Saturday, May 31, 2025
The Clue Is Here
In turn, a White House official said the administration is relaying to the leaders that “the money simply cannot and will not flow unabated as it has been – and that the universities are incubators of discrimination and the taxpayer cannot support that.”There will always be too many innocent victims, but any institution that signs on deserves to collapse into the Earth, along with the law firms.
These conversations come as the administration is investigating dozens of other schools, and as some school leadership comes to Washington.
The White House is looking to strike a deal with a high-profile school, said the first source, who is involved in the higher education response.
“They want a name-brand university to make a deal like the law firms made a deal that covers not just antisemitism and protests, but DEI and intellectual diversity,” this person said.
Sure Why Not
President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would set tariffs on steel imported into the United States at 50%, double their current rate.
Friday, May 30, 2025
Bad China
Rest in Piss, Bernie Kerik
Likely More Than Fetterman
EXCLUSIVE: Mahmoud Khalil Alleges the Trump Admin and Pro-Israel Groups Coordinated to Target Him
A FOIA request obtained by Zeteo demands the government provide details of its communications about Khalil with several doxxing groups, a Columbia alumni chat, and Sens. Fetterman and Cruz.
Special K
As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according to people familiar with his activities.Sounds like a problem! There are some obvious points to be made here about security clearances and low level staffers who panic about the "did you ever try marijuana" quuestion, but maybe we can just ponder this for the moment.
Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
Starting out as "a little bit of fun" he said his 20-year addiction nearly killed him.I wonder if Stephen was familiar with Musk's activities.
"It feels like someone's setting fire to your insides," he said.
...
Because of the impact on his bladder, he said he had ended up sleeping in the bath to be closer to the toilet.
"As soon as I fell asleep I'd be back up again to go to the toilet so there was just no sleep involved," he said.
"I've had to lie in the bath and try to get a couple of hours before I'm back up again to go to the toilet because my bladder was so shrunken."
Stopped Clock
Frankenstein is the monster
Actually, Frankenstein is the name of the creature's creator.
Right, Frankenstein is the monster.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Gold Standard For Science
Concerning
The back-to-back failures have hampered Starship's development and put a tighter clock on the vehicle's expected operational start. NASA has contracted SpaceX to develop Starship as the lunar lander for the agency's Artemis 3 mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. That mission is slated to launch sometime in 2027. Before then, SpaceX has to land at least one uncrewed Starship on the moon and then successfully launch it back into lunar orbit. So far, Starship has not yet completed one full orbit of Earth.
With even odds I'd bet the entirety of the vast Eschaton World Industries fortune on that moon thing not happening.
Welp
A White House official, who requested anonymity to talk about the change, confirmed that Musk was leaving.However...
Musk’s departure comes one day after he criticized the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda, saying he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big beautiful bill.”
The legislation includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement. While speaking to CBS, Musk described it as a “massive spending bill” that increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.
CNN also reported Wednesday that Katie Miller, a top adviser and spokesperson for DOGE, has left her position and is now working with Musk, according to three sources familiar with the matter. She did not respond to a request for comment sent to her White House email, which still appeared to be functioning. A separate White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment....
Still, Musk’s relationship with the Millers has become a subject of great intrigue in Washington as DOGE continues to wreak havoc on the federal government. Little is known about how often they interact outside of work and how the relationship grew over the late stages of the campaign into the transition.
“If you can find out anything about Stephen Miller’s social life, I don’t wanna know the answer,” says a longtime Republican operative who knows the couple personally. |
“Stephen and Katie are very attentive to [Musk],” the Republican who referred to Stephen as “prime minister” tells WIRED. There’s also only one audience which truly matters, they say: “He’s got a forgiving audience: the audience of one, and all of us around him.”
No More Liberation
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law, swiftly throwing into doubt Trump’s signature set of economic policies that have rattled global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised broader fears about inflation intensifying and the economy slumping.I was rooting for the lines to go down, so I am a bit disappointed.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Welp
Just in: Texas' former solicitor general has left the AG's office amid sex misconduct allegations and a lawsuit outlining his apparent, months of detailed disclosures to colleagues about his sexual obsession with watching an asteroid anally rape the agency's No. 2 attorney in front of his kids.
— Robert Downen (@robertdownen.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 3:35 PM
I am being dead serious. Judd Stone allegedly talked about this asteroid fantasy so often that the agency's No. 2, Brent Webster, discussed it with him and, later fearing for his and his family's safety, consulted with other top officials in the AG's office.
— Robert Downen (@robertdownen.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 3:43 PM
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Our Sister Organization
I suspect "journalists against journalism," something which is already less rare than you would think from hearing them talk about themselves, will become quite common.
Can. Will?
California has already announced that it will sue to maintain its waiver, charging that the Senate had no authority to overturn it. But the Senate operates largely on precedent, and now that the parliamentarian has been disregarded on this point, virtually any action the executive branch takes could be construed as a rule, and therefore subject to fast-track congressional review.
