimed WKA had “funneled millions of dollars to the Bahamas” to assist Louis Bacon, a hedge-fund billionaire, in his purported effort to “destroy and damage” Peter Nygård, a Canadian fashion mogul, who owned an estate next to Bacon’s on the island nation. The complaint, filed in a lawsuit brought by Nygård against Bacon, alleged that WKA had engaged in “illegal and/or improper activities” to benefit Bacon, a major financial backer of WKA. It also claimed Kennedy had “carried out illegal and improper activities to further [Bacon’s] scheme to damage [Nygård’s] business and property at the direction of, under the supervision of, at the request of or on behalf of [Bacon].”

    […] The Nygård complaint was ultimately dismissed. But with Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to run the massive Department of Health and Human Services, this episode—involving millions of dollars—could shed light on his managerial experience and competence.

    A Mother Jones investigation has found that charities associated with Bacon, the co-founder and CEO of Moore Capital Management, did contribute at least $63 million to WKA and that these funds were subsequently sent by WKA to Save the Bays, a small environmental group that Bacon, Kennedy, and others had started in the Bahamas and that filed multiple environmental suits against Nygård.

    […] The two owned adjacent estates in Lyford Cay, a posh community for the super-rich in the Bahamas, and a property dispute—they shared a driveway—had evolved into wild combat costing each millions of dollars. And Save the Bays and its lawyer had become involved in Bacon’s battle with Nygård.

    […] “You couldn’t really ask questions about this,” a former staffer says. “There was a cult of Bobby.”

    Through 2023, the amount of money routed through Kennedy’s organization to finance what was described in its tax records as a program in the Caribbean totaled $79 million. […]

    Tamminen had spotted a story about the complaint Nygård had filed on April 30, 2020, in a New York federal court alleging that Bacon and others had engaged in a pattern of illegal conduct for years to defame him and destroy his fashion brand. Nygård listed a host of people and organizations supposedly involved or knowledgable of this alleged scheme, including Waterkeeper Alliance, Kennedy, and Fred Smith, a Bahamian lawyer and co-founder and board member of Save the Bays, […]

    A lawyer who has worked with WKA describes Bacon as “one of Bobby’s rich-guy friends.”

    […] According to Tamminen’s resignation letter, he soon spoke with Kennedy and asked for records related to this funding, and Kennedy, was “unable to provide the documents (or a verbal explanation).”

    Afterward Postman informed Tamminen that the WKA had a “fiscal sponsorship agreement” to support work in the Bahamas. This meant WKA was receiving, as a pass-through, money for the Bahamian group. Acting as a pass-through is a common practice for nonprofits, but they can only do this to support charitable activity, usually a project in sync with their own missions. They can charge a percentage of the funds for this service, often in the 7-to-14-percent range, and, according to the WKA trustee who replied to queries from Mother Jones, the organization did receive a cut. The trustee would not say how much.

    […] Finally, according to the letter, Tamminen was sent a spreadsheet from WKA trustee William Wachtel indicating that the majority of the more than $67 million in question went to the Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay, an earlier name for Save the Bays, and “an invoice for reimbursement by WKA from lawyers involved in the [Nygård-Bacon] litigation…in the amount of $1,752,193” for a three-month period in 2020.

    Tamminen deemed this reply insufficient. At this point, he threw up his hands and decided to quit, noting in his letter, “I have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the organization’s finances” and stating that because Kennedy and his staff had not provided adequate documentation he could not perform this basic task.

    […] Why had Kennedy’s organization passed along so much money to the Bahamas? “We didn’t really know who was giving us this money,” a former staffer says.

    The WKA’s 990s show that through 2023, the total amount that passed through what the group called its Central America/Caribbean program was $79 million. On the 990s available to the public, the name of the recipient of those funds were redacted. (This is unusual; grantees tend to be identified.) A former WKA staffer says that the recipient listed on the 990s was the law firm of Fred Smith, the Bahamian lawyer who, with Kennedy and Bacon, helped organize Save the Bays and who was associated with Bacon’s wide-ranging fight against Nygård. That battle included a lawsuit charging Nygård with sex crimes.

    WKA staff and associates of the Waterkeeper Alliance were suspicious of this funding arrangement. The amount of money going to Save the Bays was “off-kilter,” a former WKA staffer says. “It was disproportionate to the size of the program. They had an office that was maybe 400-square-feet with one full-time staffer and some part-timers. […]

    […] A key issue was the source of the funding. A review conducted by Mother Jones of charitable organizations associated with Bacon—Moore Charitable Foundation, Belvedere Charitable Foundation, and Bessemer Trust—shows that these entities donated a hefty amount, nearly $63 million, to the Waterkeeper Alliance from 2014 through 2023. […]

    The WKA trustee confirms that the Bacon donations to WKA were the source of the funds that Kennedy’s outfit passed to Save the Bays. If so, that means Bacon was sending money to WKA—a group for whom he was a major supporter—that Kennedy’s organization, after taking a cut, was forwarding to a group that Bacon, Kennedy, Smith and others had formed, which subsequently filed lawsuits against Bacon’s archnemesis.

    […] After Tamminen’s resignation caused a fuss for WKA, the law firm run by WKA trustee William Wachtel conducted a review of the money sent to the Bahamas […] Former WKA associates point out that this was not an independent investigation, given that it was conducted by a trustee. “This was a bogus audit,” Shavelson says. A onetime WKA associate says, “To have a trustee conduct an investigation that then says ‘nothing to see here’ doesn’t pass the smell test.”

    […] On July 10, 2020, Terry Tamminen wrote a letter to the board chair of Waterkeeper Alliance, the clean-water group founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to say that he wanted out.

    […] There is “no way you can spend $79 million on this type of litigation. You can buy a whole ecosystem for that amount of money… Without details, there’s no way you can explain these numbers.”

    […] Save the Bays and Smith did indeed engage in environmental-related litigation. In 2015, the group launched a legal action regarding pollution attributed to a power plant. It successfully sued Nygård for illegally dredging Clifton Bay to expand his property, and that case led to the Supreme Court of the Bahamas seizing his property in 2018. It also filed a legal action claiming Nygård had engaged in unauthorized construction. […]

    But former WKA associates say the nearly $79 million price tag for Save the Bays litigation seems exceedingly high. “The cost of an illegal dredging case is in the tens of thousands of dollars,” a former WKA staffer says. Shavelson asks, “Where’s all this litigation?

    […] Smith worked with private investigators and found 15 Bahamian women to participate in a sex crimes lawsuit against Nygård. He also encouraged women who claimed to be Nygård victims to go to the Bahamian police. The newspaper noted that Smith created a nonprofit called Sanctuary, which he and Bacon funded, and that it paid Bahamian lawyers and investigators involved in putting together the sex crimes lawsuit against Nygård. […]

    Nygård reportedly spent $15 million on a smear campaign against Bacon, which included television and radio ads, doctored videos, and outlandish accusations, and Bacon said in court that he expended $53 million for investigators and lawyers in his legal fight with Nygård.

    Mother Jones sent lengthy lists of questions to Marc Yaggi and Mary Beth Postman of WKA, Fred Smith, Save the Bays, Louis Bacon (through his Moore Charitable Foundation), and the Trump transition team. […] None of them, except Katie Miller, a Trump transition staffer, replied. Miller emailed, “As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to left wind [sic] activists masquerading as journalists.” […]

    Several months after Tamminen prompted a stir about the Bahamas money, Kennedy resigned as WKA president. […] Upon his departure, the board named him president emeritus.

    Link

  108. birgerjohansson says

    A Different Bias
    “Trump#s Confused Ramblings on Canadian Trade”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=7ah4XRNo8gg
    Tr*mp seems to confuse trade deficit with subsidies.
    USA is paying money to Canada. Never mind that USA gets commodities in return, if Canada does not buy as much from USA the money flowing from USA must be subsidies!
    This is one possible interpretation of what he is saying.

  109. KG says

    I know, many think I say it too often: we are in a Death Spiral to the New Dark Ages
    But, as the infrastructure and healthcare crumble and as the MUMP (MUsk+truMP) cult drastically increases inequity, how can you refute what I say? – shermanj@101

    It’s not a question of whether anyone can refute what you say. What is the point of constantly repeating it? If it’s to irritate other people, you’ve certainly succeeded in my case, and can now give it a rest.

  111. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 110
    His ignorance is a feature, not a bug. Recruited from Fox News because Tr*mp has seen him on TV he was never expected to “know” anything as long as he is loyal to the Dear Leader.

  113. says

    Followup to comments 93, 95 and 110.

    […] Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said during his questioning of Hegseth that Army recruiting has surged since Donald Trump was elected in November — a claim that Hegseth agreed with.

    This is false.

    Fact check: Army recruiting numbers haven’t surged since Trump’s election, continued
    Army recruiting is doing better now than during this time last year, but that is due largely to the delayed entry program (people who signed up in 2024 but did not ship until 2025).

    More than 11,000 soldiers included in current recruiting numbers were from delayed entry.

    Another major factor was the future soldier prep course: Thousands more joined that program months or even years ago to be ready to join when eligible.

    Both groups signed up before Trump was elected, not as a result of his being elected and they have helped Army recruiting numbers exceed last year’s numbers.
    —————————
    During his questioning of Hegseth, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., asked about diversity initiatives in the U.S. military, alleging that the U.S. Navy had mandated “DEI” training.

    “Met with a couple of Navy SEALs not too long ago, they just got back from crawling around in the mud and the muck overseas, unknown places. Couldn’t tell you where they’ve been carrying a weapon, obviously protecting us and our allies. And the first week they’re back, what do they do? They had to go through a week of DEI training. Both are now out,” Tuberville said.

    Tuberville’s claim is false.

    Navywide, mandated “diversity” training does not exist. Naval Special Warfare Command is not aware of the training Tuberville described.

    Top military leaders addressed various related claims last year, debunking them factually during congressional hearings.
    —————————–
    One of several strong exchanges about women in combat was when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., pushed Hegseth on women in combat.

    Hegseth alleged that standards have been lowered in infantry units and that commanders are required to meet quotas for how many women are in these units.

