Actually you missed a pretty massive concession Paul - Canada will now have to recruit a Fentanyl tsar to sit on his/her ass pretending there is meaningful fentanyl coming in from the northern border 🫠
I was wondering if they're already seeing cartoons about that job across the border. Seems like the cushiest make-work job in history--eliminating less than 1% of our fentanyl supply in a non-fentanyl crisis.
Well Carol, on the Canadian side of the border, the cartoon is that having created this position yesterday afternoon, they now have to go about recruiting the individual, which means drawing up the qualifications and terms of reference for the position, and going through a recruitment process. One of my relatives has a Labrador Retriever - maybe she would be a good candidate for sniffing out the goods and bringing them in. People old enough to remember The Royal Canadian Air Farce - one of our great comic institutions - Sgt. Renfrew of the RCMP and his dog Cuddles lounging in their 23rd story log cabin in RCMP Headquarters in Ottawa.......so where is Sgt. Renfrew and Cuddles when we need them?
Fetanyl is an absolutely enormous crisis here in British Columbia and across Canada. There is very, very real work to be done on addressing it. A fentanyl tsar could do a lot of good in terms of treatement, prevention, and disrupting criminal production and distribution networks. It's just that the flow of fentanyl doesn't tend to go south from Canada, so Trump's concern is made-up bs and the productive focus of a fentanyl tsar won't be disrupting the Canada-to-US flow.
As the EU prepares for loans on THREATs from the US on tariffs for them, (aka BLACKMAIL ON LEGAL AGREEMENTS ) they are already extremely strapped for supporting a War in Ukraine by Putin....hmmmmm let's pause here...in the Orwellian world Trump has now thrown us....should we now wonder...is Elon Musk securing access to Federal Payment systems or other systems... to cover up any payments past or more likely future ??? OR our ability to SEE what goes on from here on in????? I smell something off !!!??? ! Hmmmm ok out there but ...like payment BACK to Russia for his war financially strapping or bankrupting (him morally we know) all Democratic countries of their money $$$ to support Ukraine, as they KNEW Democracies HAD to/and would support a brutal military take over. It is real snakes and ladders here but honestly ....I always sensed it was obviously Putins motive the DRAIN Democracies of money $$$ but the WHY never wasn't obvious. And no FBI or CIA or functioning US.... if he was subsidized till payback, which he was....it is terrifying to think an even larger coup is possible .... but it will show up - well in truth they are covering all tracks faster than we can respond now. I think the idea belongs on the white board of ideas and future solutions ??????
"faster than we can respond" - I respectfully disagree - We are indeed capable of responding in kind and at the same level - our elected officials are choosing not to, and won't do so, unless WE THE PEOPLE get off our dead butts and respond in unison and with a roar. We've done it before. I'll be 79 next Monday...my mother was a operating room nurse in Hitler's army, my father was in Hitler's army, my grandfather was a Train station master (that should have been a good one) ...I was born in 1946 the war was over but the Americans still came long after that bringing chocolates for the kids like me and stockings and sugar for the women (only thing I can remember). We immigrated to Canada and then the US. In school I was asked if I knew Hitler....I was ashamed to say I was from Germany even though I was born after the war. I'm now ashamed we let a narcissistic carbon copy bamboozle half the country into his cult. History tends to repeat itself and it seems like many of us have learned nothing and keep worshipping that golden fleece until it rears up and bites us in the butt. That's what's happening now. I for one will do whatever I can to explain to my grandchildren and great grandchildren the importance of continually protecting our democracy (it ain't free). I'm a naturalized citizen of the United States and was so proud of that until Trump.
I agreed. THIS is a far greater crisis than drumpf's cretinous tariffs, not that they're small potatoes, but compared to the huge monster takeover, they're not as significant, except that we can't count on either Mexico or Canada to send in troops if Musk takes over the presidency.
The tariffs blowup was a tempest in a teapot and we will see if it helps to stem the already diminishing stream of illegal entries into our country.
There are however three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.
I figured Dave would be bood by intransigence of braino indoctrinated. Dave is mostly correct and if we do not pull away from those trends, we will either never win or almost win or win by a hair. Smarten up. We are not going to become the United Trans States of America as much as you want. And before you call me homophobic, I have accepted their lifestyles probably long before you were born so don’t try and lecture me. And there should never ever be balls in women’s stalls get it? For anyone who cares to understand the trans thang, these are 2nd generation people who spent too much time on their devices given by mommy and daddy to keep them quiet and they received indoctrination from social media. As a single small business proprietor, I too have been theoretically discriminated against. Woo to all of you who think in very limited frameworks.
