Lately, I’ve been getting up in the morning and glancing briefly at the news. More tariffs; we’re in an unnecessary trade war with our allies. The US is breaking climate agreements right and left. The Trump administration is unconstitutionally throwing out the principle of free speech, and has arrested Mahmoud Khalil for the ‘crime’ of legal protest. Trump is using “Palestinian” as a slur. DOGE has slashed $800 million from Johns Hopkins’ research funding. The president of the US just made a commercial for Tesla cars.
It’s overwhelming.
I don’t want to know more, unless someone has a suggestion for how I can contribute to the overthrow of the American government.
In lieu of that, I’ve got a lot to do in the lab.
I’m autoclaving fly bottles in preparationg for the next cross we do when the students get back.
I’m doing the next step in the cross for all the students. The fly breeding goes on even if the students are away on spring break!
I’m making these adorable wooden platforms for my spider cages. I’m going to be recording spider behavior, and I want them to be building cobwebs in the horizontal plane.
I’ve got an exam I’ve put off grading.
I have to do some critical reviews of student paper summaries.
The students have been working on a major lab report. I have to look over their methods section.
By the weekend, I have to get next week’s lectures prepared.
I’ve been trying to schedule an hour of light exercise every day. Easy to do over spring break, my plans will fall apart when classes start.
I have to spend at least an hour in bed tonight overcome with general feelings of dread and anxiety.
I’ve got stuff to do while the country swirls down the drain!
One day, Tr*mp will no longer be in the white house. And feeding the spiders will not be such a problem. There will probably be leftovers for the buzzards, too.
I’ve seen news reports of people attacking Tesla dealerships with guns and Molotov cocktails. It’s not all bad.
I’ve been (trying) to avoid as much news as possible. Said that was my plan since the election. Believed from the get-go Trump was going to bring it all down. His first term was a dry run, he figured out only with his sycophants in all levels of government can he overthrow America and make it his. Inundating the world with anger, hate and chaos has created a seemingly impenetrable wall. What has astonished me is he found plenty of them (sycophants) while the opposition has crawled under rocks. Since the election I believe the way things will stop is if/when they flame out. Only when enough people, the wealthy and the rest of us decide we have had enough will Trump and his parasite enablers can we dislodge them from power.
Between the overwhelming lies being spread, the denial and major stupidity entrenched in America, I don’t see any changes coming soon. My next concern is Trump will have full control of America, (legislature and judiciary) already has control of the first two and partial control of the third, and we will be left will only bloody revolution to bring change.
Let me cheer you up. The weird millionaire who is chasing youth is doing it the wrong way. So until CRISPR catches up, rich and poor will have the same chances of longevity.
“Woman who lived to age 117 had genes keeping her cells ‘younger’, study shows”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/13/supercentenarian-aging-genes-study
Only if you look at the details.
The GOP and Trump are wrecking the US and wrecking its government.
And imposing a fascist dictatorship.
That sums it up.
The current regime is already doing that.
After they weaken the Federal central government, what is going to be left?
Not much.
A power vacuum.
The 50 states are going to have to fill that power vacuum and provide services once provided by the Federal government. As best they can.
To take one example, the EPA, Environmental Protection Administration, is now dead. Each state has an equivalent though. Sometimes called the state EPA, or DEQ, Department of Environmental Quality. They are usually small, underfunded, and don’t have much enforcement power. Small fines.
Same with Public Health and the public schools.
This sentence above summarizes what our former allies and friends have to do.
Trump’s foreign policy is to cozy up to our enemies and make sure our former allies and friends hate and fear us.
They have to isolate the dangerous, sick, and declining USA and move on with their lives.
What other choice do they have?
The rest of the world has been slow to realize this but here we are.
They have a huge amount of power that they don’t seem to even know exists.
If the EU, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and China all get together in an alternative trading block, they out number and out GDP the USA.
This will have to happen one way or another because the USA is forcing the issue with multiple trade wars. They don’t have much of a choice.
It’s not as hard as it looks either.
At least half of the US population is on their side after all.
The rest of the world isn’t dealing with 346 million crazed and delusional MAGAts. It’s dealing with ca. 173 million crazed and delusional MAGAts, and 173 million normal Americans who deeply wish they would go away and leave us alone.
Before this never ending nightmare runs it course, the Mad King will be coming for your spiders, too.