    Gillibrand fired back, “commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. That does not exist.”

    Hegseth’s allegation is, in fact, false.

    Fact check: No, Army commanders do not have quotas for women in combat.

    Responding to questions on the topic from NBC News, an Army spokesperson said, “No, the Army has integrated female soldiers of all ranks into all units and occupational specialties without quotas.”

    The spokesperson explained that men and women each have to meet the same standards to qualify for combat roles. When combat roles were opened to women, the military did an exhaustive study of what is needed for various roles and they established standards that everyone has to meet. Men and women have the same standards and women are not allowed into units if they do not meet those standards. (Men aren’t, either.) […]

    Link

  114. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 110

    Ah, Hegseth wasn’t taped for DoD for his knowledge of geography. He was selected because Trump wants the military to be run by racist sociopaths who will to commit war crimes for him and sic the military on domestic libs. Hegseth, being a white/Christian nationalist who just today dismissed the Geneva Convention, fits that bill.

    That, and it helps that Trump saw him on TV.

  115. Reginald Selkirk says

    The FBI Says It Made Malware Delete Itself From American’s Computers

    The FBI just closed a backdoor into thousands of computers by telling the malware to delete itself. According to a press release from the Department of Justice, the intelligence agency was able to successfully get PlugX, a piece of malware utilized by Chinese state-sponsored hacker groups to steal information from victims, to delete itself from the machines of its victims.

    PlugX is a Remote Access Trojan that has been around since at least 2008, according to Malpedia, and has been a favorite tool of a notorious Chinese hacking group that is often referred to as “Mustang Panda” or “Twill Typhoon,” who have been using it to infect computers across the US, Asia, and Europe. The malware, which typically infects victims who plug an infected USB drive into their machines, grants the attackers full remote access to the system, including the ability to log keystrokes, capture screen activity, and execute commands.

    To retrieve information from and send commands to the hacked machines, the malware connects to a command-and-control server that is operated by the hacking group. According to the FBI, at least 45,000 IP addresses in the US had back-and-forths with the command-and-control server since September 2023.

    It was that very server that allowed the FBI to finally kill this pesky bit of malicious software. First, they tapped the know-how of French intelligence agencies, which had recently discovered a technique for getting PlugX to self-destruct. Then, the FBI gained access to the hackers’ command-and-control server and used it to request all the IP addresses of machines that were actively infected by PlugX. Then it sent a command via the server that causes PlugX to delete itself from its victims’ computers…

  116. Reginald Selkirk says

    Falling SpaceX Debris Is Getting In The Way Of Commercial Flights

    … Falling debris from SpaceX rockets delayed Qantas flights over the Indian Ocean this month. Australia’s flag carrier was given little warning that its flight paths would be showered in space junk.

    Qantas flights on its route between Johannesburg, South Africa and Sydney are suffering delays lasting as long as six hours, Bloomberg reports. Flying out of Australia, the airline is diligent enough to be aware of space operations around its transoceanic routes. Qantas regularly communicates with SpaceX, but late-minute changes will impact customers’ flights. The Guardian spoke with Ben Holland, the head of Qantas’s operations center: …

  117. Reginald Selkirk says

    Apple will soon receive ‘made in America’ chips from TSMC’s Arizona fab — company in final stages of quality verification

    Apple is already testing the initial batch of processors produced for its devices by TSMC Arizona, reports Nikkei Asia. To begin with, the tests intend to compare the Arizona output to see if the quality is similar to chips produced in TSMC’s cutting-edge fabs in Taiwan. If the chip quality verification testing does not encounter any hiccups, the source says that the first batch of mass-produced chips from the Arizona fab is expected to arrive at iDevice makers as early as this quarter. If this is the case, Apple will likely be TSMC’s first American customer to use locally made chips. AMD and Nvidia will likely follow suit soon, as they’re also running wafer test production there.

    The entry of locally produced chips in the American market is a big win for the United States’ push for silicon independence, especially as it massively relies on Taiwan for the majority of its most advanced chips…

  119. Reginald Selkirk says

    Buy something or leave, Starbucks says

    Starbucks says it is reversing rules for its cafes in North America that allowed people to use their facilities even if they had not bought anything.

    The changes, which are set to come into force from 27 January, are a U-turn from a policy introduced six years ago that allowed people to linger in Starbucks outlets and use their toilets without making a purchase.

    The move is part of the “back to Starbucks” strategy – a plan announced by the firm’s new boss as he tries to tackle flagging sales…

    Mmm yeah; make people feel less welcome, that is sure to spur sales.

  120. Reginald Selkirk says

    P.E.I. homeowner captures sound and video of meteorite strike on camera, and scientists believe it’s a first

    Joe Velaidum can’t help but wonder what could have happened if he’d lingered outside his front door for just a couple of minutes longer before taking his dogs for a walk.

    The timing of their departure that day last July proved lucky. Just seconds later, a meteorite would plummet onto the front walkway of Velaidum’s home in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, shattering on impact with a reverberating smack…

    Luckier still, his home security camera caught both video and audio of the meteorite’s crash landing.

    Scientists believe it could be the first time that both sound and visuals of a meteorite’s strike have ever been recorded…

  122. says

    @109 KG wrote to complain about my ‘Death Spiral to the New Dark Ages’ comments.
    I reply: I take your point. I checked and found I use that phrase in about half of my comments. I guess if I’m overusing it that’s because I’m so angered by the situation in which we are immersed (with so little recourse). Realizing that I’m preaching to the choir somewhat, I’ll try to refrain from ‘flogging it to death’ here.
      Also, as I commented on PZ’s ‘cool-catching-the-crash-of-a-space-rock’. It seems that was in Canada. Before seeing that, I had this image of some lunkhead in this country wearing a maga hat trying to catch it in his baseball glove, LOL.

  123. Reginald Selkirk says

    Florida will see subfreezing temperatures, heavy rain from new winter storm

    A new winter storm will bring rain and some of the coldest temperatures of the season to the southeastern United States, including much of Florida.

    AccuWeather says that the same weather pattern driving high winds and spreading wildfires in California will trigger the storm in the eastern U.S. early next week.

    “How quickly the storm strengthens will help to determine its track,” AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. “And consequently, where it tracks will determine where the band of accumulating snow versus rain sets up.” …

  124. Rob Grigjanis says

    Reginald Selkirk @118: The only one of those five ways the universe could end which caused any existential dread in me (for a short time anyway) was the phase transition. When the Higgs boson was discovered, its mass implied that our universe was possibly in a metastable state; there may be a vacuum which has a lower ground state energy than ours. That means quantum tunnelling from our vacuum to the other vacuum can occur.

    That means a phase transition could occur at any point in space, at any time. A ‘bubble’ of the new vacuum would expand at or near the speed of light, and the particles in the bubble would be different from ours. Puff, we’re gone, without any warning.

    The good news; it hasn’t happened for billions of years, and likely won’t for billions more. Still, it’s always out there…

  125. says

    Reginald @115, that’s good news!

    In other possibly good news, there’s this from the New York Times:

    Israel and Hamas are ‘on the brink’ of agreeing on a cease-fire in Gaza and the release hostages held there, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday, raising hopes for some respite to the violence after more than 15 months of war.

    I’ve heard that before. Will believe it when I see it.

  126. says

    Politico reports another aspect of team Trump’s purge efforts:

    Michael Allen, a longtime Republican national security expert, was recently ousted as the ‘sherpa’ for CIA director nominee John Ratcliffe because he had co-hosted a campaign fundraiser for Liz Cheney, according to three people familiar with the matter.

  127. says

    NBC News:

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Tuesday that it was suing Capital One for misleading consumers about their savings account interest rates and ‘cheating’ them out of more than $2 billion in interest.

    Good for the CFPB, well done. After Trump takes office, it is likely that we will see less good news like this.

  128. says

    Associated Press:

    New Jersey is going to build up a supply of medication used in abortions, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced Tuesday during his state of the state address as he both pledged to work with President-elect Donald Trump and warned that the state is ready to push back against the incoming administration.

  129. says

    Even with a second chance, Trump is unable to carry out an orderly presidential transition”.
    By Rachel Maddow. Video at the link.

    “It seems the president-elect can’t manage to oversee a transfer of power that isn’t chaotic and in poor order.”

    It would be hard to run a presidential transition that could be worse than the last one. That transition included the outgoing president, Donald Trump, encouraging his followers to march on the Capitol to try to keep him in power.

    The last inauguration had to have thousands of National Guard troops on hand to protect the proceedings from the threat of more violence from Trump’s followers. The outgoing president also didn’t even bother to show up for his successor’s swearing-in.

    To be blunt, the last transition was the worst presidential transition in the history of the country — by a mile. Given how disastrously Trump performed during the last transition, you may have assumed this one would be better. But it looks like it’s going to be close.

    During this transition, the president-elect has continued to sell his self-branded watches, sneakers and Bibles — including the new Inauguration Day edition. He’s also selling boots, commemorative coins and guitars.

    Over the last few weeks, Trump has made unprovoked threats to seize territory from three countries — which is inexplicable to most Americans but very exciting to the dictators of both Russia and China, who have been seizing territory from other countries (or planning to), and now — whether or not Trump follows through on these weird threats — have Trump’s words to throw back at us.

    This is the presidential transition when the president-elect officially became a 34-times convicted felon 10 days before he was sworn in, and then named another convicted felon, one of his relatives, to be ambassador to France. He also picked his son’s ex-girlfriend to be ambassador to Greece and reportedly lobbied for his other son’s wife to be made a U.S. senator … until that collapsed.

    He picked his son-in-law’s friend to be his special envoy for hostage affairs. The same son-in-law then announced that his firm received another $1.5 billion from government-controlled funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, on top of the billions he already got from Saudi Arabia.

    This is the transition when the president-elect appears to have just randomly picked people off the TV for almost every imaginable senior government job. He chose a syndicated daytime TV doctor to run Medicare. He’s picked Fox News contributors or hosts or their relatives for roles like secretary of transportation, national security adviser, FDA commissioner, counterterrorism director, ambassador to Israel, surgeon general, ambassador to the Dominican Republic, border czar, Ukraine envoy and defense secretary.