For this reason, Democrats could subject the Senate to time-consuming resolution votes repeatedly, to such a degree that the Senate would not have time to do anything else for the rest of this session of Congress. In other words, Democrats could respond to the waiver vote by paralyzing the Senate, and stopping the giant Trump tax bill from ever reaching the floor.
Georgia State University assistant professor and former House Oversight Committee staffer Todd Phillips laid this out in a Prospect piece earlier this month. Any 30 senators can force a CRA resolution onto the floor, with a required ten hours of debate time. These resolutions would need the president’s signature, and nearly all of them wouldn’t even get the Republican votes necessary to pass the Senate. But according to Senate procedure, they have to be dealt with if enough senators force them onto the floor. They must be debated and voted upon ahead of other Senate business if brought up for consideration. This means that Democrats can tie up the Senate floor for upwards of ten hours with any single CRA resolution.
Starship
It is all above my pay grade, but I have read a few convincing things that assert that Musk's rocket, which is intended to carry humans, is doomed for that purpose. They might get some successful launches, but you you need a bit of reliability to put humans in it.
Elon Did Another Boom Boom
Starship HLS (Human Landing System) is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
And that was before the Trump/Doge era! Just billions given to this grifter.
Many boombooms to come:
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Nationalizing The Means Of Production
Following his statement Friday, Trump on Sunday told reporters that U.S. Steel will be “controlled by the United States, otherwise I wouldn’t make the deal” and that “it’s an investment and it’s a partial ownership, but it’ll be controlled by the U.S.A.”McCormick described the U.S. government’s veto as a “golden share” and suggested that the idea was Nippon Steel’s proposal.
Sure Why Not
The Trump administration has ordered US embassies worldwide to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students as it prepares to implement comprehensive social media screening for all international applicants.They're gonna ask Grok if you ever said a bad thing about Trump or Israel, or a good thing about Biden, or mocked Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.
Boom Boom
British officials told the U.S. they are concerned about the safety of SpaceX’s plans to fly its next Starship rocket over British territories in the Caribbean, where debris fell earlier this year after two of the company’s rockets exploded, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica.Exaggeration, of course, but, really, have some self-respect.
The worries from the U.K. government, detailed in a letter to a top American diplomat on Wednesday, follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision last week to grant SpaceX’s request for a fivefold increase in the number of Starship launches allowed this year, from five to 25. Growing the number of launches of the most powerful rocket ever built is a priority for SpaceX head Elon Musk, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers.
Of particular concern to British officials is the public’s safety in the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands — all of which could face debris risk from Starship 9.
Scheduled explosion is tonight! Maybe this time they won't get that data they love so much! Anything is possible.
There's A Little Yellow Man In My Head
The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.
The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.
But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.
Seems Bad
European airlines are freezing their transatlantic growth and pulling back from major U.S. cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago as they redirect flights to Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Caribbean, where bookings are rising and demand is outpacing the American market. Carriers including Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, KLM, Iberia, and SAS have adjusted their summer schedules to reflect shifting traveler priorities, with more passengers opting for destinations that offer smoother entry, better seasonal deals, and fewer political complications. The changes mark a clear retreat from the U.S. at a time when international sentiment is cooling and alternative routes are proving far more profitable.Being denied entry, sucks, too, but a tiny thing compared to being thrown into a cell for months.
As long as (as seems to be the case) various quotas are being pushed on agents, the situation won't improve.
A Big Deal
I don't think all political problems are solved by people knowing the facts more, and I definitely don't think "knowing the facts more" is best achieved by consuming the supposedly smart people's news media, but I also don't think most people know shit like this is happening!We love to see it.
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 1:26 AM
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Monday, May 26, 2025
It's Tariff Day, Again
Donald Trump has announced that he will pause his threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union until 9 July, after a “very nice call” with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Do The Right Thing
This may have been a tactical mistake. Because now Democratic lawmakers are planning to make a series of public visits to private detention centers in their states starting as early as next week, according to House Democrats and aides who spoke to The Bulwark. The idea is to put a spotlight on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the justice system, attacks on institutions, and targeting of political dissent. But Trump himself created the opening. Because by targeting McIver, he turned the detention visits into a question of congressional oversight.I'm not quite sure this is the right way to thread that needle, precisely, but it's something. If they can't even stand up for themselves (Congressional perogative), they certainly can't stand up for you! So do that, at least!
“Every member of Congress should go visit within the next ten days a private detention center,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois) told me, emphasizing the fact that lawmakers have the legal right to conduct oversight of detention centers. “We are not going to stand for this intimidation of members of Congress, and coming after members of Congress to intimidate them so they don’t do oversight.”
Primaries
“Squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would trounce Sen. Chuck Schumer in a primary – as the Democratic leader is “bleeding support” from his party and Jewish voters, a stunning new poll found.Pelosi endorsed Joe Kennedy when she was Speaker! Think what you want about it, just don't embrace any fake rules.