Don't be silly. Here in Maine, I regularly attend concerts in a huge auditorium that has a restroom for all genders. Seeing an adult male walking out from a toilet stall (ever see those? Solid metal with doors that close and lock?) to wash his hands, dry them, and leave, has somehow never terrified me.
In fact, it's a lot like seeing an adult male leave the guest bathroom in my home, which is within about three feet from where I'd be getting dinner ready or washing dishes.
How did you get so fixated on the genitals of perfect strangers, whom you cannot even see?
You totally totally totally misunderstood me. No balls in woman’s stalls was referring to guy/girls in girls shower stalls in hight school or in fact grate school. I don’t care what anyone wants to identify as. Personally,I identify as a lesbian. How’s dat grab ya, sister?
I would bet your annual salary that other than giving you yet another reason to bitch and moan about something, the trans issue has ZERO impact on your ability to live your life.
And while we're at it, spare us the reverse discrimination horseshit. If you were denied a job, it was most likely because the hiring manager realized that you're a whiny a-hole.
Ha ha ha. I have almost never worked for anyone. Well, parttime stuff in young adulthood but I long ago developed my business. As I said, (oh another almost homophobic remark coming?) some of my best friends are gay and lesbian. You are so defensive but go for it. Make sure we keep losing elections because those of us who are centrists, realize both extremes will fight until the right side wins. Have you ever heard how great President Al Gore was? No? Darn that Green Party guy had to take 90,000 votes from him in Florida. Let’s keep fracturing for The New Snazzy Nazi States of America.
"Woo" to you too. Also, explain "theoretically discriminated against." I agree that there has been entirely too much focus on transgenderism, I mean, my god, 90% of the Trump ads run during the last campaign talked about it incessantly. The rest of us treat it as something we very, very, very (add about 10 more) occasionally encounter and don't really care about (and I live in a major west coast city).
My conservative husband said we (Dems) needed to not talk about trans issues "all the time." When I pinned him down about when such conversations occurred, it turned out that nearly every instance involved conservative commentators continually making BS claims that Dems felt compelled to correct. My husband is a pretty smart guy, but he could not see (without having it repeatedly pointed out to him) that he was being played.
And this is why we cannot take you folks seriously. The lack of education. It's woe to all. If you can't even spell, and don't know the difference between woo (to try to get a woman to marry you or a company to favor you) and woe (great sorrow or distress), which are simple but opposing ideas, then you shouldn't be in charge of anything and we should pay you no mind. So many of you don't like it when we call you out for your lack of education, but you really are ignorant on so many levels.
Holy Crapola, Batman, the lady found me out. In fact, I’m mosty self educated and more worldly then I need to say. I am writing my second book and I’ll be going into a recording studio to record my compositions political stuff now that we are beset with him for 4 years. Oh btw, did you know Sam Clemens, aka, Mark Twain had extremely little formal education. I overcame my learning disabilities my way. And I’ve done alright for an uneducated person and I’m so sorry you need to interact with such trash.
How can one be "theoretically discriminated against?" WTF does that even mean? And why should any of us care about theoretical discrimination when ACTUAL real-life discrimination hurts actual real live people every day?
Your missive has all of the maturity of a seventh grader held back for an additional year. Are the playground monitors aware of your absence?
In any case, it is not your remit to "accept their lifestyles" because you are not the gatekeeper for how anyone other than you should live. The fact that you think otherwise is why you're so keen to embrace the open authoritarianism now on display in the Trump administration. Were you in the minority you would be the first to howl about the discrimination and cruelty that you're suffering at the hands of ignorants, and you would be right to do so.
I defy you to identify one material harm that you suffer because anyone anywhere lives as queer. I shan't be holding my breath.
No, his DEI EO restores affirmative action for incompetent people who are white, Asian, and/or male. See Pete Hegseth as the latest example. For those of us old enough to have lived through and barely survived the “white male is always best” era, this is a return to dodging the fallout of disastrous decisions large and small.
The tariff fiasco wasn’t and isn’t a tempest in a teapot. It was and is bullying, chills business investment, and shows blatant disregard for contracts.
Mass migration has just begun. It’s a process of human osmosis that no one is going to control.
The sooner you dupes stop bleating about gender identity and using fascist propaganda to stir up other rubes, the better.
