we don't need no education

the federal government has neither the time nor the inclination to oversee the dumbing down of the american polity so we will devolve the responsibility of eroding budgets and bowdlerizing the sylabus to the states who can then dertermine just how stupid they would like their citizens to be...no critical thought about the machinations of the maga utopia...just mute acceptance enforced by an equally ignorant ( and utterly obsequious ) state legislatures...

we will, however, continue to monitor and bitch-slap any uppity university that allows its students to question our motives or say anything negative about israel, no matter how factual it may be...critical thought is the incubator for sabotuers and wreckers who would stand in the way of the aforementioned maga utopia...that doesn't mean we are letting go of all that student debt though...the national political agenda is debt...debt so deep for as much of the polity as we can manage wthat will leave them in the poistion of only being able to survive and service the interest on the debt while never paying-down the principal...keeping them focused on surviving rather than thinking.

rebirth

so the tariffs cause a little recession and ecomonc pain for the polity...it's the long-term we're looking at here and if it engenders an era of manufacturing rebirth it's worth the short-term hardship...bearbrand hsoiery will resume knitting amd gary screw and bolt will splutter back to life and thread again...the JOBS are what it's all about...there are some questions in mind though don...are these going to be union manufacturing JOBS? are they going to pay a living wage? are people going to be able to recover from "the pain" ( egg prices are not going down don...you punted that one ) you are handing them without crippiling themselves further ( many are under water now ) with debt in the short term?

here's what the MIT living wage caluculator has to say about who needs how much in the county i live in...have a shufti at the "minimum wage" versus "povery wage"...i see only two small categories whaere the minimum wage coud lift someone up into poverty...for the rest you are on your own...so...are you going to usher in a new era of "prosperity for all" with a strongly unionized workforce...or reinforce "right to work" with a stacked NLRB bard and a continuation of national and local union busting policies leaving the prosperity for the rentier class ( your natural constituency despitwe the economic situation of your voting base )? we will see how this pans out...thinking i will see familiar results.

walking backwards

the concept of limits...even for don...may be beginniong to filter into the adminstration's consciousness...they may not have as much control over events as they imagine...for instance...

the alleged second in command, co-president, puppet-master, apartheid guy, muskateer, muskatel, whatever you care to call him had a run-in with rubio at a cabinet meeting ( what cabinet post does muskie hold? ) and forced don to intervene to calm the boys down...cracks continue to form...don says he has asked iran to open nuclear talks...tarrifs on canada and mexico have been "paused " for thirty days because prices are staying stubbornly high as merchants indulge in profit taking while the market tanks...and don is "seriously considering" sanctions on russia to force some sort of peace deal...of course that could be something he and vlad the impaler cooked up...vlad was in the spook world for a while...then again don might be angling for that peace prize...hard to know with all the "alternate facts" "fake news" and outright lies going on in whoretown...meanwhile words like: • accessible • activism • activists • advocacy • advocate • advocates • affirming care • all-inclusive • allyship • anti-racism • antiracist • assigned at birth • assigned female at birth • assigned male at birth • at risk • barrier • barriers • belong • bias • biased • biased toward • biases • biases towards • biologically female • biologically male • community diversity • community equity • confirmation bias • cultural competence • cultural differences • cultural heritage • cultural sensitivity • culturally appropriate • culturally responsive • DEI • DEIA • DEIAB • DEIJ • disabilities • disability • discriminated • discrimination • discriminatory • disparity • diverse • diverse backgrounds • diverse communities • diverse community • diverse group • diverse groups • diversified • females • feminism • fostering inclusivity • GBV • gender • gender based • gender based violence • gender diversity • gender identity • gender ideology • gender-affirming care • genders • Gulf of Mexico • hate speech • health disparity • health equity • hispanic minority • historically • identity • immigrants • implicit bias • implicit biases • inclusion • inclusive • inclusive leadership • inclusiveness • inclusivity • increase diversity • increase the diversity • indigenous community • inequalities • inequality • inequitable are bing flagged as ones to avoid in documents emanating from federal agencies...hard to be a monist bent on crushing differences rather than engendering ( is that a banished word? ) tolerant unity when you use words like "diverse"...the history of this adminstration grinds on.