“Wot? There’s a liberal professor with a well known anti-god blog who is not accepting me as his rightful monarch? Call Bondi. I’ll issue an executive order declaring that breeding spiders henceforth illegal. Call it a national security matter. If he continues in this un-American activity, send him to Guantánamo. I’ll show him spiders. Big, hungry ones.”
One thing that Trump and Musk both have in common is that they each have to be the “alpha”, and never the “beta”. Trump knows that failure to keep Musk on his side means not only losing the hundreds of millions of dollars which Musk gladly gives him, but also becoming a hated target among Musk’s massive following on Xitter. And Trump is not well known for his self-restraint.
Meanwhile, many Republican politicians have a re-election to face, and are seeing increasing protests from their voting base. They should also remember how poorly they did overall in 2016 and 2020. Will they continue to reject their base as the election nears, while both Trump and Musk increasing focus their attention on keeping the other squarely in their crosshairs? And do you think that the size of the Republicans’ civil war won’t have an effect on how well they do when it comes to their re-election?
Saw a headline early this morning that Pete Hegseth…you know, the SoD…wants to relax the “rules of war.”
@6 raven – Yes, the rest of the world needs to realize they have to move on without cooperation from the U.S. That is one element which can redirect the ship. Internal redirection will also be needed. The cancer needs to be removed.
@7 john Watts – I want that to be funny, but it is scary because it can easily happen.
I’m going to be calling my Congresscritters pushing back against emails they have sent replying to my numerous phone calls. First of all, quit trying to convince me that the American people voted for this. To begin with, I am an American person, and I most assuredly did not! Furthermore, I don’t think Trump’s voters voted for this, either. They voted for Trump, not Musk, and they voted to have the economy fixed, not ruined. Yes, most of them weren’t really paying attention, but that does not negate the fact that they were not looking for chaos.
Secondly, don’t try to get all Gifford Pinchot on me about the Forest Service. The fact of the matter is that neither you (the Congresswoman) not anyone else in government has the first clue about how to manage timber sales or curate water resources. That is why we need the Forest Service.
Then I’m going for a nice long bike ride. One os the few perks of being unemployed is that I can head out for a 3-5-hour ride whenever I want. The wind here isn’t supposed to be too bad today, but tomorrow there is a high wind watch (they always say “watch”, but it always happens) out for tomorrow along with snow, and it’s supposed to be chilly all next week. Bike rides, indoor or outdoor, are what keep me sane, but I’d rather be outdoors given a choice.
It will get worse, I’m pretty sure of that. It will take a long time for the US to wake up to the reality of Trump. Everything should be protested, and markets should be sold off if they rally. Europe understands, but this will continue for some time. Keep your powder dry.
The rest of the world can’t really move on without the USA though. Sure, politically and economically it can. Find trading partners that aren’t irrationally hostile, fund sciences and arts and defense without it, cordon it off like a giant North Korea. Hopefully take refugees, of which there will be more and more. But…then there is still climate change. And if the USA is still burning every last scrap of oil and coal it can find, the consequences don’t stop at its borders.
Republicans “supporting the troops”.
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxZUt59-wVlgM9eE3fFfLwv2LcSoy3vfW3
I’m the chair of my Democratic Town Committee. As far as I’m concerned, protests and calling your congressional reps and letters to the editor and blog posts and all that are fine, and you should do all that if you can. But the only really meaningful action I can take is to organize at the local level. I got a message from Rep. Joe Courtney’s aide Adam Richardson that’s on the money: “November’s municipal elections will be the first referendum on Trump’s second term – and we want to send a clear message that eastern Connecticut rejects him and all the harm his administration had already caused.”
So in our small town, our Democratic Town Committee is committed to running a full slate of candidates for every office, from First Selectman to the Library Board. The town votes Republican and went for the raging orange lunatic by a substantial margin, but I’m determined to hold candidate forums, knock on doors, mail to every address, and do whatever it takes to thump the Republicans in November. We don’t have any federal or statewide offices on the ballot, so it’s all going to be about turnout.
Wherever you live, small town or big city, there’s a Democratic Party organization. Join it. If there isn’t one, found it — contact your state party to find out how. Make sure there’s a Democratic candidate for every line on the ballot, and make sure people work to get every one of them elected. That’s what will make a difference.
Probably.
The betting among large businesses is that those dumb tariffs won’t last too long.