Socialist Ocasio-Cortez leads five-term incumbent Schumer by a 54%-33% among likely Democratic voters in the Big Apple, according to the poll conducted by Honan Strategy Group for the Jewish Voters Action Network.
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Welp
Israeli actions in Gaza "are not a genocide"
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 25, 2025
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tells @TrevorPTweets, 'Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK, just like Ukraine is'#TrevorPhillipshttps://t.co/sdor7jUS9i
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/jZe0RC64tQ
Seems Bad
News of a downturn then leads to a sizable drop in the markets. As investors rush to shed themselves of risky assets, crypto, perhaps the riskiest “asset” imaginable, is dumped with ferocity. Soon, there’s a run on the banks, except it’s not like in 2023, it’s far bigger. Instead of only a handful of banks, dozens or maybe even hundreds are affected, including some of the largest in the country. And quelle surprise, we are all obligated to bail the banks out (again) or face global financial armageddon.The funny thing is, that in a way bailing out "the banks" is costless, but as with the great financial crisis, somehow "we" bailed out "the banks" but not the people, even though we could have done that instead/too.
Odometer Fraud
Tesla’s warranty strategy isn’t just aggressive—it’s algorithmic warfare against its own customers. A California class-action lawsuit alleges the company uses predictive software to inflate odometer readings by up to 117%, voiding warranties prematurely and forcing owners into $10,000 repair bills. And if the Courts find it to be systematic? Global? Based on the lawsuit data, the total estimated annual financial benefit to Tesla is about $3.99 billion.Tesla basically said, what if instead of counting miles, we just had our computers vibe a number?
Nyree Hinton’s 2020 Model Y odometer logged 72 miles/day despite a 20-mile commute, burning through his 50,000-mile warranty in 18 months. Tesla’s system calculates distance using energy consumption and driving patterns rather than physical rotation, a method patented in 2023. This is not random or a glitch but part of Tesla’s revenue model. Every 1,000 algorithmically generated “miles” saves Tesla $200 in warranty repairs per vehicle, while pushing owners into $3,500 extended coverage plans.
This suite is about the warranties, but it completely fucks up the used car market.
Seems Bad
I get why people remained relatively silent about this general issue. Not everybody is as brave a protesting college student. Mortgages to pay. You know. I really will never forgive (or forget) all the people who screamed about mostly made up things for months and then just went silent.
Orders often came from the top, and at times nearly every platoon used a Palestinian to clear locations, said an Israeli officer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Several Palestinians and soldiers told the AP that Israeli troops are systematically forcing Palestinians to act as human shields in Gaza, sending them into buildings and tunnels to check for explosives or militants. The dangerous practice has become ubiquitous during 19 months of war, they said.
Applies to many of your faves! Not that any of them care what I think, of course.
That Newspaper
I can't know this, of course, but I suspect that Annie Karni, the writer of the Fetterman piece, was sent to write a sympathetic piece about how all the intolerant left is so mean to genocide supporter Fetterman, found an absolute shitshow of a man, and even the piece she delivered was sanitized.
Sympathetic profiles of Democrats who are hated by their voters are pretty standard!
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Fetterman Hates Job
Speaking Of The Game
I also know that what would have happened is that Lindsey Graham would be on all 15 news channels simultaneously losing his shit, and every Republican and conservative commentator would be joining him.
And, yes, I understand that when something happens every political journalist instinctively calls Lindsey Graham - his personal phone, not his comms person - because that's how the game is choreographed. But if there is no Democratic "Lindsey Graham?" If any time a Democrat "loses his shit," Jeffries or Schumer tell them to tone it down a bit?
They're calling what the House passed the "GOP Tax Scam" and telling people not to use "hyperbolic language" about the bill. The press is not going to lose their shit on their behalf without at least a bit of prompting.
What Game Were They Playing
Friday, May 23, 2025
Blocked
Uncertainty
Plenty Of Those Kids Are Going To Be Special
The Trump administration has moved to end Harvard's ability to enrol international students, escalating a standoff with America's oldest university.By special I mean that their parents are important (and rich). VIP special. Not all of them, of course!
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration had revoked Harvard's "Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law."
I'm not saying that should make a difference but such things do!
...Originally typed and scheduled the post before this came out:
BRUSSELS, May 23 (Reuters) - Princess Elisabeth, the 23-year-old future queen of Belgium, has just completed her first year at Harvard University but the ban imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on foreign students studying there could jeopardise her continued studies.
It's Tariff Day... Again
Thursday, May 22, 2025
The Joe Rogan Of The Left
The quest for that has become the jokey shorthand for efforts to improve Dem-friendly media. That might not be fair to what people are actually trying to do, but as for the issue generally, Matt Duss said it best:
One of the reasons Democrats are in such trouble is because there’s already a liberal Joe Rogan and it’s Joe Scarborough.
— Matt Duss (@mattduss) May 21, 2025
Dem Friendly Media
I would certainly like to embrace rich liberals investing in media in many forms, but I am skeptical for many reasons. Happy to be wrong!