does $36 trillion in debt minus $2 trillion in spending cuts = $5000?

the national debt clock has the national debt pegged ( approximately...it moves quickly ) at $36,537,459,150,833 and growing at about a grand a second...and yet my friends at doge claim to have slashed $2 trillion off the total and, as a memeber of one of the 79 million tax-paying households, they want to give me a share of 20% of that total via a check for $5000...either the reportage is grossly mistaken or there is some flaw in the math and, per bertie russell, the logic...20% of $2 trillion is $400 billion, however 79 million times $5000 is $395 billion...there are 5 bilion dollars lost somewhere...and if i get a cut of 20% where does the other 80% go? and there are more questions than that...which terminated federal employee's pocket did they pick to pay me and do i want that? is the $5000 in lieu of a cessation of social security/medicare/medicad payments? is this more smoke and mirrors to cover a counter-constitutional coup? are spending cuts actually money? if i have a $10000 balance on a credit card and return $2000 worth of merchandise to pare the balance down to $8000 do i have $2000 or just less debt? since money is simply an abstract expression of work ( a $20 bill is just a piece of paper with some green ink on it ) this is all just playing with numbers...and as a side note the $5000 check would take an act of congress, and while they are sycophantic, subservient, and utterly hypocritical they are also tools of the elite which is whining about it being an inflationary move...and if there is one thing the elite hates and fears more than the poor it is inflation...don't plan a splurge with that five grand just yet._________________________________________________________________ 1 march 2025 one question i did negelect to include is , will terminated federal employees be eleigible for this ( if this non-starter should miraculously come about ) being they have been labeled as parasites?

cracks

so many egos combined with rank incompetence and dogmatic thinking are going to multiply their problems...the faithful will lose faith and, since the crackbrained idelogy cannot be the problem, there will be "wreckers and saboteurs" derailing the promised improvements...and the ideological police will be born.

above the law redux

this...

is why the blog is called what it is called...the parallels are not exact however they are close enough to make me think someone has briefed don on tricky dick's precedents...old dick...

didn't get away with it...there were still spines in congress in the 70s...not sycophants and conspiracy theorists.

round-up ready

as i write this people are being rounded up ( with all the malignant connotations that holds historically in my estimation ) ostensibly to remove criminal elements that have entered the country which is a difficult precept to argue with...beyond that one surmises that any number of diligent and honest people have entered the country without documentation simply in an effort to better their lives and that they represent the majority of undocumented immigrants who will be swept up with the rest under the authoritarian rubric of “better the innocent should suffer than the guilty escape punishment”...and the authoritarians define “guilty” as universal in this case...which leaves little room for maneuvering for the innocent since they do not recognize the concept...don has wailed about the united states being full of “the wrong kind of people” which I would take to mean anyone who does not agree with project 2025 and muskie’s doge cost cutting to line the pockets of already over wealthy people ( after all if the lesser kind have medicare, medicaid, and social security then those resources are denied the greedy bastards in charge and they want it all...i have said before that the political agenda in the united states since bretton woods has been the creation of debt...greed wants everyone possible in debt penury since interest is the only thing that makes new money...their ideal would be a population scraping along and only able to service the interest on their debt and never overcome the principle while selling their offspring into servitude for more credit ) and since they are the “wrong kind” subject to round ups once the “illegal aliens” have been dealt with...that would entail the removal of a considerable number of people...in the 2024 presidential election 23 candidates ran for the office ( according to reports from state election officials )...a total of 155,238,802 votes were cast in the election of those don garnered 77,302,580 votes which did give him the most votes for any single candidate...majority ( or mob ) rule...the remaining candidates received 77,935,722 votes meaning that a majority of voters voted against don and project 2025 by a plurality of 633,142 votes...more than half voted “no” to don so when he spouts about a bogus “mandate” he is ( again ) lying...propaganda passing as fact...removing them would be as much a non-starter as the whole set of gaza ravings...as his agenda sinks into chaos and becomes unworkable there will need to be scapegoats...the maga ideology cannot be the cause of chaos so it will, of necessity, be the work of “wreckers and saboteurs”...which is where the police force comes in to attempt the impossible the round ups...although I would like to point out that muskie and doge have left the coercive elements of the “deep state” fully intact...in desperation they will give it a shot...an old authoritarian dodge

