It’s always someone else’s fault

I’ve avoided bringing up the reflecting pool debacle, because it’s just too ridiculous. Trump wasted $16 million in a no-bid contract to one of his cronies, who drained the reflecting pool, painted it badly a dark blue, which then led to an algal bloom, that they tried to correct with buckets of hydrogen peroxide, and then the paint started to peel. None of this is Trump’s fault, he’s now blaming everyone else.

Of the MANY Statues and Fountains that we rebuilt, renovated, cleaned, and fixed, the only one that was Vandalized was the Reflecting Pool, which is being taken care of, ASAP! It has been given a 300 foot long gash, chemicals have been illegally placed in the water, and the beautiful new grass field has been destroyed with a gigantic 86 47 chemically carved into it (Probably inspired by Dirty Cop, James Comey!). Please remember that there is a 10 year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things – Which will be fully enforced!

Don’t worry, Jeanine Pirro has put everyone ON NOTICE!

Weird, isn’t it, how the pool has been there since 1922, and this is when suddenly the whole thing starts falling apart, right after the president puts this guy in charge.

If they’re going to start handing prison sentences, maybe they should start with the sleazy cigar-chomping clown with the silly haircut. Or the creep who is obsessed with redecorating the US Capitol badly.

Minnesota pride

Not to confuse anyone — we also have gay pride events all across the state — but I’m talking about general pride in one’s state, which seems to be doing a lot of right things, in addition to being a regular rainbow state.

Even our ‘criminals’ are heroic.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota on Tuesday announced that 15 Antifa members have been indicted for their alleged roles in conspiring to hinder federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The suspects, 12 of whom are in custody, are all charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, according to a 94-page criminal complaint, and some are charged with further crimes. Federal prosecutors allege that each suspect took part in a conspiracy to obstruct federal immigration enforcement officers, including ICE personnel, through force, intimidation and threats.

The suspects are alleged members of the Antifa cell Direct Action Minnesota Network (DAMN), a radical far-left group accused of coordinating operations against federal immigration officers.

Hah, “radical far-left”. Those are just normal Minnesotans resisting the real criminals, the fascist state. Spread the news: most of us are antifa to some degree. There are almost 6 million citizens here, they better be prepared to arrest 3 million.

Anyway, Minnesotans are disgracefully and arrogantly proud of our state for many reasons, including our generally progressive politics. There’s a song about it.

Now if only we could be so unashamedly proud of our whole dang country, but it’s going to take a lot of work to change that course.

Elon Musk is a dangerous racist

There was a violent crime in Belfast: a black immigrant stabbed a white man. It’s a common kind of crime, horrible and deserving of condemnation, but trust Elon Musk to fan the flames of hatred and turn it into a cause celebre, and the city was consumed with violent riots.

As the bedlam raged in Belfast after the stabbing—resulting in far-right rioters torching cars, buses, and even the homes of immigrants—Musk egged it on. Using X—the platform he acquired precisely for moments like these—he posted locations for groups of rioters to congregate. He elevated vile, overtly fascist and white-supremacist exhortations. When one far-right British politician called for the prosecution of officials who “placed dangerous third world savages in our communities,” Musk replied: “This is the way.”

These developments graphically illustrate the future that Musk truly envisions. They also demonstrate that Musk will use his stratospheric wealth and influence to incite untold levels of global fascist violence going forward. Which leads to an unavoidable conclusion: At some point, friends of liberal democracy throughout the advanced democracies—including future liberal governments—will simply have to come together in a concerted and deliberate way to constrain Musk and all he’s unleashing. Whenever Democrats take back power in the United States, this must be squarely on the agenda.

The article has a lot to say about Musk’s outrageous fascism, and don’t deny it: it’s fucking fascism of the kind Hitler would have endorsed, combined with the same crazy ignorance of actual genetics, and he has a plan that Donald Trump would recognize.

It’s instructive that amid the violence, Musk endorsed a call for “Reconquista,” an allusion to Christian military campaigns to retake the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces. (Modern-day keyboard fascists have long rather pathetically imagined themselves to be akin to Charles Martel, who turned back the Muslims at Tours in 732.) And Musk boosted a call for the removal of millions from the U.K.

I was wondering what Democrats could possibly do against a trillionaire. Here are some suggestions.

Then there’s what a future Democratic Congress can do. The Musk problem will have to be on its agenda in a serious and meaningful way. Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, points out a core problem here: His many government contracts, and his access to privileged information, pose a “national security threat,” even as Space X itself is in many ways a “national security asset.” We need to know a lot more about what Musk’s contracts actually translate into in terms of his personal influence inside the government.

“Congress has to do rigorous oversight of Musk’s government contracts as well as his entire financial empire,” Finkelstein tells us.

Other ideas abound. Brian Beutler has urged the next Democratic administration to closely scrutinize the murky circumstances of Musk’s own immigration to the United States. Beyond such things, we’ll need a coordinated effort across liberal democracies. Appropriately, the targeting of apartheid in Musk’s native South Africa provides a model. We need an international consensus that recognizes the threat Musk poses and works against it with boycotts, with the withdrawal of support and funding, and with whatever creative tools are available. Politicians and publics alike need to think internationally.

OK, let’s strip him of his government contracts, and then turn his own plans against him: deport Musk. Maybe we can seize all of his assets and turn SpaceX into a subdivision of NASA, too. And that’s a mild response: he really ought to be jailed for incitement.

The war is over. We lost.