There are many reasons why journalism is not attractive to wealthy donors. The pitch for funding real journalism is, essentially, “Give us money. You can’t tell us anything about what to do with it. Then we will write stories inimical to your interests. Over the course of years, civic society will be strengthened.” This tends to strike rich people as unattractive. They are generally looking for something more along the lines of, “Our publication will be the equivalent of injecting an undecided voter with a powerful drug that will indoctrinate them into our way of thinking, like an acid-crazed Manson acolyte.” Journalism cannot promise this sort of ROI. Propaganda can. The confident pitches of propagandists often turn out to be little more than attempts to soak well-intentioned rich people for as much money as possible, using oversimplified promises of grand influence in record time. Oh well. That’s what you get for believing propagandists.
And those confident propagandists will have little success especially if they are constrained by the idiosyncratic desires of donors and are expected to fall in line with the Democratic talking points of the week.
I used to complain that the Dem party had shitty message discipline, in the sense that they lacked it. Now they more have shitty message discipline in the sense that they try to impose shitty messaging on all electeds and Groups. Too much discipline on shitty messaging, as they are convinced that one stray comment from a barely affiliated rando will force them all to apologize.
America's Worst Democratic Senators
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who co-sponsored the bill, Adam Schiff (D-CA), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Mark Warner (D-VA), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), John Fetterman (D-PA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE).
Certainly don't take any preening lectures about smart politics, economics, or morality from these people.
The People Who Love Trump Love Trump
I'm not even picking on Katelyn Burns here, but this highlights the way Trump has been covered since 2016.
President Donald Trump's standing with voters is often portrayed as an immutable fact.
But while it's true that his hard-core supporters don't appear to be swayed by much, recent events have shown that the public can and will respond to his mistakes — provided that it hears about them.
Why is his standing with voters - around 42%, around the level of the hideously unpopular Mr. Biden - an "immutable fact" especially when that fact is often portrayed as the opposite of what it is?
Years of diner stories, where the reporters are fascinated to find out that the assembled group of Trump's biggest fans are still big fans.
Foghat's on tour this summer, I am sure the people who will attend are mega-Foghat fans, and those people might be interesting to interview, but that doesn't tell us all that much about Foghat's general appeal.
This Is Mass Murder
We already overlook too much "computer say no - you die" denial of payment approval in US health care, but this goes beyond simple denial of payment - death by bureaucracy - and is quite literally murder.
The company also monitored nursing homes that had smaller numbers of patients with “do not resuscitate” – or DNR – and “do not intubate” orders in their files. Without such orders, patients are in line for certain life-saving treatments that might lead to costly hospital stays.
Two current and three former UnitedHealth nurse practitioners told the Guardian that UnitedHealth managers pressed nurse practitioners to persuade Medicare Advantage members to change their “code status” to DNR even when patients had clearly expressed a desire that all available treatments be used to keep them alive.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Sure, Elon
I suppose I could be wrong, but I think the only question is: What kind of disaster will this be, specifically?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, by the end of June.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.
Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.
Intervention
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia has died at the age of 75 after a battle with esophageal cancer, his family said in a statement Wednesday.
“It is with immense sadness that we share that our devoted and loving father, husband, brother, friend, and public servant, Congressman Gerald E. Connolly, passed away peacefully at his home this morning surrounded by family,” read a statement posted on Connolly’s X account.
Connolly served as the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform until late last month, when he said he would step down because his cancer had returned.
I Thought Elon Was Going To Fix This
FAA cuts 25% of flights at Newark airport after air traffic controller shortage and construction causes delays
Krapner
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
RIP George Wendt
Oldheads might remember that "Atrios" was a misremembered character name from that play (one couldn't easily google things back then). Antrios was the unseen artist who painted the white canvas that was the central source of friction for the 3 friends in that play. In this performance, it was Stacey (Marc) being enraged at David (Serge) for buying a ridiculous painting. George (Yvan) was the middle peacemaker.
Under the white clouds, snow is falling.
You can't see the white clouds, or the snow.
Or the cold, or the white glow of the earth.
A solitary man glides downhill on his skis.
The snow is falling.
It falls until the man disappears back into the
landscape.
My friend Serge, who's one of my oldest friends,
has bought a painting.
It's a canvas about five feet by four.
It represents a man who moves across a space
then disappears.
End Of The Elon Era
President Deals
Japan on Tuesday clarified its stance on U.S. tariffs, saying it wants all new levies put into place by the administration of President Donald Trump completely removed, confirming a hard-line position ahead of high-level negotiations that might be held later this week in Washington.
“As we have repeatedly stated, we find the series of U.S. tariff measures — including those on automobiles, auto parts, steel, aluminum, and reciprocal tariffs — extremely regrettable,” said Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief tariff negotiator, at a news conference.
Business As Usual
The Department of Justice charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with assaulting federal law enforcement during a chaotic melee that erupted outside of an ICE detention facility in her home state of New Jersey, acting US Attorney Alina Habba said Monday.I don't know how to convince DC consultant brains that "a party that won't even defend its own members is unlikely to defend 'me'" is a perfectly sensible conclusion for voters to come to.