Trump was foolish to put tariffs on steel and aluminum, which are things we can’t easily replace.
The CEO of one of the aluminum companies said essentially, why bother building a new US based aluminum plant, when the tariffs will be gone soon?
A new steel mill runs $1 billion to $4 billion dollars. They also take 3 or more years to build.
An aluminum smelter runs around $4 billion and take years to build. We might not even have the electrical capacity to refine aluminum, which is done using electrical reduction.
We are going to have to just pay those tariffs and keep on importing steel and aluminum from somewhere. For now.
Yeah, the aluminum smelters are especially problematic. Canada can certainly hurt us, beyond whiskey and orange juice, no doubt about it. Trump is playing a dangerous game of chicken, which is in accordance with his 15 year old mentality. But in the end, we can’t go it alone.
Sorry, but climate change is a lost cause.
We aren’t going to stop it.
The USA isn’t helping but it isn’t just the US either.
CO2 levels are 429 PPM today.
The world has passed the 1.5 C degree warming levels and is on the way to 2 C.
World oil production will be around 104 million barrels per day this year, a record for oil consumption.
So OK, CO2 up, global temperature up, and…world oil production will set another record for output.
This isn’t just a US problem, it is most of the world’s problem.
Even a lot of the hardcore climate scientists have given up. How many decades can you warn people and they don’t just ignore you, they threaten to kill you?
@monad:
This was posted on Lawyers, Guns, & Money today:
Trump administration to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s woke “environmental protection” agenda
Part of that article indicates that the current head of the EPA plans on getting rid of the ‘Good Neighbour’ rule which forces states to take care of their own pollutants if they’re crossing borders into other states.
It reminds me of the U.S.–Canada Air Quality Agreement of 1991… which was set up explicitly because both sides understood that air pollution doesn’t stop at borders and that if we wanted to stop acid rain damaging architecture on either side of the border we had to stop producing it on both sides. I guess that’s another treaty Trump et al are planning to break…
@18 raven: Sure but climate change isn’t a binary thing, where you stop it or you don’t. 1.5 degrees is not as bad as 2 degrees, 2 degrees is not as bad as 2.5 degrees, 2.5 degrees is not as bad as 3 degrees, and so on until whatever threshold where there is nobody left to care. Any limit or at least deceleration saves a few more lives than otherwise, and someone stepping on the gas instead is going to kill more people all over the world. Not to mention that it’s what inspires people to give up…even with millions dying, who would take up the cause of saving humanity if it’s being destroyed by a dictator beyond reach?
Needless to say, I agree with you.
I was dealing with Deep Time ecologists in the 1990s and we were already looking at Global Warming.
But I’m not the one in charge of the US EPA, which currently is someone who has declared that global warming doesn’t exist.
Right now, what we think or know about CO2 and climate change is irreleveant.
I once tried to guess how many people had to die from climate change before we decided to do something serious about it.
I doubt if 100 million dead would be enough.
The Canadians are figuring it out.
There is no point in appeasing bullies like Trump. It won’t work as the Chinese found out.
True as Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly points out.
Canada did absolutely nothing to deserve our threats to destroy them.
Their crime and misfortune was to be our nearest neighbor and within easy reach.
“Nobody is safe.” That especially includes people like me/us in the USA. We live here and don’t have any where else to easily get away from the fascists.
Canada was our best friend and neighbor. Not any more.
If the border was a fictional line, why would he even care then?
What does Canada even import from the USA that is so important that they can’t live without us? Nothing that I can see.
Computers and cell phones all come from China and Asia.
Hollywood movies maybe.
Canada should join the EU or the EEA like Iceland and Norway.
It would be good for the EU and good for Canada.
So should Mexico.
Robert Green Ingersoll one of my favorite people wrote:
“Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.”
I want to live in that country, but I live in one who’s top export seems to be hatred. Today I learned a Texas lawmaker wants a bill like this:“
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-bill-identify-transgender-state-felony-rcna195642
I realize it won’t pass, but the hatred is there even if the votes aren’t.
Something serious will be done about it as soon as it kills 1 rich person.
When COVID first appeared, anyone could die — even the rich. The rich were on board with taking whatever measures were necessary to keep them from catching it, up to and including economy-pausing lockdowns.
As soon as the rich were vaccinated, the political support for ongoing lockdowns evaporated like dew dropped into a furnace.
