The civil war sundering the Republican party continues. Steve Bannon minces no words in his hatred of Elon Musk.

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Wednesday. The article was flagged on Saturday by Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart, which published excerpts in English.

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.”

I am made extremely uncomfortable by my agreement with Steve Bannon, and I hope he and Musk engage in a game of mutual annihilation. I also appreciate all the irony he is delivering.

In addition to Musk, Bannon blasted David Sacks and Peter Thiel, who also have roots in apartheid South Africa.

“Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon said. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

You know, Bannon’s gripe with Musk is over those H-1B visas, that allows some well-educated brown people to live and work (and be exploited) in the USA, polluting his vision of an all-white America — yet white South Africans are the most racist people? Come on, guy. Racists are diverse, too, and both Bannon and Musk are equally racist, just in different ways. Racism is a spectrum, ranging from red-faced, rummy-nosed blustering MAGAts to pale flabby bros with sketchy facial hair. Kumbaya! Now go murder each other. I don’t want to see anything left but a pair of tails.

In 1921, the Canadians formulated a plan they called Defense Scheme #1 to invade the United States. This was not a serious plan to conquer North America, but was a contingency to be deployed in case they discovered that the US was plotting to annex Canada.

That condition is currently valid.

The idea was that Canadian militia would come charging down our highways to distract and disrupt our preparations, to give Great Britain time to come to their aid. The situation has changed; I don’t think King Charles III is going to be much use in this hypothetical war. Still, it’s a good plan to shake up our unjust invasion.

Lt. Col. “Buster” Brown even scouted out the eastern prong of their invasion plan.

Brown even undertook some very informal (though probably grossly illegal) reconnaissance missions in and around Vermont, near the border – scoping out bridges, locks and railroad lines, and chatting with locals in taverns. Lippert’s telling of these missions and their reports are the most amusing parts of a dark alternate historical scenario. Brown apparently found Vermonters to be “fat and lazy but pleasant and congenial,” and suspected there were “large and influential numbers of American citizens … [who are] not altogether pleased with democracy and have a sneaking regard for Great Britain, British Law, and Constitution, and general civilization.” He suspected alcohol-deprived Americans might welcome their new Canadian overlords, and the barrels of illegal Canadian whiskey they’d bring with them.

That condition is mostly valid. We are fat and lazy and clearly many of our citizens want a king, but not a British one — they want a king who is fat and lazy, like them. Also, Prohibition is over, so the barrels of Canadian whiskey aren’t as enticing as they once were.

The Pacific prong of the invasion is already doomed. There has been a massive build-up of military force in Washington state since 1921 — that’s the home of JBLM.

The Canadian flying columns would have been deployed in trucks, packed with guns, explosives and soldiers. Historically, flying columns have utilized horses, though in this interstitial period between equestrian warfare and modern mechanized tank warfare, trucks seem most likely.

That collection of casual Canadians in trucks full of rifles and whiskey would be met by the 7th Infantry Division, the 8th, 189th, and 191st Brigades, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and a swarm of cocky fighter pilots who are well-practiced in the art of strafing and bombing lines of trucks. Stay home. “Independently directed units of unarmored Ford trucks packed with rowdy prairie province roughnecks packing TNT and machine guns” are not going to hold up well.

The central prong, on the other hand, has potential. We’re still weakly defended here in the Midwest, and swinging through the Dakotas with their ripe ICBM silos dotting the landscape would give Canada the opportunity to become a nuclear power. Then the lovely progressive state of Minnesota might not offer much resistance — I know I’d be out there on the side of the highway happily waving my Canadian flag (note to self: buy a Canadian flag to prepare).

A century of military development on the US side means that Defense Scheme #1 is grossly obsolete, but the idea of Winnipeg thrusting deeply into Minnesota is somehow arousing. Especially if they’re planning to serve drinks first.

Welcome to the fin de siècle, only a few years too late. According to Wikipedia:

Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The “spirit” of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and “a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence”.

“Period of hope for a new beginning…” that part doesn’t apply.

Also, the previous end of a century got some great art, but we’re just going to get some flaccid, dead-eyed AI art.

Donald Trump held a press conference this week in which he once again threatened to invade and take over Greenland and Panama, and that Canada should be annexed as our 51st state. Trudeau replied to that by saying “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” while the French foreign minister said “Non,” the EU wasn’t going to sit back and let their borders be violated.

All of this is utterly bonkers — the delusional aspirations of a very stupid narcissist. That he’s the president is not sufficient grounds to justify this program of expansionist imperialism, and I hope that reality is going to crush his dreams in short order. Hope. That’s a threadbare belief at this point.

But I am most worried about the weird, pathetic obsessions of this rambling old man — the frozen strawberries of his career. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America…what? I know he doesn’t believe in history, but now he wants to reshape geography to fit his nationalistic ignorance? And then there are the Big Issues of the Trump campaign.

Perhaps Trump’s most consistent political position, since his first run for office, is his vehement opposition to windmills.