What you people can’t seem to understand about “DEI” is that there are actually qualified people of color for every job in the country.
I know you probably neither know nor care about how other cultures, sometimes in other times and places, viewed gender and gender identity, but you might be surprised to learn that some American Indian tribes believed that there were as many as 7 different genders, and that all had their place in society. Similar beliefs arose in other places at different times in human history. The point is that "gender" is a cultural construct that is somewhat but not entirely related to physical characteristics.
Frankly, what any of us believe about someone else's gender identity is irrelevant. For the most part, it's none of our damn business how other people view themselves.
Honey Buns, didn’t you read me? I hav no problems with anyone bing who they ant to be. Just don’t thrust it in our faces all day long. And another thing, go ahead put it in our faces. It’s your partial fault the animal we have in the White House today.
Read any scientific works lately? It might help to understand the issues you're concerned about or is it your 'belief system' that anchors your attitudes. The bigotry, racism and misogyny represented by your remarks sadly reveals a great deal about you.
If Dave is worried about legal immigration I’m afraid he’s out of luck - both Private Bone Spurs and El Presidente Musk are all for it, after all you can’t expect universities to focus on STEM when there’s lucrative sports jocks to put through the mill Then again if the US hadn’t been so keen to open its regime change laboratory below its southern border there wouldn’t be such an issue with illegal immigration through it. Besides, you’re always going to need someone to do the jobs that white privilege prevents you from doing.
As to the comments regarding the Trans community and DEI - neither should be a concern to your manliness or whiteness, so your fake concern says more about you.
Like it or not, these are the three issues that got Trump elected. Of course, now that he is elected he has a much bigger agenda that was hidden from voters. At any rate, if Democrats continue to support these unpopular positions, they will continue to lose.
These positions are actually popular. Trump won this election by the thinnest margin *ever,* thanks to right-wing + Russian propaganda filling "X," Lies Social, Fox "We Pretend This is Factual News," and social media.
People whose heads are in those clouds think that Musk-Trump-Putin plans are great. The vast majority of Americans do not.
I call bs....ALL/most Democrats were aware of Drumpf's agenda. It wasn't hidden, but was out in the open for all to see: Project 2025. Only Republicans without critical thinking skills could miss what Drumpf's REAL agenda was from the beginning of his campaign.
You might want to familiarize yourself with it so you know what other egregious things are coming. There are about 900 pages filled with stuff that makes most reasonable people's skin crawl. Hint: it is a fascist playbook. It involves suffering for all the "lower" 95-99% of the population. Local Republicans will not be immune.
The tolerance that I remember from youth has been dismantled by 40 years of right-wing media, and Trump's EOs are not the way to fix any of this, not that he cares about morality of any sort LOL. Just red meat for the base. A wise person said, "you cannot legislate morality," i.e., tolerance, respect for other people's differences, and your rights stop at the other person's nose. Trump loves violence and cruelty, hallmarks of his extreme narcissism. Let's start with him and Musk, and enforce the laws that we have.
How does asking an employer to evaluate someone who was discriminated against create privileges? White men invented racism and now want it restored so that can do more racism. All the impediments used to deny people equal opportunities were designed by white males as well as the anti-discrimination programs they want to destroy. Announcing the programs was sure to create a backlash which what they wanted.
Actually all races are racist. Ask any white South African who is now being discriminated against or Asian in the US who the Supreme Court has found was discriminated against by Harvard. You have an outdated simplistic view of the problem but then you are a simple person.
Oh yeah, I am insulted by someone who has sympathy for colonialists who took over countries because they had rapacious attitudes, better weapons and wanted other peoples’ riches. I didn’t know that whites were indigenous to South Africa. I thought people like you wanted migrants to go back where they came from.
Mitchell’s: What a stupid comment. Do you want Americans to leave the US as well or are you satisfied with simply mouthing senseless land acknowledgements about people who also conquered land here. Typical ignorance of history.
What exactly are you implying here: "People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions."
"Voluntarily reduce their own country's population"? It sounds a lot like you're encouraging genocide or culling of populations. While I agree we need reforms to a proper immigration/asylum system this seems pretty... draconian.
Somehow people like this always ignore the fact that poor women do not usually want to have baby after baby, and would welcome the opportunity to have access to birth control, enabling them to have a chance to adequately and safely care for the child or children that they wish to have, if any.
So what do MAGAs, in their infinite wisdom, do? Why, of course, they cut foreign aid for birth control, *ensuring* that too many children are born to those with the fewest resources for raising them, ensuring that desperate families will continually try to improve their situations, often via immigration.