It’s going to take some Hollywood mogul roasting alive in a massive Pasadena wildfire, or half the Rockefellers being wiped out by a tropical storm working its way up the coast then suddenly mushrooming into a Cat 5 overnight and making landfall in New York. (Acapulco already took a shock Cat 5 on the chin like that, give it a few more years and it could happen.)
Once rich people realize they’re not safe, then something will be done. The non-fossil-fuel ones will throw their oil sheik former class allies under the bus in a heartbeat after that. Look for a rapidly intensifying hurricane taking aim at somewhere where a) there’s a lot of rich people and b) it simply isn’t possible to evacuate everyone on very short notice, or for particularly bad fires heading for a rich enough part of California. Those are the two likeliest scenarios, both creating weather that is not conducive to a safe escape by helicopter in particular.
As for Trump, I’d suggest that driving a wedge between Trump and Musk might work. That “both have to be the alpha” thing means they’ll have a falling out pretty much as soon as their interests diverge enough. That suggests, in turn, riling up evangelicals to oppose something Musk is doing. If lots of them call up Trump to say that Musk can mess with things like the EPA and USAID but he has to keep his grubby mitts off their Social Security, that might do it. We might also plant the idea in Musk’s head of getting the rich some tax cuts by shifting some of the corporate tax burden onto those notorious freeloaders, the churches. Musk has little interest in religion, near as I’ve been able to tell, so he just might be amenable to such an idea, and stupid enough to go for it. Any talk of taxing churches during a Republican trifecta and watch how fast Evangelicals change loyalty. Just as the Civil Rights Act made them switch allegiance to the Republicans fifty-odd years ago, this would probably drive them right into the loving arms of the Libertarian Party. Cue decades of significant right-wing vote splitting in the US.
Oh, and what is with the persistence of that silly alpha/beta thing anyway? They aren’t even interpreting the original wolf study right. The beta wouldn’t be the lower decks ensign who spends all day scrubbing plasma conduits and crawling through Jeffries tubes; the beta would be William Riker. If it meant I got accorded his level of respect, autonomy, and female attention, I’d be very happy to be a beta too.
@ ^ Bekenstein Bound : “Something serious will be done about it as soon as it kills 1 rich person.”
Or ideally wipe sout mar-e-lago, something I kepe kinda hoping for..
Also it feels like that’s something that should;’ve and probly has already happened but obvs not rich or famous or clearly enough. Yet.
The LA wildfires destroyed a few rich people’s homes last year ofc.
Clearly not bad enough to drive real change.
Locally the Gold Coast was badly hit with lots of rich folks living in big skyscrapers there.
Google search not really finding much for me on this question of rich people actually dying yet. :
https://oceanhero.today/web?q=Have+any+rich+people+died+due+toClimaet+change+yet%3F&utm_medium=Extension%3Aomnibox&utm_source=Chrome&offset=10&count=10
“As for Trump, I’d suggest that driving a wedge between Trump and Musk might work.”
I not only would, but actually do.
“Don’t hustle a hustler”
“You can’t con a conman”
“Takes one to know one”
(But do feel free to suggest it, one day)
—
“Google search not really finding much for me on this question of rich people actually dying yet.”
Rememer how the CEO was murdered recently, and people got all excited about some sort of historical turning moment? How CEOs would quiver in fear and cause things to change?
Similar thing.
@24
Who are these “the rich” and why do you think change will happen if 1 dies? Guns have killed plenty of rich folks, don’t remember it bringing change to gun laws.
Rich people who are targeted, as with the Mangioni shooting, result in blaming the shooter and not the gun.
Now, if some rich asshole were to visit Prescott’s Elbow Middle School in West Armpit, Pennsylvania to give some speech for Career Day, only to get mowed down indiscriminately along with random other people as part of a mass shooting, then the rich might start talking gun control.
@28. eastexsteve : What do you think would change gun laws? Any ideas?
@29
The rich didn’t put the recreant back in office, a higher percentage of of the richest voters went for Harris. The veterans had one of, if not the highest percentage of support for dt; as a veteran myself I’ll never understand why. As for Luigi, he grew up as one of “the rich” and may benefit from being able to access some familial wealth for his defense.
@30
I got nothing! I thought (incorrectly) that after Sandy Hook there would be some meaningful changes. I suppose individually we love our children more, collectively we love our guns more. I don’t see changes any time soon.