His latest comments came as part of extended criticism of environmental and energy efficiency — complaining about dripping showers, low-water dishwashers and electric heaters. (He railed against the water in toilets during his first term, saying in 2019, “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”)

On Tuesday, he blamed windmills for a sharp increase in whale fatalities across southern New England’s coastlines in recent weeks. “The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” Trump said.

He said windmills “litter our country” and compared them to “dropping garbage in a field.” He said they are “the most expensive energy ever,” and that only those who build them with subsidies want them.

“We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump said.

I can sort of understand the opposition to wind turbines — he’s in the pocket of the oil industry, and wants to increase our reliance on fossil fuels — but showers, dishwashers, electric heaters, and toilets? WTF?

When you buy a house that no water comes out because they want to preserve even in areas that have so much water, you don’t know what to do. It’s called rain. It comes down from heaven.

No water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip. So what happens? You’re in the shower 10 times as long.

This is an imaginary problem. Trump doesn’t have to deal with trivial details like plumbing, so this is his idea of the problems the little people have. There aren’t any water restrictions in places that have lots of water, and in places with serious droughts, the first thing they’ll shut down is watering lawns and golf courses. No one takes a “drip, drip, drip” shower.

Likewise, washing machines, they want in your washing machine to have very little water coming out of the washing machine. So when you wash your clothing, you have to wash it four times instead of once you end up using more water.”

We’re a party of common sense. And things that I’m telling you now is really all about common sense.

Trump has never in his life operated a washing machine. That’s not how they work.

The Republicans are not a party of common sense. Nothing their president says makes any sense.

You know, the US Constitution has this 25th Amendment that allows congress to dismiss a president for inability or incapacity to perform the duties of his office. There is a clear case that Trump is not fit to be president — he’s demented, with delusions of grandeur, and an unrealistic grasp of the state of the world. Unfortunately, congress and the Supreme Court will never question the god-king, and even if they did, they’d put JD Vance in his place. We are so screwed.

Not as screwed as Canada, Greenland, Panama, the EU, and Ukraine if he gets his way, but still pretty goddamned wrecked.

Lots of biology teachers show their students this map in their classes. I’m one of them. The US has an ugly history of involuntary sterilization, using the excuse of eugenics. Personally, I like to point out that our progressive state of Minnesota sterilized over a thousand unwilling people, all in the name of helping society.

But that’s from 1935! We don’t do that anymore, right?

The state of California had to pass a law to compensate all the women they have sterilized in the last decade. Now they’re squirming to avoid paying out.

Pressure from advocates for incarcerated people and investigative reporting pushed California officials to take action in recent years. In 2021 state lawmakers passed a reparations program to provide $35,000 to each person who was involuntarily sterilized while in state custody.

But that program has compensated only a fraction of the around 800 women identified by a state audit who underwent procedures that could have resulted in sterilization while imprisoned between 2005 and 2013; that state audit also found that prison doctors regularly violated the consent process for such procedures during that time. As of June, the California Victim Compensation Board (CVCB), the body tasked with determining who gets reparations under the program, has approved compensation for roughly 120 of those survivors, according to documents from the board.

How do you sterilize 800 people against their will by accident? This would be grounds for massive malpractice suits, except that it happened in prisons.

In 2014, the California State Auditor found many violations of the consent process leading up to the sterilization procedures, including physicians failing to sign documents certifying that the women “appeared mentally competent and understood the lasting effects of the procedure.” They also found that the sterilizations were not always reported if they were conducted alongside another procedure, such as a woman giving birth.

The audit also found that the majority of women who were sterilized were between the ages of 26 and 35, and most had a high school reading level. Of the women who received a tubal ligation procedure, which blocks or removes fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy (one of the only procedures the compensation board previously deemed eligible for reparations), between 2005 and 2013, 50 were white, 47 were Hispanic, and 35 were Black. For most, it was their first time being incarcerated.

So a woman gives birth, and the prison doctor goes back in and scrapes out her endometrium? That’s unjustified and should be treated as criminal behavior.

Don’t worry. Some of the doctors have a perfectly good excuse — they were doing these women a favor.

The news outlet also interviewed an OB-GYN at Valley State Prison, James Heinrich, who claimed he was providing an important service to poor women. “Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for those unwanted children—as they procreated more,” he said in 2013.

“Heinrich”? Really? Did he have to have such a German name? Regardless of nationality, doctors should never carry out a medical procedure without informed consent, that the patient does not want, because they think they know what’s best.

It is so delicious that even before Trump is signed into office, MAGA is ripped with an internal war.

Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.

On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.

The battle is over immigration, between those who want perfect purity and every non-white expelled from the country, and those who want to allow a few brown people to stay to work in their factories and tech industries. It’s really that simple — are you so racist you don’t want to even see a brown person, or are you so racist you want to exploit their labor? Unfortunately they’re still in total agreement on the racism part.

One of the problems is that the leaders of these two factions, Trump and Musk, are ignorant buffoons with fallacious ideas about genetics.