    This is a shambolic, ridiculously bad transition. It is not going well. And now, with less than one week until Trump’s inauguration, we’re entering the part of this very poorly run transition where the confirmation hearings start falling apart.

    On Tuesday, the Senate was supposed to hold a hearing for Trump’s nominee to run Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins. Most people couldn’t pick Collins out of a line-up, but as a nominee to run the VA, he is a bit of a walking scandal. The only thing he’s really known for when it comes to the VA is his desire to get rid of it and privatize veterans’ health care.

    But on Monday, Senate leaders announced they had to delay Collins’ confirmation hearing because the FBI hasn’t finished the paperwork and background checks necessary to start his hearings.

    Tuesday was also supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump’s interior secretary nominee, Doug Burgum. You might remember him as the obscure Republican presidential candidate who seemingly paid his way into the debates. There was a provision in the Republican primary debate rules where you had to get a certain number of people to donate to your campaign in order for you to get onto the stage. Burgum did not have a sufficient number of donors so he paid people to donate to him, offering some of those who donated $1 to his campaign a $20 gift card. That’s how he got into the Republican presidential debates, and now Trump wants him to run the Interior Department. But we’ll have to wait to hear from Burgum since his hearing was also postponed due to paperwork delays.

    As was the hearing for Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Amid reports of yet more trouble getting the paperwork together, Gabbard’s confirmation hearing has still not been scheduled. And this might be one to watch to see if it ever gets scheduled at all. The Trump team has already had to pull two of their nominations, for attorney general and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and we should watch for this one, too, given what’s emerged in public reporting on Gabbard, including how poorly she’s allegedly done in her meetings with senators. There’s also the conspicuous silence from Capitol Hill in terms of whether there’s sufficient support for her even to make it through committee.

    This is their level of performance even before they have responsibility for governing. We will watch what they do and not just what they say, from now, and for the first hundred days, and for the duration.

    But what they are saying and what they are doing thus far is utterly shambolic. And none of us should be afraid to say so.

  130. Reginald Selkirk says

    Texas has a powerful new House speaker in a blow to the GOP’s hard right

    A push by Texas’ hard right to widen control in the state Capitol fell short Tuesday after House lawmakers rejected its choice for the powerful speakership amid a Republican feud accelerated by the historic impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    Instead, new House Speaker Dustin Burrows won the job with the support of Democrats, who favored him over a challenger backed by the GOP’s emboldened right.

    The outcome is a victory for Texas’ shrinking establishment wing, though it’s possible that Burrows could still lose influence in the coming months. The race deepened divisions within the GOP, partly driven by Republicans who say an agenda that includes some of the toughest laws in the U.S. over abortion and immigration doesn’t go far enough…

  131. Reginald Selkirk says

    Rashida Jones is stepping down as MSNBC president on the eve of Trump inauguration

    MSNBC President Rashida Jones says she is stepping down after four years leading the liberal news network, her move coming on the eve of a second Trump administration and after changes in corporate ownership.

    Jones, in a memo to staff on Tuesday, said that she is leaving to “pursue new opportunities.” She’ll be replaced on an interim basis by Rebecca Kutler, a former CNN executive who joined MSNBC in 2022…

  132. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/if-zuckerberg-wants-masculine-energy

    “If Zuckerberg Wants ‘Masculine Energy,’ He Ought To Consider Being The Strong, Silent Type”

    Are you sick of talking/reading/writing about the train wreck that is Mark Zuckerberg for the last week and half? I know I am! In fact, I wasn’t even going to address his ridiculous comments on “The Joe Rogan Experience” this past Friday about how companies like his need more “masculine energy” … but here we are.

    So, yes. On Friday, after a full and exciting week of eliminating DEI goals and protocols and making it kosher to claim women are “property” and trans people are “freaks” on Facebook (so that Republicans can express their political views, which they simply could not do before they were allowed to say that women are property and trans people are freaks), Mark Zuckerberg stopped by “The Joe Rogan Experience” to chat about his transition to MAGA-hood that definitely is in no way motivated by the tax breaks Trump is about to give him and other absurdly rich people. Really, his concerns are about the lack of “masculine energy” in the corporate space.

    That, I think we can assume, is why he’s moving so much of his company’s operations to Texas, a state in which women have no reproductive rights. If that doesn’t bring in the machismo, what will?

    He also talked a lot about mixed martial arts […]

    “I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg said in response to Rogan’s claim that Jiu Jitsu turns “you” into a libertarian because it makes you value hard work (and, I guess, hate poor people?). “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”

    Sure, but has he considered becoming the strong and silent type?

    […] I do have a guess as to why companies may have tamped down the “masculine energy.” It just might be because that “masculine energy” and “aggression” led to a whole lot of women in these companies being sexually harassed or assaulted, and that just was not the best PR for them. Also, defending yourself from sexual harassment or assault lawsuits costs money!

    Where I am confused, however, is where Zuck is finding this incredible dearth of “masculine energy” in corporate America. Because like … only 11.8 percent of those in C-level roles are women. Only 37 percent of Meta’s own employees are women (a number likely to drop as they move more of their operations to Texas).

    Women are still 14 percent less likely to be promoted and 30 percent less likely to be called in for an interview than men with the same qualifications and characteristics. Women with children are 35 percent less likely to be called in for an interview than men with children are, and high-achieving men are twice as likely to be called in for an interview than are high-achieving women with the same characteristics — three times as likely in math-related fields. On top of that, one study found that 60 percent of women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the workplace.

    Not to mention, tech world is also notoriously male-dominated. How much more “masculine energy” does he need?

    […] you may recall started Facebook as a site for ranking women by hotness.

    […] absolutely no one said that “masculinity is bad.” It’s also weird to think that these things would be mutually exclusive. […] Perhaps his idea of masculinity is more like Donald Trump or Bluto from Popeye than Paul Newman, whom I just can’t quite picture throwing a whole ass tantrum over the lack of “masculine energy” in corporate America.

    In fact, I would actually kind of argue that the least manly thing on earth is constantly whining about your masculinity feeling threatened in some capacity.

    […] Would he be going for more of a “Mad Men” vibe or like a 1980s construction site vibe? And should we assume that both of those necessitate the sexual harassment of women in the office? Because how can you really feel manly if you can’t smack your assistant on the ass once in a while?

    So, just to be clear, this adult man — a fucking billionaire, mind you — is out here complaining about some kind of intangible “vibe,” as opposed to the actual, real, documented issues that women deal with in the workplace. You know, like their employers moving operations to a state where they can’t get an abortion and have to worry that if they have a miscarriage and it goes wrong, the doctors won’t treat them until they’re septic? Or, if they are trans, moving to a state where Republicans just introduced 32 bills targeting them and their right to exist?

    These are real, non-vibe-related problems — the kind that are experienced by the very people he just decided he’d allow hate speech against on his platform.

    […] he might want to keep his mouth shut.

  133. Reginald Selkirk says

    Archaeologists Dug Up the Tomb of an Egyptian Queen. It Could ‘Reconstruct History.’

    Archaeologists working near Luxor announced a bevy of new finds they believe could “reconstruct history” thanks to the wealth of artifacts they discovered in a mixture of rock-cut tombs, burial shafts, and even part of a temple. Some have been around for as many as 3,600 years.

    The Zahi Hawass Foundation for Antiquities & Heritage announced the finds near Luxor along the causeway of Queen Hatshepsut’s funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile River. The foundation, led by Hawass, said in a statement provided to the Associated Press, that it had been working with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities at the site since September 2022.

    Along with the discoveries of the tombs and burial sites comes a mix of artifacts that experts believe could reveal the practices of life near Luxor around 1500 B.C. Artifacts inside the tombs included bronze coins (some dating to between 367-283 B.C. thanks to the image of Alexander the Great on them), funerary masks covering mummies, winged scarabs, funerary beads and amulets, and even children’s toys formed from clay. While looting certainly stripped some of the more precious pieces from the tombs over the past centuries, the archaeologists also found pottery tables used to offer bread, wine, and meat and archer’s bows that could link the tomb’s owners to the Egyptian military.

    Inside pieces of Queen Hatshepsut’s Valley Temple, Hawass said the rock-cut tombs come from the Middle Kingdom from 1938 to 1630 B.C. and there are burial shafts from the 17th dynasty dating from 1580 to 1550 B.C. The shafts still contained wooden coffins, and the remains of a young child were discovered in one…

  135. Bekenstein Bound says

    They left out “mangled worlds”, which stems from an attempt to explain how the probability rules of quantum mechanics arise from decoherence and entanglement.

    If true, then the universe is constantly splitting into more and more worlds that have smaller and smaller quantum amplitudes (they must always sum to 1). The true reality is then a “configuration space” with all possible universe-states in it, and a set of amplitude-multipliers that indicate the probability, essentially, that any given configuration follows a previous. An observer “sees” themselves in a universe “moving” through the configuration space along branching paths according to these amplitude-multipliers.

    Thing is, time itself essentially emerges from these flows, and causality. Points in the configuration space usually have most of their incoming amplitude come from a particular prior point. The view from the inside is that that’s the past, and it caused the present. Further, when the path branches, the communication between the universes in each branch shrink away rapidly, decaying exponentially. The more particles are different, the lower the probability that a transition can flip that many simultaneously into the other state. So the amplitude cross-flow between branches with only small differences to one particle can be considerable, and this can show up as things like double-slit interference patterns. Get more particles involved (entangled with the difference-bearing particles) and the differences multiply and the amplitude cross-flow rapidly dwindles to nothing: “measure” one of the particles and the interference pattern disappears.

    The issue that arises is: what happens if a configuration flow-branch’s amplitude becomes sufficiently tiny? Eventually, the amplitude flows “within” its history that knit its causal structure together will shrink below the amplitude flows coming from configurations with very large absolute amplitudes (e.g., the Big Bang, which as the starting point has the highest of all), and that means that time comes unraveled. Observers in worlds that still have large amplitudes see branching probabilities that correspond to those of classical QM; observers in worlds with tiny enough amplitudes see the very laws of physics disintegrate, then cease to exist along with everything and everyone around them. Gone in a puff of logic.