And the winner is…

I can’t say that I’m particularly upset at our defeat — it was an unjust attack, a war of aggression instigated by our right wing and Israel, and it was doomed from the start — except that we killed a lot of people for no good reason. Fortunately, now Trump has signed what is called a “Memorandum of Understanding” that ought to be more accurately labeled our terms of surrender.

He signed it at Versailles.

On social media, the historian Kevin Kruse reacted with disbelief to the president signing the agreement to end his war in the same location where Germany was forced to sign the humiliating treaty of Versailles in 1919, accepting its loss in the first world war.

“He signed an unconditional surrender at Versailles?” Kruse wrote. “Come the fuck on.”

It is most definitely a surrender. Look at point 6 of the memorandum.

6. The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

The US also agrees that “frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available”. There are no concessions to the US other than the promise that Iran will never produce nuclear weapons, a promise that was in place before we started bombing everything. We’re paying $300 billion in reparations!

The war might be over, except for one little clause.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles.

Our “ally” in this war was Israel. Netanyahu has already declared that they aren’t leaving Lebanon. He’s going to start firing missiles everywhere, isn’t he?

The MAGA rationalizations are going to be epic.

Being apolitical is political

The American Diabetes Association has responded to the little incident at a recent meeting, and issued a formal statement.

As many of you are now aware, an incident took place at the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) Scientific Sessions.

As a 501(c)(3) organization, the ADA has safeguards in place to ensure that it complies with all IRS regulations. This includes maintaining a strictly nonpartisan environment at all organizational events and functions while engaging across party affiliations to advance our mission. We have always, and will continue to welcome scientific inquiry, respectful dialogue, and diverse perspectives in the pursuit of better outcomes for people living with diabetes and obesity.

Oh. They were being nonpartisan. That claim doesn’t hold up.

When the opposition is ignorant, advancing unscientific ideas, and is using them to consciously dismantle the apparatus of science to silence disagreement, you can’t silence yourself to prevent conflict. They have a political agenda and are distorting and destroying science to achieve it, and conceding the argument in advance with silence is political, too — and it’s favoring their position.

I’m not at all impressed with the cowardly, conservative leadership of the ADA.

Institutional cowardice opposing scientific truth

An article published in the journal Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association, and authored by credible scientists in the field, begins with this condemnation of the policies of the NIH administration:

Just a year ago, in these very pages, we highlighted the many threats the current U.S. administration posed to the health of our nation. Since then, there have been actions by the administration that have caused grave health consequences, and their current approach will continue to do so. The numerous measles outbreaks and associated avoidable deaths have resulted in part from hyping disproven theories of harm rather than publicizing the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. Plugging the concept that diabetes is curable by “changing the food source” simply ignores the large body of work that has demonstrated that it is not merely a disease of poor nutrition and the immense challenges of reinventing the food industry. Peddling conspiracy theories represents failures by officials of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), whose primary goal is to protect our health. These two examples represent just two of the broken promises made by the current HHS leadership during their confirmation hearings. And, despite promising oversight, representatives on Capitol Hill have shirked their responsibility and have allowed the country to continue along misguided paths that even they recognized as irresponsible.

It goes on at considerable length, documenting all the failures of Jay Bhattacharya and RFK jr. Read the whole thing.

The authors were at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association handing out copies of that editorial to attendees, when the society administration called in uniformed security to kick them out of the meeting, and cancelled their registration.

The incident took place Friday morning at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans, shortly before Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, was scheduled to speak. An organizer announced just before Dr. Bhattacharya’s session that he would no longer be speaking; a senior adviser at the N.I.H. took his place.

The researchers were handing out copies of the editorial, recently published in the association’s flagship journal, which detailed the effects of N.I.H. cuts and other Trump administration actions on diabetes research and outcomes, when security staff asked them to step outside and tried to take away the papers, said Aaron Kelly, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota who was among the researchers escorted out. A video taken by MedPage Today, which first reported the news, shows a tense confrontation, including a man in uniform putting his hands on an expert.

Wow. That’s fascism in action, suppressing the free discussion of scientific assessment of the field. And this action was ordered by the officers of the American Diabetes Association!

Hours after he was removed, Dr. Kahn received an email from the American Diabetes Association stating that his behavior had violated the conference’s code of conduct.

“You were respectfully informed that distribution of materials was not permitted and given the opportunity to remain in the meeting if you stopped handing out the materials,” the email read. “When you continued the behavior, we had no choice but to remove you for the remainder of the meeting.”

The email went on to note that there are “a lot of logistics and security measures taken when a federal official is in attendance.” A spokesperson for the N.I.H. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Several of the researchers said they believed they were removed partly because the association feared repercussions from the Trump administration.

The order refusing to allow the distribution of papers is pure bullshit. It is common practice for researchers to bring along copies of their relevant papers and hand them out. I’ve been at poster sessions where the author brings in a small stand and has a stack of papers that people can take away. Why would you limit the dissemination of information at a meeting whose purpose is to disseminate information?

That it was a “security measure” is equally disingenuous. What was the guy going to do, rush the stage with his papers and slash Bhattacharya with vicious paper cuts?

This action by the American Diabetes Association was simply cowardice by the organizers of the conference. They should be ashamed. This is going to go in the history books as another example among many of chickenshit institutions caving to their own oppression by the Trump administration.

Dr. Kahn said that the editorial aimed to advance science.

“It is no longer enough to stand idly by or work behind the scenes with lawmakers,” the experts wrote in their editorial. “Moreover, it is no longer appropriate to fret about political backlash. Now is the time to recognize and fight to reverse the spiraling fall of the United States of America’s status as the foremost nation in health care innovation.”