January, 2025 archive
This New Gilded Age 0
Robert Reich sees a strategy emerging from the Trumpled chaos. Here’s a bit:
He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another— over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.
Now. to be fair, I’m not sure that Donald Trump is capable of thinking in terms of a such long game; he seems to live in the moment. But some of the persons behind him (think Project 2025, for example) most certainly are. Our new generation of robber barons founded those “conservative” think tanks as part of their long game to return us to the 1890s.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Thom is astonished. I’m not.
All pretense is off.
The racism and misogyny of today’s Republican Party are fully out of the closet.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another “responsible gun owner” feels empowered to display his portable phallus on the nation’s highways.
We are a society of stupid.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Lane Crothers spots the thumb on the scales.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Will Bunch heard a chilling rhyme. A snippet (emphasis added):
The irony of all of this — good people cowering in their attics, praying to avoid getting cuffed and shipped thousands of miles away by camouflage-wearing soldiers — happening on Holocaust Remembrance Day is almost unbearable.
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*Mark Twain.
The Crypto Con 0
Jacob Silverman talks with Sam and Emma about the growing threat of greater US government involvement in crypto, with state and local governments pondering active investments in the scam-centric industry, and how a Trump presidency will likely expedite that.
Executive Disorders, Reprise 0
To watch the blizzard of executive orders issuing from Donald Trump’s White House, it seems that Trump thinks that executive orders are pronouncements from Caesar’s throne, sweeping all else before them.
My old Philly friend Noz, who, I would note, has some legal training, points out that they are not nearly so sweeping as Trump seems to think:
I urge you to read the rest of his post. Methinks it most timely.
It’s All about the Benjamins 0
Back when I was a young ‘un the college football season ended with the New Year’s bowl games. Now, it’s still going on shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, I’ve lost almost all interest in professional and college college-level professional sports. (And, yes, I think there’s cause-and-effect there.)
At Psychology Today Blogs, Tess M. Kilwein takes a look at some of the recent changes in college sports their potential effects on “student” athletes, noting that “(t)hese . . . developments in college athletics pose both benefits and risks to student-athlete mental health.” Here’s a bit of her article:
Furthermore, student-athletes face a reduced ability to enjoy a typical college experience. Opportunities to engage in formal clubs and organizations or informal social activities outside of the college athletic environment are becoming increasingly rare for student-athletes and can result in further isolation from non-athlete peers.
The Privatization Scam 0
And it is a scam. You can voucher on it.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
The Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher hears a rhyme in the firings this time. A snippet; follow the link for a parsing of the parallels.
Less than a week after Trump was sworn in, he fired 17 inspectors general.
Inspectors general are federal government investigators embedded in government agencies to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. Lofgren’s prediction came in a review of the book Watchdogs by Glenn Fine, a former inspector general fired by Trump after 20 years of exemplary service.
Last week’s pink slips violated a law enacted three years ago in response to Trump’s first-term firings, which mandated 30 days’ notice to Congress before the president could terminate an Inspector General.
Trump’s illegal assertion of executive power echoes the attempt 158 years ago by President Andrew Johnson to fire Secretary of War Edward Stanton.
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*Mark Twain.
Karen, Meet Karma 0
When someone’s actions say one thing, but their words say another, believe the actions.
(Warning: Short promo about at about the two-and-a-half minute mark.)