    Thing is, every time a quantum “decision” is made the universe splits and the amplitudes of the daughters become smaller than that of their parent. Eventually every branch must meet this fate. Some meet it sooner than others, after a sufficient string of low-probability events.

    There’s no reason to think that this universe will run into this any time soon. It’s been around for billions of years and probably has billions more — the same argument as applied to vacuum metastability events. But if you ever win ten lotto jackpots in a row or something, it might be time to get a wee bit scared …

    On the plus side, in a way it’s an auto-renewing cyclic universe model, as the mangled universes typically get overwritten by amplitude flowing directly from the Big Bang configuration.

    As for what it would look like, I don’t know. A weakening of causality could precede its complete abolition (or being disintegrated and swept away into a crosscurrent, absorbed into a new, infant universe freshly starting to expand). That might mean improbable events, or a worsening deviation of QM branchings from the normal probabilities, or something. It sounds like a fascinating science fiction scenario but in reality would probably happen too fast (if of course it is even possible at all) to notice. The timescale for the most fundamental processes, after all, is on the order of 10-44 second or so.

    Also, the version of you who didn’t get the highly improbable string of lotto wins will still be alive, if not as rich, in the still healthily-large universe next door.

    There is a non-negligible probability that all of this is bullshit, of course, as with any speculative extension of known quantum physics. Unless all those extensions exist at once in a state of superposition, of course.

  136. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all

    The segment discusses the fact that Governor Gavin Newsom slams Elon Musk and Trump, “Elon knows what he’s doing,” when it comes to fueling wildfire lies. Newsom thanked President Joe Biden for his leadership and for Biden’s prompt disaster declaration.

    That’s the Chris Hayes “All In” A block segment from earlier this evening.

    The video is 10:46 minutes long.

    That video and more at the link.

  137. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Bekenstein Bound @135:

    left out “mangled worlds” […] There is a non-negligible probability that all of this is bullshit, of course, as with any speculative extension of known quantum physics.

    Ha! More so in this case.
    The author’s PhD’s in economics where his focus is on futurism and market prediction; BS/MS in physics but his vita in that area is, shall we say, lacking (spitballing about odds of extraterrestrial life). Mangled Worlds hardly comes up outside of LessWrong circles. He’s a fan of cryonics, transhumanism, and MRAs (the latter two he backpedals from identifying as, but agrees with anyway). He JAQs ‘provocatively’ with a misogynist bent for mainstream (negative) attention.
     
    An Interview With Robin Hanson, the Sex Redistribution Professor (2018)

    I published an article asking whether Robin Hanson was the “creepiest economist in America.” […] notorious for a blog post in which he used a recent misogynist murder spree in Canada as an opportunity to ponder a world in which sexually frustrated young men might form a political movement to try to “redistribute” sex, and compared those who might want to do this to progressives who want to redistribute income. […] the professor has a history of controversial writing on gender issues and has written supportively of the men’s rights movement. […] Hanson and I talked about that post
    […]
    [Hanson]: I said, “Oh, look, here’s an excuse to talk about a subject I’ve talked about many times before because it’s in the news.”

    [Interviewer]: it didn’t strike me as the best time to launch into a sympathetic take on sexually frustrated men given that one had just mowed down 10 people with a van.

    [Hanson]: Right. And I hear you. And that sounds plausible. And if I had thought these things through more carefully, I would have paid more attention to that. And honestly, you know, in addition to many idiosyncratic things, I am probably personally less able to and inclined to think those things through.

    LOL. He built his career on predicting societal behavior. Either he’s the fool he presents himself as, or he’s the fool who thought that presenting himself this way as a defense wouldn’t undermine his credibility.

    [Interviewer]: Someone can look at your work and see a guy who has expressed a lot of sympathy for, as you put it, beta males who are sexually frustrated. A guy who is very worried about cuckoldry, which is an issue relating to women’s sexual behavior and whether or not they’re sneaking around and lying to men. […] sexual redistribution […] They might look at all that and say, hey, […] he’s interested in patriarchy.
    […]
    [Hanson]: I do not want to automatically presume that the norms of my era are obviously the best […] I am giving an open mind to patriarchy.
    […]
    [Interviewer]: do you think this idea you expressed, of redistributing sex, is potentially a good idea?

    [Hanson]: Potentially, sure, that’s the whole point. If it’s an open question—it couldn’t be an open question if it weren’t potentially a good idea.

    Teach the controversy!

    Needless to say, Mangled Worlds didn’t catch on among physicists.
    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/814431/did-mangled-worlds-go-anywhere

  139. says

    Trump announces plans for a new, wildly unnecessary bureaucracy

    “The president-elect announced plans for a new “External Revenue Service,” to run parallel to the IRS, which was bizarre for reasons he ought to understand.”

    With just days remaining ahead of Donald Trump’s second inaugural, there’s ongoing chatter about whether the president-elect will follow through on his trade tariff threats. […] when push comes to shove, some continue to suggest, Trump might not pull the trigger on a misguided plan that would undermine the economy.

    It was against this backdrop that the president-elect made an announcement of sorts by way of his social media platform:

    For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves. It is time for that to change. I am today announcing that I will create the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE to collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources. We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share. January 20, 2025, will be the birth date of the External Revenue Service.

    Before we dig in on this, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the “watch what they do, not what they say” maxim. Some reports over the last 24 hours indicated that Trump is creating a new bureaucracy to run parallel to the IRS, pointing to his online missive. The trouble is, there’s no way of knowing whether Trump will actually try to create an “External Revenue Service,” or whether this will soon join the long list of ideas that he briefly seems excited about, only to never mention again. [True]

    But for the sake of conversation, let’s say Trump was serious about his latest plan. Let’s assume that, starting next week, the new GOP administration really will have a new layer of bureaucracy that will focus exclusively on collecting foreign money coming into the United States, thanks in part to his plans for sweeping new tariffs.

    What’s wrong with this? Quite a bit, actually.

    For one thing, the idea of an “External Revenue Service” appears to be a clumsy attempt at political packaging: Trump has long struggled to understand the basics of trade policy, and he apparently continues to believe that tariffs will generate vast wealth that will pour into the government’s coffers.

    As he really ought to know by now, it is American consumers, not foreign sources, that would pay more as a result of Trump’s policies.

    But even if we put this aside, a more glaring problem emerges: Trump seems determined to create a new bureaucracy that’s wildly unnecessary, because the United States already has an agency responsible for collecting foreign revenue. The president-elect has probably heard of it: U.S. Customs and Border Protection already does what the “External Revenue Service” would presumably do.

    The Washington Post reported that Trump’s announcement “sparked immediate confusion about how such an office would work in practice.”

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection currently administers tariff policy, which is set by the president and Congress. Importers self-classify and declare the value of their goods, and CBP officials review and audit that paperwork before collecting any duties, penalties and fees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Those funds are deposited into the U.S. General Fund, run by the Treasury Department. The government collected about $80 billion in tariffs and duties in 2023, according to a White House estimate.

    Does Trump know this? Did he give this a moment’s thought before making the announcement? Did it occur to him that maybe he could ask someone who actually knows something about the issue?

    Unfortunately, I think we know the answer to these questions.

  140. Reginald Selkirk says

    FDA bans Red No. 3, artificial coloring used in beverages, candy and other foods

    The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it’s banning the use of Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that gives food and drinks their bright red cherry color but has been linked to cancer in animals.

    The dye is still used in thousands of foods, including candy, cereals, cherries in fruit cocktails and strawberry-flavored milkshakes, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group that petitioned the agency in 2022 to end its use.

    The FDA’s decision marks a victory for consumer advocacy groups and some U.S. lawmakers who have long urged the FDA to revoke the additive’s approval, citing ample evidence that its use in beverages, dietary supplements, cereals and candies may cause cancer as well as affect children’s behavior…

  142. says

    Jane Mayer/The New Yorker:

    The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary

    Supporters of Donald Trump’s nominee have intimidated potential witnesses and suppressed the F.B.I. background check of the former Fox News host in the run-up to his Senate hearing.

    Outside the public eye, Hegseth’s fixers have used questionable tactics against his opponents. Last week, the private employment records of a former employee of Hegseth’s who was a potential witness against him were leaked to the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site, which published them in an apparent effort to undermine her.

    The Free Beacon’s chief financial supporter is Paul Singer, a New York hedge-fund billionaire who was also a major supporter of Vets for Freedom, a nonprofit that nearly went bankrupt under Hegseth in 2008, as NBC recently reported.

    The Free Beacon didn’t disclose its past ties to Hegseth. Instead, it publicly outed the previously anonymous witness, who had sought whistle-blower protection from the Senate Armed Services Committee. The same day, another version of the piece about the witness, along with her photograph, appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

  143. says

    Interesting idea. Since they’ve taken DEI and scream it every time someone who isn’t straight, white, and male gets a job or office, refer to the abusers and upwards failures as rightwing DEI?

    I don’t associate with the word “white” if I can help it. I think of it as one of history’s worst memes. I’d be tempted to refer to white male DEI but maybe the culture isn’t ready for that.
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/15/2297046/-Marcy-Wheeler-Identifies-the-GOP-Coffin

  144. says

    Half a dozen nominees of President-elect Trump’s Cabinet nominees are in front of Senate committees for confirmation hearings Wednesday.

    The list includes former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), his pick for secretary of State; Russell Vought, whom Trump tapped to head the Office of Management and Budget; and John Ratcliffe, the nominee to lead the CIA.

    […] Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    […] President Biden is slated to deliver a farewell speech to the nation at 8 p.m. EST. […]

    Link

    Live updates are available at the link.

    Excerpts:

    […] Wright stands by past comments that attention for wildfires is ‘just hype’ to justify climate policy […] Chris Wright told senators he still supports a past post saying that “hype over wildfires is just hype to justify” bad policies. […]

    Rubio calls for working with Mexican authorities, not using military to counter drug cartels […] Rubio said he would look into whether a foreign terrorist designation is an appropriate tool to sanction such drug cartels. […] Rubio holds back commitment for Palestinian state. […] Protesters, in English and Spanish, interrupt Rubio […] Rubio: Russians, Ukrainians need to make concessions […] “In this conflict, no way Russia takes all of Ukraine. It’s also unrealistic that a nation the size of Ukraine — no matter how incompetent, how much damage the Russian Federation suffered — no way Ukraine is going to push these people back [to their original borders].”
    […] Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the elimination of a senior adviser for Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) position at the State Department that was established by the Biden administration.