Among the many charming aspects of their partnership is a fondness for some highly unsavoury views on genetics. Trump is an enthusiastic advocate of “racehorse theory”, which he shares with white supremacists; the belief that he is personally superior and that this is rooted in his “good genes”. It’s a vapid idea, but it directly informs his toxic views on immigration, where he argues the country needs to be shielded from the “bad genes” of outsiders.

Meanwhile, Musk has his own equally baffling take on genetics, infused with a characteristic messiah complex. Like some of his fellow tech moguls, he is determined to “save humanity” by producing as many offspring as possible, convinced that our future depends on it. This might all be laughable were it not for the fact that Trump and Musk now wield more power than they ever have before. The shared thread running through their rhetoric is genetic determinism: the idea that who you are, and what you can achieve, is all down to your DNA. Nothing else matters.

Do I need to explain why these ideas are bogus? I’m tired. I’ll let Jonathan Roberts do it for me.

In debates surrounding genetics and social policy, it is easy for the language of genetic determinism to lure you into an ill-advised “nature v nurture” debate. You know this debate: maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s the pervasive conditions of social inequality? But this debate misses the bigger picture entirely: it should not be seen as a binary choice. The truth is, humans are born with genes that require a good environment to thrive. It’s not either/or, but a complex interaction between the two that determines who someone becomes. We have a nature that requires nurture. Good science accounts for this complexity, rather than reducing it to a simplistic binary.

No matter how the “civil war” is resolved, we’re still screwed because all of these people are stupid assholes.

Gone at age 100, a life well lived. My very first presidential election was in 1976, and of course I voted for Carter — it was actually an election that gave me a misleading optimism in future presidential elections that was repeatedly dashed.

He wasn’t the greatest, most successful president, but he was a damned good human being. I’d vote for any decent person who’d run against these venal, corrupt jerks who have been running over the last few decades.

All the infighting has exposed the truth about Elon Musk’s dedication to free speech. He has deprived a gang of right-wingers their little privileges and badges entirely because they have a political opinion that differs from his.

Several conservative critics of billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk were stripped of their verification badges on X, Thursday after publicly challenging Musk’s stance on immigration.

Trump ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and the pro-Trump ConservativePAC were all stripped of their verification badges after criticizing Musk’s controversial remarks about American workers and foreign H-1B visa holders.

Their crime? They were too anti-immigrant. They opposed the use of H1-B visas to permit foreign tech workers to live and work in the US — Musk wants to keep a ‘loophole’ to allow some brown people to work for his companies. Musk is now using his power to silence critics. Is anyone surprised? I’m not.

I’m on Bluesky, but I’m not going to be smug about it — BlueSky also has the danger of centralized administration. They just haven’t flexed yet.

Donald Trump belched out a “christmas” message. It’s not the usual platitudes and well wishes, it’s instead a subconscious whine from the id of a demented tyrant. I’m not going to type this all out, so struggle with reading this mess…or don’t.

He keeps talking about seizing the Panama canal, annexing Canada, and taking over Greenland because “we need it”. I’m beginning to believe he’s really going to try to do it, somehow. Apparently, he’s going to try wheedling Canada into voluntarily ceding their sovereignty for lower taxes and the benefit of our “protection” (he’s openly asking for protection money, very Mafia). I don’t think Canadians are interested in being invaded by health care insurance companies, or being saddled with the kind of uncertainty about the future I have, and the only threat to Canada I know of right now is the USA. He has also deluded himself into thinking the inhabitants of Greenland want to be taken over by Donald Trump.

Panama is a different story. Now he’s falsely claiming that Chinese troops are in control of the canal — they aren’t, they’re investing lots of money in development in Panama — which is priming the MAGA clowns to justify military action.

I’m going to guess what’s going on in his mind. He knows his record as president was bad, and is going to get worse, although he thinks he can hide it with all this bluster. He’s trying to come up with something that will generate a positive legacy for him, and thinks that territorial expansion is just the thing to make him look like a strong leader. It’s what Putin did, after all. I think he’s also trying to pick out ‘easy’ targets (Canada has a history of wrecking American invasions, though, and I think he might find that a lot of American citizens would stand with our friend and ally to the north), because maybe he thinks Ronald Reagan looked tough invading Grenada.

The second half is just the typical whining about how everyone is picking on him.

25 days until this demented, delusional maniac is at the wheel of this country.

The Gaetz report is trickling out.

From the report: “The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

More: “The record overwhelmingly suggests that Representative Gaetz had sex with multiple women at a 2017 Florida party, including the then-17-year-old, for which they were paid… Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex. At the time, she had just completed her junior year of high school. Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age.”

I can’t compete. I could talk about my experiments in spider sex, but all that’s happened is that the males have been attentive but cautious with the females, and all the black widow couples have settled down into a quiet domesticated co-existence. It’s not exciting at all! None of them are even taking drugs.

At least I can say that black widow spiders have a more conventional sense of morality than Matt Gaetz. Unless this portrait of Gaetz is accurate.