the junior varsity weighs in

j d vance says that judges are not permitted to control don's "legitimate power" and i am inclined to agree that the judiciary should not involve itself in legitimate presiential acts...what the judiciary can and should do is adjudicate what "legitimate powers" are...while the top-down wannabe authoritarian in the white house seems ready to ignore legality and anything like due process that doesn't mean those concepts are null and/or void...you haven't subverted the constitution yet j d even if don is yammering about a third term already...so stop indulging in flights of fancy...a significant portion of the polity does not agree with you and may well become the majority as the consquences of a looming trade war make bideneconomics seem like prosperity...in other news don has instituted 25% tarrifs on foreign steel and aluminum while simultaneously trumpeting that nippon steel has dropped its acquisition plans for u s steel and will instead "invest heaviluy" in the steelmaker...how "heavily" is an unknown at this point ( as far as i can find ) so will they become the majority stockholder? almost the same as outright acquisition as they will have considerable say in how things are run...more smoke and mirrors? thinking so, however we will wait and see what occurs before any final thinking takes place...

continues.

obfuscation

don lied all through his campaigns and first adminstration..."alternate facts" was the pc label they applied...and, as alexandr points out the lying goes on, even though we all know what he and muskie spout is an overfull crock of elitist bullshit about why they should have it all their way...so why continue lying? is a valid question...i am inclined to think they lie not so much to specifically mislead but more to obfuscate...to confuse things to the extent that no one knows what to believe or simply they stop believing anything that comes out of the media or vomits out of the mouths of their sycophantic "spokespeople"...then they can procede to do as they like and even if the facts are exposed no one will believe them...disbelief is one of the major responses the brazen count on to have their way...if no one can manage to believe what they are actually doing the job is half done...these are authoritaian elitists and no mistake...what they are doing is deliberately destroying the government...or, at least, any humane portion of the government...all in the name of saving taxpayer dollars through more efficient government...my question is who is going to end up with all the saved dollars...who else but that self-same elite...tax cuts for wealth...or simply redistribute the "surplus"...we know how that has worked in the past.

for the sake of the kids

a potent propaganda tool that will impact the masses and a malleable source of future ideological adherents that will need to be separated from their parents...at least emotionally, care and feeding can be left to the parents...education comes from the state and affection needs to be redirected towards its leadership...adults start the cult...the kids sustain it

relocate

nation building? something donny decried in his campaign for his first term...another "forever war" looming since no arab is likely to accept this as an alternative...if this ever actually gets off the ground...you can tell don is a developer..."the riviera of the middleast"...sounds overly optimistis...and, in a move remeniscent of the brits and french carving up the middle east with rationally straight-line borders that negelcted to take anything like local conditions and traditional territorioes into account, he suggest moving two million people to egypt and/or jordan ( who cares what they may think...they are subject peoples...in fact we all seem to be subject peoples ) a move rather like stalin and the chechens ( or any other group he found inconvenient in their present location )...one wonders what will cover the cost of all this? tarrifs? fringe politics is never a healthy environment for rational, critical thought...doctor tarr and professor fether are in charge...more sleight of hand to distract from what's really going on.

flirting with unkowns

from a stance of "the tariffs will pay for themselves" to "will there be some pain? yes maybe" ( the "maybe not" seems to be hopelessly optimistic if not outright maga utopian )...a revision of trumpist infalibility something like twelve day into the new era of government by chaos...