    Risch criticized DEIA as inserting ideological and political requirements into personnel decisions and policy execution.

    “This must end on Day 1. We need a return to merit, and I know Marco will right the ship,” Risch said in opening remarks at the confirmation hearing of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

    Bondi demurs on whether she would appoint special counsel to review illegal acts from Trump. […] Bondi said she won’t have ‘enemies list’ but bashes Trump prosecutions […] Less than 2 in 10 confident Trump DOJ will act fairly: Survey […] Bondi says US needs more detention space for migrants […] Bondi won’t say Trump lost 2020 election […]

  145. lumipuna says

    It seems like the Hegseth confirmation will be like Brett Kavanaugh on steroids (while also drunk).

  146. says

    Excerpt from Wonkette’s live coverage of Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing:

    […] While Ted Cruz grandstands and peacocks and jacks off for the cameras about the Biden weaponization of the Justice Department, Bondi’s stupidity and fangs both come out at the same time when she adds “AND TWO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS!” as if that was part of Joe Biden’s big plot.

    Also she angrily explained that Trump was elected by “77.1 percent” or maybe 77 million or 77 million percent, she doesn’t fucking know.

    Surprise, this one is a moron too. […]

    She says nobody is going to be prosecuted for being a political opponent LIKE JOE BIDEN DID. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/liveblogging-the-confirmation-hearing

  148. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/special-counsel-jack-smith-donald

    “Special Counsel Jack Smith: Donald Trump Is A Criminal, No Sh*t. But let him count the ways!”

    At long last the first volume of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report is out, after Judge Aileen Cannon’s maverick attempt to shiv it in the kidney. Fat lot of good the report coming out now does anybody, but probably it coming out sooner would not have mattered either. After all, Judge Tanya Chutkan already unsealed the government’s much-more detailed filing in Donald Trump Can Steal An Election And Let His Dumb-As-Dirt Supporters Try To Hang Mike Pence vs. No back in October, including the exhaustive appendices, and That Asshole still got re-elected anyway. Note for future elections (should there be any): Don’t stake the result upon Americans reading hundreds of pages of evidence.

    And what more evidence does one need? We all saw that [Trump] on January 6 heaving about “fighting like hell” and telling his supporters he’d walk with them to the Capitol. We heard him wheeze about wanting 11,780 votes on that phone call to Georgia to an incredulous Brad Raffensperger. Did millions of voters nap through this? Do they have the memories of goldfish? Do they just not care? Do they approve?

    It’ll also forever be an aggravating mystery why it took Attorney General Merrick Garland nearly two years to even appoint a Special Counsel, and an outrage how the Supreme Court dragged its ass for eight more months, before pronouncing Trump above the law for anything he did in the role of Holy Executive Emperor. This failure is no orphan, it has many fathers, and a mother or two.

    But taxpayers paid for this report, so we might as well read it and revisit once again how Donald Trump, LOSER, knew he was a LOSING LOSER WHO LOST. A FRAUD who mounted a desperate chock-full-o-lies multi-pronged effort to steal the 2020 election anyway, one that ended in terror for legislators, violence for Capitol police officers, and death, all while he sipped a Diet Coke and shrugged “so what?” at the possibility of Mike Pence getting murdered.

    It’s 174 pages of saying a whole lot of what we already knew: that there was several piñatas’ worth of evidence, more than plenty to convict that con man for his efforts to steal the 2020 election. Volume two, which we probably will never see because Trump will be king in five fucking days, is about Trump stealing and retaining our national secrets in his roach motel shitter. That volume is still under wraps for now, because the appeals to the dropping of obstruction-related charges against Trump’s Diet Coke-and-documents valet Walt Nauta and Trump’s motel manager Carlos De Oliveria are still ongoing.

    There’s a new thing here: Smith is as horrified as the rest of us that the Supreme Court declared Trump more equal before the law than others, from page 122:

    Before this case, no court had ever found that Presidents are immune from criminal responsibility for their official acts, and no text in the Constitution explicitly confers such criminal immunity on the President. As set forth below, prior criminal investigations by the Department of Justice, whether conducted through special prosecutors, independent counsels, or special counsels, had examined whether Presidents had violated federal criminal law through use of their official powers, and none of those investigations had regarded former Presidents as immune from criminal liability for their official acts. The Office proceeded from the same premise. […] The Supreme Court, however, vacated the court of appeals’ judgment based on its conclusion that Presidents have absolute immunity for core official conduct that Congress lacks power to regulate; at least presumptive immunity for other official presidential acts; and no immunity for unofficial conduct. […] Department of Justice prosecutors had historically investigated presidential conduct based on the understanding that no criminal immunity would bar prosecution if the President had used his official powers to violate federal criminal law.

    […] thanks to this fucked-up Supreme Court, the law is powerless to save us, that frauding con man can do whatever he wants to America now. Trying to steal the election was just an amuse-bouche.

    And Smith laments in his cover letter, “While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters. I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters.” Christ, why am I about to cry?

    Smith does not neglect to mention that every other fucking court other than the Supremes called bullshit on the audacious presidential immunity for “SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival” argument.

    […] Smith takes us through the elements of the four felonies that Trump was charged with, and makes it clear he sure as shit did those things six ways to Sunday, and that there were buckets of evidence that could have convicted him, and probably his six co-conspirators too (unnamed but easy to suss from context cues):

    (1) Rudy Giuliani, (2) John Eastman, (3) Sidney Powell, (4) Jeffrey Clark, (5) Kenneth Chesebro, and (6) less obvious but probably Boris Epshteyn.

    All of those treasonweasels have been indicted in some state, and they have a passel of disbarments/suspended law licenses amongst them, so at least somebody’s facing some consequences.

    Count one of the four felonies Treasonboob had been charged with in DC was conspiracy to defraud the United States, on account of his repeated and widespread efforts to spread false claims about the November 2020 election while knowing they were false. How very not true did he know they were?

    For starters, everybody told him so, from Vice President Mike Pence to officials in all of the seven states that he lost, to his Attorney General Bill Barr and back again. Then there’s how the numbers he claimed of dead voters and fraudulent ballots he moaned about in public were constantly changing, because he could not keep his lies straight:

    “For example, in Arizona, the conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in that state; 150 five days later, it was “beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote”; three weeks later, “the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000”; 152 days after that, the assertion was 32,000; conspirators landed back where they started, at 36,000 — a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.”

    [Yep. All true. Makes one feel sorry for the investigators who have to track that torrent of nonsense.]

    Privately he told people that he was planning to declare victory before all ballots were counted, and told family members “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” And, “in a January 3, 2021 Oval Office meeting regarding a national security matter, Mr. Trump stated in part, ‘[I]t’s too late for us. We’re going to give that to the next guy,’ meaning President-elect Biden.”

    When a senior advisor told him that Rudy Giuliani’s claims wouldn’t hold up in court because there was no evidence, he said, “The details don’t matter.” And privately he told people that Sidney Powell’s Italian-space-laser voting-machine fraud claims were “crazy.”

    And his co-conspirators lied to the would-be fake electors and then-RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, too, telling them that the fake certificates they wanted everybody to sign were For Entertainment Purposes Only and just a contingency in case Trump won his lawsuits. […] (footnote on page 22: “Nobody — nobody suggested, hey, you know what, let’s just get this signed because we’re gonna put pressure on … Pence on the 6th. Cause if I had known that was the plan, I wouldn’t have signed a contingent on it.”)

    And so those fraudy fake certificates became the basis of two more counts: conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and the count of obstruction of/attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, all about the plan to use those fake certificates to summon Trump’s troglodyte supporters to DC and rile them up into rioting and going after Mike Pence so he couldn’t certify the election for Biden, even as Chesebro and Eastman helpfully admitted in their emails that to “send[] in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence” was “[k]ind of wild/creative,” and “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes” and that hey, maybe they should “keep [the plan] under wraps until Congress counts the vote on Jan. 6th.”

    All of that equals unlawful means Trump and his-co-conspirators used to benefit nobody but Trump.

    And don’t forget the weeks of Chesebro, Eastman, and (probably) Epshteyn nagging, haranguing, and harassing poor little Mike Pence to betray his oath of office, even as they openly admitted to each other that the plan was “not supported by the Constitution or federal law.” And then Trump demon-dialing Pence for days on end, lying to him that fraud was being found, saying the “Justice Department [was] finding major infractions,” [Oh. I didn’t remember that detail.] and threatening him that “hundreds of thousands” of people would “hate his guts” and think he was “stupid,” and that Pence was “too honest.”

    So that brings us to count four, conspiracy against rights, in which Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to “oppress, threaten and intimidate” people in their right to vote in an election.

    […] Smith also mentions why Trump was not charged with insurrection, in case you were wondering. Short version, he was the current president on January 6, making it legally complicated, and nobody’s prosecuted that in more than a hundred years.

    So, Trump got away with everything then, then he got away with all of it some more, and Lordy knows what he’s going to get away with over the next four years. At least there’ll be no more impetus for him to even try to hide whatever crimes come next? […]

  149. says

    Israel and Hamas agree to Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal

    […] Implementation is likely to start on Sunday. Hamas is expected to release 33 hostages during the first phase of an emerging deal. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are set to be released from Israeli jails at the same time.

    • The release of the hostages would be the first phase of the deal being finalized. Negotiations to reach the second phase – which is intended to end the war – would begin on the 16th day of the implementation of the deal. Here’s what we know about the potential deal.

    The Israel government and Hamas have agreed to a deal that will pause fighting in Gaza and lead to the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, a source briefed on the talks has told CNN.