If I didn't know you all were dumb as rocks, I would think you were pure evil, and enjoyed the idea of causing so much suffering.
Plus, people are not fleeing "over-population". They are looking for safety from threatening regimes, fleeing war and famine. Haiti isn't over-populated, nor is Venezuela.
Marcia: Both countries you mentioned are overpopulated for their environmental carrying capacity and ill governed shit holes. Neither is a reason to open our borders to them. They need to stay home and work to improve their own living conditions. We can’t take in the billions that want to come here or do you ignorantly advocate that?
We should fine/jail the people who hire illegals (no EO needed), I’ve seen far too many white UNQUALIFIED males get positions and move up the corporate/gov latter, including a manager who committe and was moved numerous times after sexual misconduct. A very close friend was kidnapped and raped by an AF Commander and then she was almost murdered by another. If you are so concerned about gender identity, why don’t you demand less toxic foods for pregnant individuals. Finally, it’s goddamm time you own your male misdeeds.
They had already approved that in December so not much of a concession, plus in retaliation Ontario and other provinces pulled ALL American wine and distilled products from their state liquor stores. This is a pretty big hit for some of the wineries and distilleries.
Also, the Canadian oil industry is talking with the Chinese to sell them all or part of the 4 million barrels of oil a day that we get from them to make gasoline and other products. That is going to definitely raise the price of gasoline in the US. And Irving Oil provides heating oil to New England to the tune of 95% of the heating oil used in New England. A 25% tariff on heating oil will force tens of thousands of families to make very hard choices.
I saw a map in December 2024 showing which states would be most impacted by Canadian retaliatory oil, gas and electric tariffs. It appeared to be mostly blue northern states, with Michigan and Wisconsin as collateral damage. So the flying monkey brigade may consider the harm done to American states a bonus.
NYT comments from South America, eastern Europe, etc. to the article about DOGE take over of the US Treasury state that we US citizens aren't aware that this is a coup bigger than anything in their narco/klepto states. The whole outfit has been threatening federal workers, so wouldn't it be a GREAT time for ALL federal employees who face the public in their day-to-day lives (such as transportation) to GO ON STRIKE SUPERBOWL WEEKEND! That will get the attention of the Project 2025 kleptocrats. Maybe football rather than tech nerds will save us all!
A general strike has long been needed in this country to remind the owners of capital that their ownership means little without the labor provided by the 97% to actually turn that capital into money. Yes, federal employees should all go on strike, but the rest of us should support them by ALSO going on strike.
It is not “intimidated media”. It is media bought by their supporters (radio, tv,newspapers and social media), as well as the intimidated media that will echo the propaganda.
Trump is forcing post-truth/performative politics on the remaining reality-based Democracies to weaken them and support his post-truth political fiction. It worked for Putin. It worked for Orban. It kinda worked for a while in Brazil. All the world's a stage. Where does Political Fiction/Post Truth not work? Anywhere there is regulated or now Facebook newsfeed and Twitter.
Please read Heather Cox Richardson's substack where she points out all that happened is Biden-era agreements were agreed upon. "Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory." Also Catherine Rampell in the former Washington Post.
Heather Cox Richardson is a brilliant historian. Her ability to take what is occurring and place it in historical context is invaluable when Trump is going off on one of his tangents. I thank the knowledge of such journalists as Richardson and Krugman in times like these.
I especially like the one where Trump says Mexico must have 10,000 troops on their side of the border. ( Mexico already has 15,000 stations on its border). What an ignorant dumbass.
The Art of the Con. That’s what his book should have been titled. All the idiotic and cruel stuff is a smokescreen while he illegally takes bribes ($trump meme coin) from foreign governments, and lets Elon’s muskrats, the Heritage Project 2025, and Magaites run wild dismantling the our government.
That was my theory also re: Musk and USAID: USAID was key in the United States involvement in combating apartheid in South Africa (can't read about it on the USAid website since it's down):
In 1986 Congress overrode a presidential veto on major foreign policy. During the 1980s, the American public increasingly resented the South African system of apartheid and urged the United States government to take major action. This led to bipartisan Congressional action to override President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act [CAAA] of 1986. This act imposed broad economic sanctions against South Africa to pressure the government to end the system of apartheid . . . the CAAA established policies and objectives that guided the early years of United States Agency for International Development [USAID] programs.