as canada, mexico, and china retaliate one could expect something in the way of price increases across the board ( there goes your avacado toast for example...or, at least, a curtailment of that delicacy ) as capital finds yet another excuse to gouge the consumer handed to them by these bozos ( while debating the impost ( tariff ) bill in the first congress a vote on the bill was delayed as the legislation languished in committee, "a philadelphia merchant...alleged that mr. fitzsimons delayed the impost bill, while his own indiamen should arrive. for it seems he has more than one. i asked mr. fitzsimons what could be the means of the bill hanging so long in the hands of the committee. he blamed gerry; said it was left with gerry last saturday , that he had called this evening (friday) and found it still lying on mr. gerry's table untouched...he said he was afraid they would say of him, as he was a merchant, that he delayed it until his own vessels would arrive from the east indies...mr.wynkoop remarked that mr. fitzsimons acted in a double capacity, as a merchant and as a representative. the man replied shrewdly, 'you will always find the merchant uppermost.' " william maclay's journal of the first congress 10 may 1789. maclay felt those he called "the new england men" were delaying the bill so they could land cargoes without paying tariff on them while still pasing the costs of the proposed tariffs on to their customers...there are more laywers than merchants in the current congress, however merchants remain those lawyers' true constituents in legislative matters...their right to pass costs onto consumers will be sacrosanct )...and that isn't mentioning the impact this will have on inflation...no, nothing is certain and that isn't going to brighten anyone's outlook...like all clerisies this one is placing the "good" its teleological thinking posits somewhere in the future...current pain for future gain...the issue being the pain has far more potential of being real than the future gain has of being seen...we will see how this turns out...acoording to maga dogma or if some disillusionment begins to crop up

a bit more fellowship

events grind on

like nixon

" Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests. In response, some[who?] have called for a line item veto to strengthen the rescission power and force Congress to vote on the disputed funds. The Act was passed because Congressional representatives thought that President Nixon had abused his power of impoundment by withholding funds for programs he opposed. The Act, especially after Train v. City of New York (1975), effectively removed the presidential power of impoundment."_____________________________________________________ tricky dick developed the habit of impoundng funds congress had approved for programs he did not especially like...monkey see monkey do...except, at least at the moment, it is illegal...an entitltled president pushing the boundries to see what he can get away with...or a wannabe authoritarian with no use for laws and due process

fellowship

during don's first term i struggled with a vague sense that his political style reminded me of someone who i was having difficulty placing until, towards the end of his term i concluded that it was solobodan milosevic and his use of the minority kosovar serbs as a rallying point for his campaign which don translated into letting some repressed political viewpoints crawl back into the open ( and which he is acting on as i type in a concerted campaign against cultuiral diversity )...that settled i was still puzzled ( until just recently ) about what it was that conservative fundamentalist christians could possibly see as supportable in don's character...i have been reading, anong other things, bartolome de las casas indictment of the conquistadors' ( and, by dint of that christians' ) treatment of indigenous peoples as sub-humans fit for slavery and the propensity of the conquistadors and their clerical supporters to destroy the religious temples pf those peoples, say mass, and then erect churches on their sites( a habit which goes back to the establishment of the vatican in the confines of nero's circus )...watching don engage in vengeful behaviors from the very start of his second term it struck me that both don and conservative christians share a sanctimonious vindictiveness when dealing with poeple and ideas they don't like...acolytes emulating an angry and vengful god.

round two

inauguration day has rolled around again and don and his cadre of sycophants and manipulators ( or handlers if you like...or those who see him as a pathway to realizing their agenda... ) are about to be enthroned in whoretown for what they hope will be an extended period of misery for those they do not like and one of unbridled self-aggrandizement for the venal among them...this probably will not tend to "make america great again" and while it may not be a complete catastrophy ( institutional inertia is not going to be easy for them to re-reoute...and we haven't even touched on the near impossibility of having a defacto empire [ which they want to enlarge with greenland and canada ] and a small bureaucracy to run it ) it is not going to be anything like stable...at least on the national level...we will see how far it reachess to the local level as they maintain they are going to uproot millions of individuals...one expects confusion and abrupt changes in direction and distortion of fact ( this has been a staple in the executive and legislative branches of government here since at least 1789 and isn't about to change ) as some agenda points prove impossible to carry out...as well as a discernable lack of critical thinking about possible concequences ( and there are always consequences...many unseen )...we have already been living in "interesting times" ( the political system has been broken for years ) both socially and climatically...one preceives that this will only intensify as an adminstration based in emotion and denial takes over to work its will...buckle up buttercup.