    Under the deal, which is yet to be formally announced, Hamas and its allied militant groups are expected to release 33 hostages seized from Israel during the attacks of October 7, 2023. In return, Israel will free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

    The agreement would deliver the first reprieve from war for the people of Gaza in more than a year, and only the second since the Israeli bombardment began.

    Once confirmed, it is expected that the deal will allow Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza and there would be a massive influx of humanitarian aid into the strip, where residents have long faced dire humanitarian conditions.

    The Israeli military would begin withdrawing from population centers during the first phase, but would remain along the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, an Israeli official said earlier on Wednesday.

    Israel would also maintain a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border with Israel, the size of which has been one of the final sticking points in the negotiations.

    The agreement would also ramp up the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza, according to the Associated Press, which has seen a copy of the draft deal.

    The deal is expected to include the release of five female Israeli soldiers held by Hamas in the first phase of the agreement, each of whom would be exchanged for 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 convicted militants who are serving life sentences, The Associated Press reported.

    Palestinian prisoners deemed responsible for killing Israelis would not be released into the West Bank, but rather to the Gaza Strip or abroad following agreements with foreign countries.

    Hamas and its allies still hold 94 people taken from Israel on October 7, 2023. At least 34 of them are dead, according to the Israeli government, though the true number is expected to be higher. Hamas holds an additional four hostages who have been captive since 2014, at least two of whom are dead. […]

    Of the 94 hostages taken on October 7, 81 are men and 13 are women, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Two are children under the age of five; 84 are Israelis, eight are Thai, one is Nepalese and one is Tanzanian.

    Israel holds at least 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, according to the Commission of Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society – though that number does not include an unknown number of Palestinians taken captive in Gaza. The figure of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel includes 3,376 people held under administrative detention, meaning they have had no public charges against them nor faced trial, including 95 children and 22 women.

    Negotiations to reach the second and third phases of a ceasefire agreement – which is intended to end the war – would begin on the 16th day of the implementation of the deal, according to an Israeli official.

    The ceasefire is not guaranteed to continue beyond the first phase of the deal. However, the official said Israel is eager to “bring all our hostages back home” and will enter negotiations to enter the second phase of the agreement in good faith, which could lead to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

    Israel does not commit to ending the war in the agreement but has committed to engage in negotiations to enter the next phase of the deal — which would lead to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. The Associated Press reported that the mediators gave Hamas verbal guarantees that they will pressure Israel to reach a deal for the next phases of the agreement. […]

  150. says

    In one of his final moves in office, President Joe Biden is aiming to eliminate some bureaucratic hurdles that have historically forced homeowners and renters into expensive mortgages and sky-high rental rates.

    On Tuesday, the Biden administration unveiled a $100 million grant program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development aimed at helping local communities identify and remove barriers to the production and preservation of affordable housing.

    “The United States faces a shortfall of millions of affordable homes that has driven up home prices and rents and has made finding a quality and affordable home out of reach for too many Americans,” the White House statement said.

    The grant will remove red tape and modernize local permitting procedures to facilitate the construction of new housing, finance the construction of new homes for renting and owning, and repair and revitalize existing buildings. New plans will be developed across 14 states, including in the cities of San Francisco, California; Austin, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; and St. Louis, Missouri.

    The White House also approved the first residential transit-oriented development (TOD) loan under the Department of Transportation’s lending programs. The new initiative will fund the creation of more than 300 new housing units near Florida’s Boca Raton Tri-Rail Station, which is expected to generate an annual $2 million in land lease revenue for the commuter rail system. This would help ensure that public transportation is accessible to people living in affordable housing, removing a potential barrier to employment. […]

    Biden’s push to address the housing shortage is an extension of his 2022 Housing Supply Action Plan, which aimed to reverse years of underbuilding and stimulate housing growth by offering incentives to state and local governments. […]

    Link

  151. says

    Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, previously held that role in the latter’s first term. After Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, Vought, a Heritage Foundation alumnus, founded the Center for Renewing America to keep Trump’s MAGA agenda at the forefront of Republican politics despite his White House exit.

    Vought, who endorses drastically increasing presidential authority over governmental agencies, made headlines in 2024 when he was secretly recorded undermining Trump’s constant denial of any connection to Project 2025, and when unearthed speeches revealed plans to “defund” and demoralize career civil servants.

    Vought’s hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee begins at 1PM ET Wednesday. [Video at the link]

    Link

  152. says

    New York Times link

    “Live Updates: Strong Winds and Low Humidity Heighten Fire Risk in L.A.”

    “New or existing wildfires could grow rapidly on Wednesday under these conditions, forecasts warned. Officials are trying to prevent speculation and evictions in ravaged neighborhoods.”

    Residents of the Los Angeles area faced a third consecutive day of strong wind warnings and remained at risk for new fires on Wednesday, more than a week after devastating blazes began tearing through Southern California.

    The most dangerous fire conditions that forecasters warned of, including gusts of at least 30 miles an hour, had not yet materialized by midmorning. On Tuesday, weaker-than-predicted winds allowed firefighters to make progress against the largest blazes and tame or extinguish new, smaller ones.

    […] Forecast: Wind gusts and dangerously low humidity on Wednesday could cause new or existing fires to grow rapidly, according to the National Weather Service. A weather system moving in on Thursday is likely to make it easier for firefighters to gain control of the blazes, though forecasters have warned of another possible wind event early next week. […]

  153. says

    Watching Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth demonstrate his appalling lack of credentials, knowledge, and character for the job for which he was nominated I am compelled to ask: Is the Trump administration running a DEI program for incompetent, unqualified, and/or ethically compromised Whites?

    Considering Hegseth, election denier Attorney General Pam Bondi, WWE exec Linda McMahon for secretary of education, and vaccine denier, brain-worm victim Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Health and Human Services, one must conclude Republicans are not sending us their best. (Or, the more alarming alternative…they are sending their best.)

    If it were not so deadly serious and discouraging, the Hegseth hearing would have been a form of high comedy. Consider this exchange with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): [video at the link]

    Or this, with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): [video at the link]

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s entire line of questioning was devastating: [video at the link]

    Moreover, “Senate Democrats on Monday said that an F.B.I. background check on Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, omitted key details on major allegations against him, in part because it did not include interviews with critical witnesses,” the New York Times reported. “One missed opportunity came when the bureau did not interview one of Mr. Hegseth’s ex-wives before its findings were presented to senators last week, according to people familiar with the bureau’s investigation.” Missed? Or intentionally skipped? It’s unfathomable that such a critical witness would have simply been overlooked.

    It is no coincidence that these Democratic women on the committee, including Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and of course Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) showed themselves infinitely more qualified to head the Pentagon. And yet, a man with a history of drinking, a list of financial and sexual scandals (which he denies or claims were merely “anonymous smears”), who possesses absolutely no strategic or diplomatic expertise is president-elect Donald Trump’s choice. While MAGA Republicans (including Hegseth) have genuflected at the altar of “meritocracy”—casting aspersions on women and non-Whites in positions of authority in the military, the Los Angeles fire department, and the Supreme Court—they suspend all critical evaluation of TV hosts, tech bros, and billionaires. The latter they presume qualified. [All devastatingly true!]

    Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot whom I interviewed yesterday, told me that Republican claims that the military has lowered standards to accommodate women is a “lie.” “I landed an aircraft. On an aircraft carrier. At night,” she said. No one lowered standards for her; yet they are seriously considering someone who has never managed an organization of any size, never done any strategic planning.

    Republicans face a choice—not only with Hegseth, but with Tulsi Gabbard, whose confirmation hearing on her nomination for director of national security was delayed. For a party that has railed about America First, demeaned our national security apparatus as too “woke” and accused Democrats of making the United States a laughingstock in the world, are their senators prepared to confirm such manifestly unfit nominees? If so, they will be left responsible for any military, diplomatic or intelligence disasters that ensue. […]

    Link

  154. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: Brony, Social Justice Cenobite @143:

    Since they’ve taken DEI and scream it […] refer to the abusers and upwards failures as rightwing DEI?

    That would play into their abuse of “diversity” in the way they pretend conservative views are wrongfully marginalized, if at all, and need to be administratively mandated into school curricula, etc.

    I can’t say whether the term is so far gone as to be worth acceding to right-wing framing of DEI as promotion of unworthy people. An ironic usage of course. Irony has normalized some bad stuff however.

  155. lumipuna says

    OT but I’d like to ask native speaker guidance for a certain detail of English language.

    The words “further” and “farther” are apparently technically synonymous, as far as I can tell from dictionary. I’ve always habitually preferred the former in my writing, but lately I’ve noticed that “farther” is almost always used in the kind of texts (scientific papers and Wikipedia articles) that I try to produce. Obviously, I want to be consistent within a text unless some difference needs to be conveyed.

    Presumably, there is some dependency on context and style for which form is preferred. I’ve gathered that certain expressions only use one form (“no further than this”). In a certain context, I presume, both forms might be sort of acceptable but only one might be truly conventional. I’d like to know something about these conventions. Is this even something people usually notice?

  156. whheydt says

    https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/volcano-updates

    Activity Summary: The summit eruption at Kīlauea volcano that began on December 23 appears to have entered its forth eruptive episode this morning at about 9:15 a.m. H.S.T. with a small lava flow exiting the north vent, following low-level continuous lava spattering that started around 5:40 a.m. H.S.T. from the same vent. All eruptive activity remains confined to the north vent area. No unusual activity has been noted along Kīlauea’s East Rift Zone or Southwest Rift Zone.

    It’s showing a vigorous lava flow out of the spatter cone, as can been seen here: https://www.youtube.com/usgs/live

  157. says

    lumipuna @155: Most people will not notice if you choose to use “farther” or “further.”

    I always use “further” if the context is to further (work toward achievement of) a goal. In that case “further” is being used as a verb. Synonyms would be: promote, advance, develop, encourage, etc.

    I tend to use “farther” when referring to distances, as in: “New York City is farther from me than Seattle.

    I also decide to use the further-instead-of-farther construction when the context would call for “furthermore.” Synonyms would be: moreover, additionally, etc. Furthermore, Pete Hegseth has been coached to avoid difficult questions regarding his past conduct.

    I do not know which word is preferred in scientific discussions.