I don't think it is that simple. The government of South Africa has never been overthrown and Apartheid was ended by the deClerk administration by due process of law admittedly pursuant to peace negotiations with the African National Congress which had a military arm that for years had been fighting a guerilla war inside and outside of SA. Those negotiations ended with a peace agreement that brought an end to Apartheid. There was no overthrow of anything.
My recollection is that the ANC had Soviet support. Are you suggesting that USAID was full full of CIA agents in SA at the time who were secretly sending arms and explosives to the guerillas ?? That is something I would expect Musk to say.
Trump got a quarter billion dollars' worth of assistance from Musk. He owes him.
Musk is carrying out Trump's revenge for him against many of those who, Trump feels, wronged him or are weak enough to be taken advantage of, and he is doing this in his own name.
Trump will allow Musk to do his thing for a while longer and, as it invariably happens with people in Trump's orbit, they will have a falling out. What is interesting here, with all of the data Musk stole, is how much insurance he's gotten for the day he and Trump no longer get along?
Musk has a relationship with the other two dominant autocrats of this earth, Shi and Putin. How much will that count when the day comes?
I agree with Paul, the catastrophe we are in, as a nation with a government, is a very serious one and we are watching the destruction of everything this nation was founded on.
What kind of catastrophe? I think it's pretty much a complete catastrophe. Putting Trump and Musk aside, it's pretty clear the other oligarchs have thrown their lot with Trump. No one will save us to return us to what we had.
We have ever so quickly become a gangster state - a Rogue on the world stage. We have seen that there is a fine but fuzzy line between RWNJ and full Nazi, and neither can stand anything which is not to their liking and which they cannot control. And they are berserkers when it comes to control. If they can't control it, they will burn it to the ground. Add to that a vast sucking need to monetize and convert public wealth into personal profit and you see the underpinnings of the catastrophe we are in. It may be that rightwing politics has really become a flag for a large organized collection of personality disorders and mental illness.
"IF may be that rightwing politics has really become a flag for a large organized collection of personality disorders and mental illness." This really seems to be spot on.
Rima Regas! I remember you from . . . uh, where? . . . comments on NYT articles? Wherever it was, I always enjoyed and learned from your thoughts. So glad to “see” you here!
I saw your name and thought, "I knew her!" but couldn't remember where from until I saw a reference to the Times' comment section you made on BlueSky... Good to see you again!
We don't need "saving" we need to get our sht. together and work together and "put the screws" to the Democrats in order to get them to understand that they too can be primaried.
It is done...all the once balance news agencies folded too after ABC caved to the legal suit ........ same old constant Mob techniques exactly he has been using since day one after Roy Cohens teachings ON STEROIDS
Which is why we need legislation that BANS professional liars like FOX from pretending to be journalists, reinstates the Fairness Doctrine, and provides robust support for publicly-supported news media.
"Which is why we need legislation that BANS professional liars like FOX from pretending to be journalists, reinstates the Fairness Doctrine, and provides robust support for publicly-supported news media." Myself, I'd prefer unicorns with wings who could carry us around to whatever lollipop farm we might want to visit at the moment.
I would not be surprised if sales of Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice start to slip in Canada even with the temporary settlement. The stores will put them back on the shelf, but Canadians are free not to buy them. If you don't want your leg gnawed off, don't poke the beaver.
You're right! The same people booing the US national anthem are free to not buy Florida OJ and Jack Daniels. That would help - Republicans don't fear anything until it hits them in the wallet.
Trudeau is urging people to do just that and I doubt the new “agreement” will change Canadians’ minds about buying American products. However it won’t make an impact on Republican rank and file if the media doesn’t make it clear that the economic pain is the result of Trump’s destructive policies. There was little coverage during Trump’s last term about crops rotting in the fields in states like Alabama and Florida because of Trump’s crackdown in immigrants so I seriously doubt there will be this time given how much more intimidated the media is now.
My Canadian friends say they probably won't go back on the shelves now and perhaps not later. It's often difficult to rile up a Canadian, but once you do ...
Stores have already taken US liquor off the shelf and people are boycotting American goods. Trudeau just gave a powerful speech:
“ Trudeau himself urged Canadian shoppers to “buy Canadian”—and specifically to pass up “orange juice from Florida” and Kentucky bourbon. He listed other categories of US exports that would be penalized in Canada. Around the same time as the speech, the premier of British Columbia specifically banned “red state” American liquor from the province’s state-run liquor stores.”