You don't reach swing voters by finely calibrating your means testing regime, you reach them by not looking like fucking losers.
...The Democrats!
Stablecoin legislation overcame a procedural blockade in the US Senate, marking a major victory for the crypto industry after a group of Democrats dropped their opposition Monday.
Vote Krasner
Monday, May 19, 2025
Cruelty
Rest in Piss
Michael "every now and again the United States has to pick up a crappy little country and throw it against a wall just to prove we are serious" Ledeen died.
Trump vs. Trumpsim
Good For The Ancestral Homeland
My paternal line goes back to Romania. I had long assumed "Black" was just a "keep it simple" immigrant name, but it was actually a translation of the Romanian "Negru."
The headline election was Romania's presidential vote, with liberal Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan coming out the winner ahead of nationalist George Simion.
Here's how the NYT covered it a few days ago.
George Simion, a nationalist who appears well placed to win the presidential election in Romania on Sunday, has promised to “Make Romania Great Again” and described himself as a “candidate on the MAGA ticket” of President Trump.
After trouncing 10 other candidates to win the first round of the election, on May 4, Mr. Simion spoke on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser and champion of an international populist movement.
Romanian voters had “totally bashed the globalists,” Mr. Simion rejoiced, echoing the language of American supporters like Vice President JD Vance, who has rebuked Romania for canceling an earlier election that a far-right candidate looked set to win.
Liberation Delayed
WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will impose tariffs at the rate he threatened last month on trading partners that do not negotiate in "good faith" on deals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in television interviews on Sunday.
The good faith negotiators are the suckers!
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Some Good News
Not optimistic, but better than nothing.
The Israeli Security Cabinet decided on Sunday to immediately resume the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza through existing channels until a new humanitarian aid mechanism starts working, according to two senior Israeli officials.
But I Still Have My Own Particular Freak Show Interests
Plenty of skull measurers manage to do just fine at our finest elite institutions.
That your colleagues thinking you're a racist dickhead, which is what this has always been about for the Freeze Peach crowd, is only an issue under the New York Times editorial board standard. This is the "lesser people and peoples are not allowed to criticize me" standard.
Must... Resist...
It does give me less to post about!
Is This Bad, Chat
At the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly a dozen top leaders, including the chief air traffic officer, are retiring early.
And at the Treasury Department, more than 200 experienced managers and highly skilled technical experts who help run the government’s financial systems chose to accept the Trump administration’s resignation offer earlier this year, according to a staffer and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Smart Business
This will get less ridicule than the correct lefty assertion that companies were taking advantage of supply chain problems by increasing prices more than their cost increases (which they were).
Teleoperation
Someone posted that Musk/Tesla had been discussing the need for teleoperation and at first I read it as "teleport." Masterful gambit, sir, $TSLA +378% as your fanboys believe you have invented the transporter.
But, no, it was teleoperation. We don't know how much remote intervention is used in existing automated taxis. Before they stopped operating, it was revealed that Cruise required it *a lot*. I don't know what Waymo is doing. In theory they are transparent, but the way they write this stuff up seems to have had the very heavy hand of lawyer involved.
Something journalists almost always get wrong about teleoperation is that it really can't help with safety. They're there to unstick a confused vehicle, not to prevent one from crashing at 35MPH.
Response lags, including cellular lags, means operators can't actually pilot the cars effectively. They can give them a nudge.
To back up the AI driving the vehicles, Tesla has also hired human staff to monitor and assist if they get into jams, taking full control if necessary. “As we iterate on the AI that powers them, we need the ability to access and control them remotely,” the company said in a posting for one such job. Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the leader in robotaxi tech, also uses remote operators to assist the vehicles by providing suggested solutions to tricky situations, but those people don’t actually drive them. Lag and latency in cellular networks make remote operations unsafe.
Safety is a real concern, especially with a company run by Elon, but as I've said all along, if they basically "work" then safety is less of a concern then people think, though that involves cars being cautious and annoying as hell to other drivers.
Freeze Peach
Not that I object to the piece at all, but I do wonder who, in the year of our Gritty 2025, needs to be told that the freeze speech crowd were always full of shit, and it was always just a backlash of elites to the notion that lesser people - and peoples - had any right to speak at all.
Flash-forward to 2025. The backlash against wokeness is the core of Trump’s second administration, and it’s being used to justify an assault on free speech unequaled since the McCarthy era. Trump has banned diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives throughout the federal government; has used the levers of the state to compel universities and other elite institutions to do the same; and has repeatedly jailed legal residents for engaging in what was once protected speech—usually speech in defense of the human rights of Palestinians. But as In These Times noted in April, just under a quarter of the Harper’s letter signatories have spoken up for the detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and other victims of Trump’s unconstitutional crackdown. (Those who have include progressives like my fellow Nation columnists Jeet Heer, Katha Pollitt, and Zephyr Teachout.) For the large majority—notably including Weiss, a leading champion of Israel’s war on Gaza—Trump’s reign of terror has apparently been less objectionable than the irritating undergraduate and entry-level scolds of the 2010s.
