Nom Nom Nom

This is an excellent example of sanewashing, which is repeated almost without exception in American media. The full video of Trump is here, in which he talks about being a movie maker and Alcatraz escapes and sharks. He is mixing reality with Escape from Alcatraz, which happened to be on TV on in South Florida right before he got this wonderful idea.

The writeup pulls the only sane-sounding bit of the quote. Here's the full one (I pulled this off the subtitles):

Well, I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We're talking, we started with the movie making. It will end. I mean it it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies, but uh it's right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It has the most violent criminals in the world. And nobody ever escaped.

One person almost got there, but they, as you know, the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up and uh it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of, a lot of problems. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something uh strong having to do with law and order.

We need law and order in this country and so we're going to look at it, some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that and uh We had a little conversation.

I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, and a lot, but I think it represents something right now it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting, uh, very, uh, you look at it, it's sort of you saw that picture that was put out sort of amazing, but it, it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable we. It's got a lot of, it's got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think they, they make a point.

This is what PBS quotes:

It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order.

Morning

It's Tuesday already.

Monday Night

Rock on.

Seems Bad

No one's blaming Elon... yet.

Air traffic controllers guiding planes bound for Newark Liberty International Airport lost radar and radio communication for more than a minute early last week before flights at the key hub were snarled for days, according to people familiar with the matter.

The outage of those key systems occurred on April 28 and lasted nearly 90 seconds, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the matter because it isn’t public. Following the incident, multiple employees were placed on trauma leave, the people said.

You Don't Have To Go The Full Zeke, Just Put Down The Gavel!

Though I do have his 75th on my calendar.

But They Didn't Leave Their Seats

Hoyer and Pelosi are still in Congress!

Clyburn, 84, played a crucial role in elevating Biden to the presidency, and then threw his weight behind former Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him after Biden quit the 2024 ticket. The lawmaker holds an important role as the top Democrat on an Appropriations Committee subcommittee and indicated he isn’t interested in stepping aside.

“Nancy left her seat. Steny left his seat. I left my seat. What the hell I’m supposed to do now?” Clyburn said when asked whether the party needed to think of bringing in younger members. “What do you want—me to give up my life?”

You can even stay in Congress! The House, unlike the Senate, has plenty of room for members who don't do all that much. You know, like those 68-year-old whippersnappers who can't ever get a "promotion" because you won't stop being the ranking member! How is being a "mere" member of Congress giving up your life?

Happy Hour

Get happy

Lunch

eat

Sure Why Not

Mr. Tariff man is now demanding a "100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands," whatever that means.

I don't think these tariffs always have specific goals in mind for "deals" but in this case I am pretty sure it is "celebrities and entertainment executives need to kiss his ass."

Above my pay grade, but apparently the statute that gives Trump "emergency" tariff authority specifically excludes movies, so...

THERE ARE TOO MANY STATES NOWADAYS. PLEASE ELIMINATE THREE. I AM NOT A CRACKPOT

Trump posts stuff like that, and journalists respond by writing, "Trump has ordered a reduction in the number of states."

👊🇺🇸🔥

On one hand, I tend to think that aside from things like texting the passwords to the Pentagon payroll system or the nuclear codes, "we" obsess about this spy-vs-spy secrecy stuff a bit too much. On the other hand, they absolutely do text actual important shit to each other.

A hacker has breached and stolen customer data from TeleMessage, an obscure Israeli company that sells modified versions of Signal and other messaging apps to the U.S. government to archive messages, 404 Media has learned. The data stolen by the hacker contains the contents of some direct messages and group chats sent using its Signal clone, as well as modified versions of WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat. TeleMessage was recently the center of a wave of media coverage after Mike Waltz accidentally revealed he used the tool in a cabinet meeting with President Trump.

According to the article, the modified version of Signal doesn't do end-to-end encrypting between Signal and the archive, so... it isn't secure at all.

welp:

One hacked message was sent to a group chat apparently associated with the crypto firm Galaxy Digital. One message said, “need 7 dems to get to 60.. would be very close” to the “GD Macro” group. Another message said, “Just spoke to a D staffer on the senate side - 2 cosponsors (Alsobrooks and gillibrand) did not sign the opposition letter so they think the bill still has a good chance of passage the senate with 5 more Ds supporting it.”

This means a hacker was able to steal what appears to be active, timely discussion about the efforts behind passing a hugely important and controversial cryptocurrency bill; Saturday, Democratic lawmakers published a letter explaining they would oppose it. Bill cosponsors Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand did not sign that letter.

Morning

Monday edition.

"Many Of His Actions Are Legal"

Still laughing at this. Does it beat this one?

Mister Deals

Very smart, Mr. President.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

I can't tell you that. I can tell you that we're making a lot of money. We're doing great. Again, we were losing more than $5 billion a day. $5 billion a day. You don't talk about that. And right now, we're going to be at a point very soon where we're making money every day. Look –

KRISTEN WELKER:

How soon?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

– we were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we're essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we're saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple.

Hopefully this new economics is taught at all the finest schools.

Lord Sidcup

Glorious future for all.

Some white collar workers may be on the brink of layoffs thanks to AI, but the Secretary of Commerce says they will always have a place in America’s factories. As the U.S. puts up high tariffs and curbs immigration, the administration hopes to fuel an intergenerational manufacturing boom.

“It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Howard Lutnick told CNBC this week.

“This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

DEI

It is a hard belief of members of the elite commenter group chat that DEI is hideously unpopular and that the restoring segregation is one of Trump's popular moves. This is an example of elite commenters projecting their own bigotries onto the population and pretending that they, Ivy graduates, are merely acknowledging the will of the people and not promoting that agenda themselves.

Bouie:

To read some prominent commentators is to get the impression that of all the things the administration is doing, the public is most receptive to its attacks on D.E.I. But there’s no real evidence to say this is the case. In fact, D.E.I. holds majority support among American adults, and when asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president’s attacks on diversity programs, 53 percent say they disapprove.

This might be because most Americans perceive something that these prominent commentators do not, which is that the administration’s attack on D.E.I. is less about fairness than it is recreating systems of domination and subordination. Consider this line of thought from Richard Kahlenberg of the Progressive Policy Institute, a curiously named group founded as the primary think tank of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 1989. According to Kahlenberg, observations that the Trump administration is not interested in fairness as such are “over the top.” To him, the president simply wants the government to “treat different racial groups the same.”

This is hard to take seriously. So far, in this apparent effort to spread racial equality, the White House has removed, without apparent cause or real justification, a number of Black Americans from senior positions in the military, removed the work of Black, women and Jewish authors from the Naval Academy (while leaving books such as “Mein Kampf”), criticized the Smithsonian, particularly its Museum of African American History, for spreading supposedly “improper ideology,” pushed the National Park Service to rewrite its history of the Underground Railroad, gutted the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, rescinded executive orders mandating desegregation in federal contracting, revoked a decades-old school desegregation order, and fired dozens of women and minorities from the boards that review science and research at the National Institutes of Health.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Night

Rock on.

Afternoon

Maybe if Big Balls yells at air trafic controllers then things will get better.

Critical Workers

I'm sure Grok can take over.

The FAA has not commented officially on the nature of the staffing problems, though staffing has been listed by the FAA as the cause of delays since Monday equipment outages led to United Airlines canceling more than 100 flights and diverting 37 others.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby put out a statement Friday about the delays, saying the airport’s issues seem to be a combination of technology failures and “over 20% of the FAA controllers for EWR (Newark Liberty International Airport) walked off the job.”

I haven't seen the precise reason they walked off the job, yet.