True. A lot of Canadians are angry. At an NYT article on Sunday there were a lot of Canadian commenters, saying they were canceling their NYT subscriptions and rescheduling vacations in the US.
I thought it was a bit much as NYT doesn’t support Trump nor do most of its readers. So I’m not canceling.
It’s the same problem, although the levels of violence are a lot lower. Estimate is that in Ontario, 90% of the handguns used in crimes are illegally smuggled from the United States.
I started in IT back when it was called Data Processing, that makes me old enough to have been a COBOL programmer. What do I know to be true? Elmo and his muppets will never figure out COBOL or CICS, it just aint never going to be Python or any of the languages used today. And I also know that if career civil servants skip email and communicate on paper writing in cursive, the muppets will not understand anything being said.
Musk's programmers are very very smart programmers.
They'll know enough COBOL in 2 days to run simple queries, and complex queries in 2 weeks.
I read blog posts by one of 'em, whose last names starts with K. He writes extremely well and is a malicious exploiter of the cult of trump (my bet), or an Ayn Rand acolyte blinded by partisan ideology. If he's the former, he'll be selling all kinds of stolen SSN & EINs along with attributes interesting to all sorts of buyers, from business competitors to the intelligence services of countries he likes. Maybe he likes Hungary, or some place where he has family... Without inspectors general, and in Patel's remake of the FBI in trump's service, there will be no investigations or prosecutions. He can make many millions in the next year.
COBOL - that's what I was trying to say earlier. Musk kids may be smart but hopefully not that smart.....but maybe smart enough to screw it up. Love that note about writing in cursive. LOL!!! According to my great grand daughter (she's 11) only the smart kids know how to write in cursive. OMG!
As an old fart, I tend to agree with you - re debugging COBOL or assembly codes for those mainframes built in the 60s. Heck, I don't even think most of those" smart Musk kids"" in their 20s could even calculate the value of Pi if computers stopped working...
In other words, how is it allowable that the most sensitive, most regulated parts of our federal system is being raided (and no one knows the reasons) with no one or no entity stopping it?
Who knows if the equipment being used to do this is even secure? Aren’t there laws on that?
Law is always dependent on the willingness of the majority to respect it. That's the Number 1 reason why Trump should NEVER have been allowed to run for office at all
Right? You would think it would be so encrypted that those young Hackers would have a hard time accessing it....so someone had to give permission....I hear it is old equipment and not many are well versed in it......and yes "but her emails" LOL!!!! Divert, divert, divert
Yes there are such laws, but the MAGA King and his toadies ignore the law - and get away with it. Will the law ever catch up to them? We can only hope, we can only hope.
I wonder if the fact that congressional salaries fall under the umbrella of "all federal payments" will help encourage a response here. Also, the idea of federal databases or code bases getting dumped into grok makes me ill.
Actually a lot of them do need the paycheck. $174,000 a year isn't wealthy, but considering the myriad ways to get into the House, it could be the best job a lot of these guys have ever had.
I wouldn't bet on COBOL to keep the bad guys away. It's old but not that complex compared to many other programming languages, so many programmers could get familiar with it in a couple of weeks.
The institutional knowledge is another matter. The complexity of these old, cobbled together, systems is much more than “a simple matter of programming.”
Yes, I agree. More than the language used, the complexity of the system will be the main pain point. But it's not an uncommon task, as a programmer, to have to modify some over-complexified messy mountain of code garbage.
How bad that is in this case, I've no idea though...
Also many of these systems also contain BAL (Basic Assembler Language) which is supported by IBM on their mainframes. I have been a programmer for almost 50 years and BAL was my first computer language and then COBOL. There are also several other mainframe languages that government systems use, like RPG-2 & 3, PL1 and Fortran.
I have former co-workers that are contractors for the Department of Treasury that maintain and modify these old mainframe systems.
Occasionally, Congress has authorized major system upgrades to various government systems only to pull the plug on their implementation weeks before delivery throwing away tens of millions of dollars in upgrades.
Many of call this "shelfware." There is also "vapor ware," where companies sell a new system and never deliver it. CSC did this many times between 1985 and 2005.
We've never faced something like this before. You wake up in the morning and it looks the same as it did the day before. I started getting worried in the GW Bush era and was seriously considering leaving for Canada. But I wouldn't leave my parents.
You just can't imagine it actually happening to you.
Prof Krugman is usually crystal clear. This morning Heather Cox Richardson is more succinct. Both the Canadian and Mexican 'concessions' were in place under Biden.