If these erstwhile free speech champions were only guilty of hypocrisy—or bad faith—they would hardly be worth writing about now, but in many ways they helped lay the groundwork for Trump’s second term. Consider the column for which Bennet was ousted, which was among the inspirations for the Harper’s letter: a Republican senator, Tom Cotton, calling for the use of military force to violently suppress free assembly (in protest of lethal police violence, no less). Cotton recently described Khalil as “a pro-Hamas foreigner” and scoffed at the idea that he has any rights worth defending. From the start, the speech being defended was advocating the violent, top-down defense of existing social hierarchies—which in 2025 is not the least bit abstract.
People either have known this for a long time 😠or they have know this for a long time 😜.
Friday, May 16, 2025
Hardline Hardball
They'll cave eventually, I'm sure.
President Donald Trump’s agenda has been thrown into chaos after a group of GOP hardliners blocked the bill in a key committee vote on Friday – dealing a major embarrassment to House Republican leaders and Trump himself.
Sure, Elon
In a statement on X the company said that someone had modified the AI bot’s system prompt, “which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic.” That modification “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” and the company says it has “conducted a thorough investigation” and is implementing new measures to improve “transparency and reliability.”
Tougher Than The Rest
A handy illustration: Bruce Springsteen is not addressing "culture war" issues. A Fox News host calling him a pussy to his audience because he engaged in wrongthink is the "culture war."
DOGEd
Maybe there's nothing! But some updated numbers on staffers, for example, would tell a bit of the story! A reporter might be able to get some angry words from Hegseth, because what fun is it being the head of the Pentagon if you can't show you friends around in a helicopter?
WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday it may ban the Pentagon from transporting government officials on routine missions around Reagan Washington National Airport, after a series of incidents involving passenger jets.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
And why is that
The urge to avert our gaze can be overpowering. But the cameramen who work for the BBC cannot turn away, and on Tuesday one of them became a casualty himself. For their safety we do not reveal the names of our colleagues in Gaza.
Big Beautiful Syria
The White House had issued no memorandum or directive to State or Treasury sanctions officials to prepare for the unwinding and didn’t alert them that the president’s announcement was imminent, one senior U.S. official told Reuters.
Classic move, sir.
This stuff is all above my pay grade, and you never have to hand it to him, but I do always lean towards "less meddling" with this stuff if that is indeed what is happening.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Playing The Hits
BiBi Should Have Offered A Gold Plane
Who Wants To Babysit Big Angry Jerk
Two more aides left John Fetterman’s office in recent weeks, the latest in a stream of staff exits amid the Pennsylvania senator’s shifting political persona and questions about his health.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Slaughtering The Sacred Cows
I’ve been toying with this idea of giving a talk sometime later this month that’s just called “Slaughtering Sacred Cows.” We as Democrats need to realize that while, certainly, people who voted for Donald Trump wanted change from their government, a lot of people actually don’t think the government is working for them. A lot of them want government to change. It’s just: we have a twentieth-century government, and it’s the twenty-first century.I pity the speechwriter having to fill in the Mad Libs form for that one. If you read through the interview you can tell that she can't. Critics of policies should at least be able to explain what they are, otherwise it's just vibeing rightwing ideology.
Slotkin's brain is made of pudding and Abundance talking points, she has negative charsima, and it's quite clear she has absolutely no idea what she is talking about. Just some phrases bouncing around her brain which she can't even explain. Big "am I the first person who thought of this?" energy.
Sure, Elon
My basic test for whether a general purpose humanoid robot would be useful, well, generally, is whether or not it can clear my table, load my dishwasher, and then put the dishes away. I don't mean that's the most important task I can imagine, just that if it can do tasks like that, it would fit the fantasy, and if it can't, it's pretty useless. And once you try to imagine one doing that, I think you can see how that's... well... hard.MUSK, in Riyadh: "My prediction, actually, for humanoid robots is that ultimately they will be tens of billions. I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it like, as though you had your own personal C-3POor R2-D2. But even better. @cnbc.com $TSLA
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) May 13, 2025 at 4:03 PM
He Can Do That?
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Tuesday that he will place holds on all political nominees to Justice Department posts until he receives “more answers” about Qatar’s potential gift of an airplane to the Trump administration.
Doesn't even seem like a kitchen table issue!
Opportunities
BEIJING — Xi Jinping didn’t even have to mention Donald Trump by name to get his point across.The Chinese president was giving the hard sell to a room full of senior Latin American leaders on Tuesday. He promoted his country’s stability and fundamental reasonableness, providing a clear contrast between him and his U.S. counterpart’s erratic trade war.
Sounds Bad
Attention is focused on Newark, but obviously they can't shift people from Philly, LaGuardia, or JFK either.