  158. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: lumipuna @155:

    The words “further” and “farther”

    Merriam-Webster

    The most common quick answer is usually something along the lines of “farther is for physical distance and further is for figurative distance.” As is often the case, however, simple rules run into the buzzsaw of actual usage.
    […]
    Further is the older of the two, with farther originating from it as a variant in Middle English. For much of their history the words have been used interchangeably. As adverbs, they still are interchangeable when applied to distance (whether spatial, temporal, or metaphorical). Many usage guides will still recommend keeping farther reserved for literal distance and further for figurative, but there is enough recently published evidence of the figurative use of farther that it is difficult to say it is a mistake.

    As adverbs, further and farther are not confined to distance, and this leads to one clearer distinction between the words. Further has the meaning of “moreover” or “additionally,” one that is not shared by farther. […] it would sound rather awkward to begin a sentence with “Farther, I’d like to address the issue of why these words are so confusing.”

    When using these words as adjectives there are similar degrees of overlap and distinction. While both words are defined as carrying the meaning of “additional,” this role has now been almost entirely taken over by further. […] However, when using an adjective to refer to distance, either literal or figurative, the words are once again interchangeable (although further is increasing in frequency).
    […]
    further is the undisputed winner in the verb bloodfest (e.g., you attempt to further your career by pretending to work harder than you actually do). This is not to say that farther hasn’t also been used as a verb, but it is now rare enough that you can sneer at anyone who uses it in this fashion (just kidding; please do not sneer at people for their linguistic nonconformity).

  159. says

    Followup to comments 144 and 146.

    Senator Adam Schiff:

    I was concerned, I think you could tell, that she [Pam Bondi] simply couldn’t answer very simple questions. Is there a factual basis to investigate Jack Smith? Got no answer. Can you tell us whether there was massive fraud that would have affected the outcome of the 2020 election. Wouldn’t answer it. Basic things that would have demonstrated — if she was willing to answer it — her ability, her willingness, her independence, that would enable her to say no to the president if necessary. And that’s really the question.

    I agree. Bondi was good at dodging questions. However, she has made a lot of public statements prior to this hearing that indicate she will do Trump’s will. She will not be independent.

    Other commentary:

    […] Nobody has asked about the deputy appointments that Trump made beneath Bondi. They are all attorneys who have directly and recently represented Trump: Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who defended Trump in his criminal cases, will be numbers 2 and 3 at DOJ, respectively. […]

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/pam-bondi-up-for-grilling?entry=1510082

  160. birgerjohansson says

    The Woman In The Yard would not be a horror film in North Sweden. Out in the boondocks there are so little people that any company is welcome, never mind the supernatural part.

  162. says

    Fox News host celebrates lack of diverse inauguration performers

    Fox News host Jesse Watters celebrated the news that Carrie Underwood will be performing “America, the Beautiful” at Donald Trump’s inauguration, citing her sexual orientation and blonde hair as a sign of America’s return.

    “I’m just happy Carrie Underwood is performing. When a straight, blonde female is singing at the inauguration, I think we’re back. I think we’re definitely back,” he said during a Tuesday episode of “Jesse Watters Primetime.” [video at the link]

    His guest, conservative comedian Nick Di Paolo added, “Thank God Kamala didn’t win, we would’ve had to see Lizzo’s ass for 45 minutes.” […]

    When Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, the performers were in fact diverse. Lady Gaga—who was blonde at the time—sang the national anthem, Jennifer Lopez also performed, and so did Garth Brooks—a straight white man.

    […] Fox has been all in for Trump—and racism—for years, and with comments like Watters’, there’s no sign the network will stop any time soon.

  165. says

    NBC News: FEMA activates transitional shelter and assistance program; EPA to clean up hazardous waste.

    Over 53,000 people have registered for FEMA’s individual assistance program and almost $12 million has been provided to wildfire-affected individuals, FEMA Region 9 Administrator Robert Fenton Jr. said at today’s briefing.

    FEMA’s transitional shelter and assistance program was activated last night for displaced survivors.

    “The transitional shelter assistance (TSA) allows for fire survivors to stay at participating hotels to help fill the housing gap until they can identify a short or longer term housing solution. TSA may also be available for those that have insurance,” he said. “FEMA is reaching out to fire survivors that have registered with us that would be eligible for this program.”

    Under the program, FEMA pays for the cost of the room, taxes and nonrefundable pet fees directly to participating hotels.

    The Environmental Protection Agency has been directed to remove all household hazardous waste from properties affected by the fires, removing products like paints, cleaners, solvents, pesticides, larger asbestos debris and batteries.

    “EPA will stand up 40 teams over the next couple days, which equates to approximately 500 personnel,” Fenton said, which he described as a first step in getting survivors back to their homes.

  168. Reginald Selkirk says

    Women held keys to land and wealth in Celtic Britain

    Women in Britain 2,000 years ago appear to have passed on land and wealth to daughters not sons as communities were built around women’s blood lines, according to new research.

    Skeletons unearthed in Dorset contained DNA evidence that Celtic men moved to live with their wives’ families and communities.

    Scientists found evidence of a whole community built around the female line of a family over generations, probably originating with one woman.

    “This points to an Iron Age society in Britain where women wielded quite a lot of influence and could shape its trajectory in many ways,” says Dr Lara Cassidy at Trinity College, Dublin, lead author of the research…

    The work indicates that this society was what is known as matrilocal – meaning that a married man moved to live in his wife’s community…

    But Romans like Julius Caeser viewed that as a sign of backwardness.

    “Women in Britain had power and it was a more egalitarian place. That was the biggest problem that Romans had with the Britons because Rome was a deeply patriarchal society. To them, it marked Britons as the ultimate Barbarians,” says Professor Miles Russell at Bournemouth University…

  169. Reginald Selkirk says

    Sweden plans to remove citizenship from people seen as threat to state

    Sweden’s political parties have agreed that dual citizens who commit crimes that threaten national security should lose their citizenship.

    A cross-party committee recommended that the change could be applied to anyone who had used bribes or false information to obtain their citizenship; and also if they committed crimes that were a threat to the state or came under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

    But it stopped short of proposals by the minority government for gangsters to have their citizenship revoked…

  171. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ford sends U.S. a clear message with patriotic hat

    It was difficult to miss Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s message to would-be American expansionists on Wednesday: He wore it right on his hat.

    Speaking to reporters in Ottawa ahead of a premiers’ meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss Canada’s response to the threat of U.S. tariffs, Ford wore a navy peaked cap emblazoned with the words “Canada is not for sale” in white block letters…

  172. says

    @CompulsoryAccount7746
    I can see that their abuse of diversity is an issue.
    At least one way of interacting with that is the diversity of bad behavior and bad characteristics amongst the people they are picking.

    The abuse of diversity was already an existing problem before DEI, not to minimize it. Or the abuse of equity and inclusion. They are separate and related. I’ll think of ways to deal with harm to attention to problems with lack of diversity due to bigotry in relation to “right wing DEI”.
    I hope there is room for both the separate issues and outlining their awful diversity. Or how they relate to equity and inclusion.

  173. says

    MSNBC:

    srael and Hamas have reached a ceasefire agreement, after more than 15 months of destructive fighting that Gazan health officials say has killed more than 46,000 people in Gaza. … Negotiations over the second and third phases of the deal will take place during the six weeks scheduled for the first, according to [Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani]. The agreement is scheduled to take effect on Sunday.

    NBC News:

    President Joe Biden, hours before his farewell address, said he was “deeply satisfied this day has finally come, for the sake of the people of Israel and the families waiting in agony, and for the sake of the innocent people in Gaza, who suffered unimaginable devastation because of the war.”

  174. says

    NBC News:

    South Korean authorities detained President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday over his botched declaration of martial law, weeks after a first attempt ended in a dramatic standoff at the residence where he had been holed up since he was impeached.

  175. says

    NBC News:

    Cuba said it will release 553 political prisoners after the Biden administration announced Tuesday it is removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and taking other “goodwill” actions.

  176. says

    Democrats’ clumsy questions for Pam Bondi missed the mark, by Lisa Rubin.

    “From the hearing’s outset, Democratic senators’ questions reflected valid and critical concerns but often in a poorly framed manner.” [video at the link]

    Day 1 of the confirmation hearings for Pam Bondi, […] Trump’s pick for attorney general, was marked by relative civility compared to the one Trump defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth sat for on Tuesday.

    Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats appeared to accept that Bondi will be confirmed despite their objections, with Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, telling the nominee that it’s neither her “competence” nor her “experience” that’s at issue, but her “ability to say no.”

    Though Bondi’s confirmation may be as good as sealed, it doesn’t mean committee members’ questions were unimportant. On the contrary, this was Democrats’ opportunity to showcase Bondi’s history of election denialism, willingness to excuse Jan. 6 offenders, and the limits, if any, to her fidelity to her former client, Trump, whom she defended in his first impeachment trial. Many of those Democratic senators, including Sens. Dick Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, are themselves experienced former federal and/or state prosecutors. And all but one of the committee Democrats met privately with Bondi in advance of today’s hearing, giving them a preview of where she might be purposefully evasive.

    […] some committee members allowed a prepared Bondi to elude clear statements about many of those concerns.

    One of the most glaring examples came when Durbin, the committee’s former chair, engaged Bondi about whether Trump lost the 2020 election. A smooth Bondi offered many of the right bromides, noting that she “accept[s] the results” of that election and that Joe Biden is our president. But she stumbled when acknowledging her own post-election “advocacy” in Philadelphia, where she accompanied then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and said she “saw so much,” appearing to suggest she witnessed questionable activity that threatened the election’s integrity. That was a moment disserved by Durbin’s insistence on yes or no answers (and that of Sen. Alex Padilla, who grew so combative in demanding a yes-or-no in a similar series of questions that Bondi, unable to get out more than a handful of words, fired back, “I’m not here to be bullied.”)

    Why not ask Bondi to share, in her words, what she saw and whether her observations caused her to believe then — and now — that Biden’s victory was illegitimate? I suspect Bondi did not observe any irregularities in Philadelphia that she could detail with any precision, much less substantiate — or justify as the basis for her previous efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.