Everyone!!! Defund the Coup! Stop paying your Federal Taxes and let the Trump Admin know you won't pay them until Musk is fired and DOGE is totally disbanded.
It's a simple and familiar message."NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION"!
Yeah. Remember when the Trump tax rebates had his name on the checks? They will use the name and contact information to personally intimidate each and every American to inject fear.
I always thought that they were poorly targeted. I was able to telework so I saw no loss of income, yet I received both stimulus payments.
And don't even get me started on the one-time-use debit cards they sent out. The US Treasury has no problem writing checks. Why did the government have to spring for debit cards that all eventually got trashed? I'm guessing a debit card processing company made a good profit off of that deal.
I often wonder if the higher ups at the PO, IRS, and the 12 major US banks that the US Treasury uses to process payments for it are all in cahoots. The IRS wouldn't accept those Trump stimulus checks I endorsed back to the US Treasury in lieu of payment for taxes. My credit card bill was one day late this month (7 days actual travel time!) and I later discovered that Priority Mail isn't guaranteed in the small print on the sign at the PO, unless it's the Express version. Communications with the credit card company by mail during Covid era ended up involving the IRS. I really appreciated the debit cards sent out during the Biden era of Covid, as that time was worse for me financially than at the beginning of Covid.
Actually you missed a pretty massive concession Paul - Canada will now have to recruit a Fentanyl tsar to sit on his/her ass pretending there is meaningful fentanyl coming in from the northern border 🫠
I was wondering if they're already seeing cartoons about that job across the border. Seems like the cushiest make-work job in history--eliminating less than 1% of our fentanyl supply in a non-fentanyl crisis.
Well Carol, on the Canadian side of the border, the cartoon is that having created this position yesterday afternoon, they now have to go about recruiting the individual, which means drawing up the qualifications and terms of reference for the position, and going through a recruitment process. One of my relatives has a Labrador Retriever - maybe she would be a good candidate for sniffing out the goods and bringing them in. People old enough to remember The Royal Canadian Air Farce - one of our great comic institutions - Sgt. Renfrew of the RCMP and his dog Cuddles lounging in their 23rd story log cabin in RCMP Headquarters in Ottawa.......so where is Sgt. Renfrew and Cuddles when we need them?
I listened to the radio program Sgt. Preston (?) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his dog, King. On, you huskies! in the ‘50s.
Well you have to lie about something as BLACKMAIL, ( on a LEGAL agreement ) has just such a lousy ring to it
Fetanyl is an absolutely enormous crisis here in British Columbia and across Canada. There is very, very real work to be done on addressing it. A fentanyl tsar could do a lot of good in terms of treatement, prevention, and disrupting criminal production and distribution networks. It's just that the flow of fentanyl doesn't tend to go south from Canada, so Trump's concern is made-up bs and the productive focus of a fentanyl tsar won't be disrupting the Canada-to-US flow.
As the EU prepares for loans on THREATs from the US on tariffs for them, (aka BLACKMAIL ON LEGAL AGREEMENTS ) they are already extremely strapped for supporting a War in Ukraine by Putin....hmmmmm let's pause here...in the Orwellian world Trump has now thrown us....should we now wonder...is Elon Musk securing access to Federal Payment systems or other systems... to cover up any payments past or more likely future ??? OR our ability to SEE what goes on from here on in????? I smell something off !!!??? ! Hmmmm ok out there but ...like payment BACK to Russia for his war financially strapping or bankrupting (him morally we know) all Democratic countries of their money $$$ to support Ukraine, as they KNEW Democracies HAD to/and would support a brutal military take over. It is real snakes and ladders here but honestly ....I always sensed it was obviously Putins motive the DRAIN Democracies of money $$$ but the WHY never wasn't obvious. And no FBI or CIA or functioning US.... if he was subsidized till payback, which he was....it is terrifying to think an even larger coup is possible .... but it will show up - well in truth they are covering all tracks faster than we can respond now. I think the idea belongs on the white board of ideas and future solutions ??????