An exclusive report by the New York Post claims that on Monday evening between 18:30 to 21:30, flights out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) were handled by just one air traffic controller and a trainee. The report quotes a New York-based controller describing the situation as “pure insanity.” It also noted that an FAA spokesperson said that there were at least three controllers scheduled for each hour on Monday night but did not clarify how many of them were fully certified personnel.
The New York Times reported something similar, adding that four people familiar with the situation said that the number of fully certified controllers on duty to manage Newark’s air traffic was sometimes one or two. These figures are shocking because the target number of controllers for Newark to manage traffic in those hours is around 14-15.
I haven't seen any piece which gets into how many ATCs left due to Elon, whether his various sticks and carrots to get people to resign directly or just because he was such an asshole that they figured it was time to get out.
Assuming I haven't just missed it, I find its absence a bit weird!
Earlier it was claimed he tried to fire ATCs, and Duffy has since denied it actually happened, but actually fired doesn't include whether they just noped out due to the various pressures Elon was putting on them and the system generally.
ATCs aren't the only critical workers, of course, just the obvious ones.
I am skeptical of this...
Mr. Duffy said the F.A.A. had installed software updates on Friday to prevent future outages and plans infrastructure upgrades, including new fiber-optic cables connecting the airport and the facility in Philadelphia.
I mean the software update part. Also why use fiber when high latency satellites are much much worse?
One of the agencies deliberating a contract with Starlink burst into public debate last week: the Federal Aviation Administration, which for years has been looking to upgrade the infrastructure underlying its communications systems. The FAA awarded a $2.4 billion contract to Verizon in 2023, and although the contract is due to run for 15 years, Musk posted on X that he wants to pivot to a rival Starlink system. He said on X that Starlink was sending terminals at “no cost to the taxpayer.”
It’s not clear exactly when the FAA began considering the use of Starlink. Musk approved a shipment of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA last month, Bloomberg News reported.
Are these in use? Is this part of the problem?
Monday, May 12, 2025
Line Go Up
Reset
Chinese tariffs on U.S. agricultural products, retaliation for the tariffs Trump issued over fentanyl, will also remain.
China’s Ministry of Commerce reiterated Monday that the meeting was an “important first step” to resolve differences. In a statement, Beijing urged the U.S. to “completely rectify the mistake of unilateral tariffs [and] work together to inject more certainty and stability into the global economy.”
Under the agreement, Beijing will also suspend or cancel some non-tariff retaliatory measures, like export restrictions and the blacklisting of dozens of U.S. companies.
Other tariffs imposed during President Donald Trump’s trade war with China during his first term — as well as a 20 percent duty issued in February over what the president said was China’s failure to stop fentanyl-related chemicals from reaching the United States — will remain in place. Chinese tariffs on U.S. agricultural products, retaliation for the tariffs Trump issued over fentanyl, will also remain.
It's tough to keep track, but unless I am missing something this means that the ag tariff is still 125% - an embargo, basically.
Stupid Pope
I'm not Catholic, so when I have observations about the Pope and the Church, I am not engaging in argument, I am merely discussing whether or not this powerful individual and his institution are moving in a more positive or negative direction, as defined by me.
It's funny to me when American Catholics, for whom papal infallibility, or something close to it, is a somewhat critical thing, just come out with, "nuh-uh, Pope."
It's Tariff Day, Again
As part of an agreement hammered out in Geneva over the weekend, the US will lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 per cent from 145 per cent and China will reduce duties on US imports to 10 per cent from 125 per cent.Masterful gambit, sir, not quite solving a problem you created in the first place, once again.
30% is still going to do a lot of damage. Low enough that more necessary goods will flow, but not much of the rest of it. Small businesses will be fucked.
Also, it's only for 90 days. The uncertainty is more important than the levels, at this point. It takes awhile to turn the boats back on.
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Last I Checked, The Dude Only Gets One Vote
When an attendee asked Gallego about a fundraiser he held with Marc Andreessen, a billionaire crypto investor and close ally of Donald Trump, the freshman senator stayed on message — framing it as an example of how Democrats should bring more people in the tent. (The fundraiser was first reported by Rolling Stone.)
“My general view of how to win elections is you have to get a lot of votes, and that means we’re going to have to have alliances with people that we may not agree with 100 percent of the time,” said Gallego, stating that “Marc Andreessen runs the largest venture capital firm in Arizona. We want to bring as many jobs as possible.”
Echoes With
So They're Going Nowhere Then
Donald Trump says there has been a "total reset" in US-China trade relations following the first day of talks between American and Chinese officials in Switzerland.Hold out for Oregon, Xi! Just give it 3 more months!
In a social media post, the US president described the talks as being "very good" and said change had been "negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner".
Saturday, May 10, 2025
This Stuff's Important
For decades, the FBI chief has received an 8:30 a.m. daily “director’s brief” with the most important information gathered from thousands of agents and analysts. Patel reportedly had trouble making the morning briefing, so it was dropped from five days a week to two.