    Whitehouse, the committee’s sharpest observer of legal ethics (or lack thereof), similarly stumbled when asking Bondi to pledge the Department of Justice would never have, much less enforce, the sort of enemies list FBI nominee Kash Patel has boasted of on TV. Sure, Whitehouse got Bondi’s assurance that, if confirmed, she would never have a so-called enemies list. But his insistence on form obscures a larger problem: Neither Trump nor anyone else in his administration needs an actual list to exact retribution by prosecution.

    His question about the DOJ’s “contacts policy,” which limits who within the department can speak to White House personnel, up to and including the president and vice president, and in what circumstances, was just as sloppy. In the abstract, it’s likely any nominee of either party, even in the Trump 2.0 era, would agree to comply with that policy. The devil, of course, is in the details.

    For example, the most recent iteration of the policy, a 2021 memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland, states (and I’m adding italics here for emphasis), “The Justice Department will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.”

    The policy also expressly aims to protect DOJ personnel, even political appointees, from “inappropriate influences” by mandating that “initial communications between the Department and the White House concerning pending or contemplated law enforcement investigations or cases will involve only the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General, and the Counsel or Deputy Counsel to the President (or the President or Vice President).”

    In other words, the head of the civil rights unit, for instance, is supposed to be insulated from calls from, say, a White House deputy chief of staff, about an existing case — but the policy doesn’t forbid the president from reaching out to the attorney general directly, or vice versa.

    Asking Bondi how she interprets these mandates, and/or for examples of situations in which she believes communicating with the White House about pending or contemplated cases or investigations would and would not be justified would have been far more elucidating than extracting her simple promise to abide by the policy.

    On the whole, forcing Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, to explain herself would have been a better strategy. Because for all of her polish, she has revealed flickers of her worldview, one that doesn’t just have a foothold in MAGA think but lives there permanently.

    When GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, in a diatribe against the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department, noted that Trump has been “indicted and prosecuted, not once, not twice, not three times, but four separate times,” Bondi jumped in to add, “And two assassination attempts!” as if there is a through-line from the legitimate, thoroughly-investigated and well-founded criminal charges against Trump and the deranged attempts at killing him.

    What makes Bondi think those horrific incidents bear any semblance to the cases brought by former special counsel Jack Smith and two local prosecutors? That’s a question I wish someone had asked before the hearing gaveled out.

  177. says

    Well, this is awkward.

    A reporter from right-wing propaganda outlet Fox News headed to Greenland to see if its residents were as pumped about the idea of the country becoming part of the United States as Donald Trump and his brain-dead MAGA cult are.

    But the reporter did not encounter scores of Trump fans who want the country to be taken over by the U.S. Instead, the reporter said that “most” of the people she spoke to were against Trump’s plan to acquire the territory.

    “I hate it,” one Greenlander told Fox News of Trump’s proposal.

    “I want to stick with Danish … government,” another person interviewed by Fox said. (Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.) [video at the link]

    [snipped details of Trump’s past fixation on annexing Greenland; and details of Donald Trump Junior’s recent visit]

    Ultimately, officials from both Greenland and Denmark officials say the arctic territory will not become part of the US.

    “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede, said in a statement.

    And even Fox News can’t propagandize that fact. The outlet couldn’t find enough Greenland residents to praise their Dear Leader Trump.

    Sad!

    Link

  178. says

    Almost sweetly dodging questions (smiling weasel), Pam Bondi at today’s confirmation hearing was not the same as the Pam Bondi of the past.

    […] When Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, asked if she “heard the recording of President Trump on January 2, 2021, when he urged the secretary of state of Georgia to, quote, ‘find 11,780 votes’ and declare him the winner of that state,” Bondi denied ever hearing it.

    “No. I’ve heard about it through clips, but no, no, Senator, I’ve not heard it,” she said.

    “What was your reaction to President Trump making that call?” Durbin pressed.

    “I have, I would have to listen to the tape, Senator,” Bondi responded.

    As Durbin continued pushing Bondi on the issue, the former registered foreign agent wiggled free by claiming that she didn’t know the context, adding “but it’s my understanding that is not what he asked him to do.” [Bullshit]

    […] Bondi told Newsmax in August 2023 […] “Fani Willis is in way, way over her head. She has charged not only President Trump, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Mayor Giuliani, but a total of 19 defendants, including President Trump, with I think it’s a 41-count indictment that takes 98 pages. It’s unbelievable.”

    “First of all, it’s not a crime what they did,” Bondi explained, referring to the hour-long phone call between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Trump, during which Trump demanded he “find” more than 11,000 votes for him.

    “It’s free speech. It shouldn’t even be in state court. Legally, it should be in federal court if they’re ever going to prosecute him for something so ridiculous,” she said. [So she had heard the audio of the Trump call.] [video at the link]

    [Jack Smith thought that was a crime. Conspiracy to commit election fraud.]

    Since Bondi’s lying and deceit on behalf of Trump goes back more than a decade, it’s no surprise that he picked her as the next potential top lawyer.

    Link

  179. says

    lumipuna @166, glad to help.

    In other news: Trump’s pick for secretary of defense has a long history of warmongering on Fox News

    […] In 2017, Hegseth declared that “there’s merit in a preemptive strike” against North Korea. He said: “There’s merit in a preemptive strike. But you got to do it right. You got to — It’s got to be decisive. How comprehensive is that first strike capability? But history shows us that when you let dictators get the worst weapons in the world, they wield a ton of influence.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/11/17]

    Hegseth wrote that “just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today.” In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth also warned about the “Muslims’ birth rates” in states like Michigan, New York, and Minnesota and said that “Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed.” [Media Matters, 11/12/24]

    Hegseth again endorsed the Crusades, saying, “Without warriors who are willing to fight in foreign lands, there would be no Europe, there would be no America, there would be nothing of today.” [Rumble, 7/26/21]

    Hegseth lamented that American troops are not allowed to conduct “aggressive offensive operations” and “take out bad guys.” Hegseth: “I’m hearing from guys too overseas, they’re not allowed to conduct aggressive offensive operations to secure their perimeter and take out bad guys to secure themselves. […].” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/29/24]

    Hegseth praised the 2020 assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and “speculated that Trump’s next target could be a ‘second general,’ or ‘how about their oil and gas?’” As The New Republic reported, in the immediate aftermath of the Soleimani strike, Hegseth became “not only one of Trump’s most slavish cheerleaders but also an influential adviser to the president.” [The New Republic, 1/31/20]

    Hegseth later suggested targeting Iran’s energy production sites. Hegseth rhetorically asked, “Do they want their economic sites, their military sites, political sites and/or cultural sites targeted? How about their oil and gas?” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 1/6/20]

    Hegseth repeated this call on The Five, saying, “I don’t care about Iranian cultural sites.” He added: “If they had the power, they would destroy every single one of our cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it.” [Fox News, The Five, 1/6/20]

    […] Hegseth further pushed for massive strikes against Iran the next day, calling on Trump to set a clock before “we start taking out your energy production facilities.” Hegseth: “What better time than now to say, we’re starting the clock, you’ve got a week, you’ve got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities. We take out key infrastructure.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/8/20] […]

  180. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Czech Republic ends its energy dependence on Russian oil imports

    The Czech Republic has boosted its energy security by completing a project to finish the country’s dependence on oil delivery from Russia, the government said on Tuesday.

    The Czech Republic previously received about half of its oil, or 4 million metric tons, through the Druhzba pipeline from Russia.

    Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the Russian imports were no longer necessary because the country is “able to get all its oil supplies from the West.”

    The Czechs have invested over 1.5 billion Czech koruna or crowns ($61 million) to double the capacity of the Italian TAL pipeline to 8million metric tons a year. A branch of the pipeline, which continues as IKL through Germany, serves the Czech Republic, or Czechia. That amount of oil imported will fully cover the country’s need…

  181. birgerjohansson says

    “Scathing Atheist 619 Hollowed Out Edition”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=xFSwhUbb6EI

    I found Swamp Road Buddhist monastery on google. Noah Lugeons lives adjacent to  Florida (and the redneck part of it) , poor kid. “That Buddhist temple is phasing in and out of reality because of them mystical pagan powers”

  184. Bekenstein Bound says

    His guest, conservative comedian Nick Di Paolo added, “Thank God Kamala didn’t win, we would’ve had to see Lizzo’s ass for 45 minutes.”

    I don’t think so, unless it’s a normal part of inaugurations for the organizers to kidnap comedians, tie them to lawn chairs behind the White House, and tape their eyelids open.

    Oh, shit, did I just give Trump an idea? :/

    As for Hegseth, the guy’s dangerous and I’ll bet he’s a rapist too or why else are they rerunning the Kavanaugh-nomination playbook both in the Senate and at the FBI? The worst bit, though, is this first strike idiocy. Someone needs to let him know that North Korea has two or three nuclear missile subs and any kind of large scale attack on them, however sneaky and however devastating, will be followed by several major US cities disappearing in very large puffs of smoke. Almost certainly including DC in particular. Missile subs = nearly perfect deterrent, provided your geopolitical foes don’t put someone as stupid as Hegseth in charge of so much as a potato gun.

    (Which is why missile subs = statistical certainty of the end of the world being nigh. We’ve been on borrowed time since 1960 or thereabouts. In the long term the only realistic hope of averting disaster is large scale disarmament, including and especially of the missile subs. All of them.)

  185. Bekenstein Bound says

    Not to mention that Seoul would be toast. It’s a sure bet there are some land-based missiles near the DMZ, and possibly also air force bombers, aimed squarely at Seoul and on a hair trigger, and a mushroom cloud where Pyongyang used to be is definitely going to meet or exceed the criteria for pulling said trigger.

  186. StevoR says

    Anyone else wishing that Biden would give / had gven Ukraine some actual nukes to defend itself from Putin? Not a fan of nuclear proliferation but versus the alternative and giving them them something to make Putin think twice… Could MAD (have) work(ed) there?

  187. larpar says

    I wouldn’t worry too much about North Korean subs. They might have nuclear missiles, but the subs themselves are conventionally powered. I’d be surprised if they are not under constant surveillance.

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