“Even that has been a struggle,” an unnamed official told NBC.
Two current FBI officials said Patel sometimes seems uninterested in the materials, forcing them to try to create briefs that will hold his attention.
Too Late
On Friday morning, West Coast port officials told CNN about a startling sight: Not a single cargo vessel had left China with goods for the two major West Coast ports in the past 12 hours. That hasn’t happened since the pandemic.
Sure Elise
U.S. lawmakers are proposing a bill that would allow some Canadian snowbirds to stay in the United States longer, in hopes of rebuilding cross-border tourism and supporting local economies.
The Canadian Snowbird Visa Act proposes to extend the length of time eligible Canadian citizens aged 50 and over could visit the U.S. without a visa to 240 days, up from the current 182 days that are permitted each year.
DOGEd
In testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins confirmed that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now looking to fill critical positions, after agreeing to pay more than 15,000 employees' salaries and benefits through September in exchange for their resignations.
"We are actively looking and recruiting to fill those positions that are integral to the efforts and the key frontlines," Rollins told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.
...
"So you let people go and you're looking for new people to fill the positions that they had experience in?" Murray asked.
"We're having those discussions right now," Rollins responded, while noting that 15,000 employees represents less than 15% of USDA's workforce and that the department loses 8,000 to 10,000 employees every year through attrition.
Still, Rollins invited some of those who took the deferred resignation offer to return.
"If they want to come back, and if they were in a key position, then we would love to have that conversation," she told lawmakers.
Friday, May 09, 2025
...The Democrats!
Nessel falsely suggested Guardian reporter @PomTerkins wrote a story blaming the “Jewish cabal” for her prosecuting pro-Palestinians. He actually reported about Nessel’s political and financial ties to UM officials.
— Steve Neavling (@MCmuckraker) May 9, 2025
Seems Bad
Air traffic controllers handling flights approaching and departing Newark Liberty International Airport experienced another outage early Friday morning.
The blackout included losing radar for about 90 seconds at 3:55 a.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Freed Öztürk
According to various legal observers, Rümeysa Öztürk is being released on bail.
One day we'll be ready to talk about the group(s) that were feeding lists of students to deport to the Trump administration.**** Judge Sessions GRANTS BAIL/RELEASE to Rümeysa Öztürk: "The court finds that [Rümeysa Öztürk's] continued detention cannot stand."
— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) May 9, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Law Firms Are Made Of People
"We'll take $2000/hr to defend you but might work against your interests if you make Trump mad" is not actually a good deal, or "ethical" in the lawyer sense.
We Will Bury You, Pigmonster Trump
China’s exports surged in April on the back of a jump in shipments to
Southeast Asian countries, offsetting a sharp drop in outbound goods to the U.S. as prohibitive tariffs kicked in....China’s shipments to the U.S. plunged over 21% in April year on year, while imports dropped nearly 14%, according to CNBC’s calculation of official customs data. Chinese U.S.-bound shipments had risen 9.1% in March, as exporters rushed to frontload orders ahead of tariff hikes.
Pigmonster Trump, getting desperate and trying to pass the buck:
Thursday, May 08, 2025
Sure Why Not
President Donald Trump is strongly considering installing Fox News host and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Who's Your Daddy
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates ratcheted up his feud with Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” through what he said were misguided cuts to US development assistance.
Shocked
Well that didn't take long. Just weeks after dropping the Tesla Cybertruck's Range Extender from the vehicle's online configurator, Tesla has quietly killed off the accessory completely without delivering a single unit of the $16,000 battery to its customers.
An email went out to Cybertruck owners last night, informing them that the company is no longer planning to offer the feature and that their deposit will be refunded in full.
The accessory—essentially a large, secondary battery pack for boosting range—had been delayed time and time again since it was first announced. This led to onlookers claiming that the accessory was just vaporware and would never be delivered. Well, it turns out that these conspiracy theories were right, as Tesla announced to reservation holders on Wednesday that it wouldn't be delivering the Range Extender and would be refunding deposits in full.
New Pope
Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration https://t.co/Ikk8gqOMzn
— Robert Prevost (@drprevost) February 13, 2025
Our LLM Future
LLMs might have some genuine applications, though as far as I can tell we are settling on "can be helpful for some coding activities" and "my horny chatbot," but people are using it for things there's no reason to think it would be any good for.
A Play In Two Acts
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last week with representatives from a teachers union in his home state when things quickly devolved.Act II:
Before long, Fetterman began repeating himself, shouting and questioning why “everybody is mad at me,” “why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do” and slamming his hands on a desk, according to one person who was briefed on what occurred.
As the meeting deteriorated, a staff member moved to end it and ushered the visitors into the hallway, where she broke down crying. The staffer was comforted by the teachers who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.
I'm not saying he is intending to be threatening here, but a guy who is 6'8" and not otherwise small is inevitably threatening when he behaves like this.Schumer standing by Fetterman, says he’s an “all-star” who’s “doing a good job”
— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) May 6, 2025