"faster than we can respond" - I respectfully disagree - We are indeed capable of responding in kind and at the same level - our elected officials are choosing not to, and won't do so, unless WE THE PEOPLE get off our dead butts and respond in unison and with a roar. We've done it before. I'll be 79 next Monday...my mother was a operating room nurse in Hitler's army, my father was in Hitler's army, my grandfather was a Train station master (that should have been a good one) ...I was born in 1946 the war was over but the Americans still came long after that bringing chocolates for the kids like me and stockings and sugar for the women (only thing I can remember). We immigrated to Canada and then the US. In school I was asked if I knew Hitler....I was ashamed to say I was from Germany even though I was born after the war. I'm now ashamed we let a narcissistic carbon copy bamboozle half the country into his cult. History tends to repeat itself and it seems like many of us have learned nothing and keep worshipping that golden fleece until it rears up and bites us in the butt. That's what's happening now. I for one will do whatever I can to explain to my grandchildren and great grandchildren the importance of continually protecting our democracy (it ain't free). I'm a naturalized citizen of the United States and was so proud of that until Trump.
Watch Rick Steves segment on Fascism, it’s very eye opening and he aired it several times during T-Rumps ( A prehistoric Ass) 1st term.
Thank you, Brigitte!
I agreed. THIS is a far greater crisis than drumpf's cretinous tariffs, not that they're small potatoes, but compared to the huge monster takeover, they're not as significant, except that we can't count on either Mexico or Canada to send in troops if Musk takes over the presidency.
What do you mean IF he takes over?
He's not as competent as he thinks he is
And therein lies the danger.
It’s called gutting the Taxpayer owned Treasury.
The tariffs blowup was a tempest in a teapot and we will see if it helps to stem the already diminishing stream of illegal entries into our country.
There are however three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.
Thank you for your bigoted remarks. It's so good to see someone seriously proposing a return to White Supremediocracy.
I figured Dave would be bood by intransigence of braino indoctrinated. Dave is mostly correct and if we do not pull away from those trends, we will either never win or almost win or win by a hair. Smarten up. We are not going to become the United Trans States of America as much as you want. And before you call me homophobic, I have accepted their lifestyles probably long before you were born so don’t try and lecture me. And there should never ever be balls in women’s stalls get it? For anyone who cares to understand the trans thang, these are 2nd generation people who spent too much time on their devices given by mommy and daddy to keep them quiet and they received indoctrination from social media. As a single small business proprietor, I too have been theoretically discriminated against. Woo to all of you who think in very limited frameworks.
Don't be silly. Here in Maine, I regularly attend concerts in a huge auditorium that has a restroom for all genders. Seeing an adult male walking out from a toilet stall (ever see those? Solid metal with doors that close and lock?) to wash his hands, dry them, and leave, has somehow never terrified me.
In fact, it's a lot like seeing an adult male leave the guest bathroom in my home, which is within about three feet from where I'd be getting dinner ready or washing dishes.
How did you get so fixated on the genitals of perfect strangers, whom you cannot even see?
You totally totally totally misunderstood me. No balls in woman’s stalls was referring to guy/girls in girls shower stalls in hight school or in fact grate school. I don’t care what anyone wants to identify as. Personally,I identify as a lesbian. How’s dat grab ya, sister?
"And before you call me homophobic..."
Immediately followed by a homophobic comment.
I would bet your annual salary that other than giving you yet another reason to bitch and moan about something, the trans issue has ZERO impact on your ability to live your life.
And while we're at it, spare us the reverse discrimination horseshit. If you were denied a job, it was most likely because the hiring manager realized that you're a whiny a-hole.
Ha ha ha. I have almost never worked for anyone. Well, parttime stuff in young adulthood but I long ago developed my business. As I said, (oh another almost homophobic remark coming?) some of my best friends are gay and lesbian. You are so defensive but go for it. Make sure we keep losing elections because those of us who are centrists, realize both extremes will fight until the right side wins. Have you ever heard how great President Al Gore was? No? Darn that Green Party guy had to take 90,000 votes from him in Florida. Let’s keep fracturing for The New Snazzy Nazi States of America.
"Woo" to you too. Also, explain "theoretically discriminated against." I agree that there has been entirely too much focus on transgenderism, I mean, my god, 90% of the Trump ads run during the last campaign talked about it incessantly. The rest of us treat it as something we very, very, very (add about 10 more) occasionally encounter and don't really care about (and I live in a major west coast city).
My conservative husband said we (Dems) needed to not talk about trans issues "all the time." When I pinned him down about when such conversations occurred, it turned out that nearly every instance involved conservative commentators continually making BS claims that Dems felt compelled to correct. My husband is a pretty smart guy, but he could not see (without having it repeatedly pointed out to him) that he was being played.
And this is why we cannot take you folks seriously. The lack of education. It's woe to all. If you can't even spell, and don't know the difference between woo (to try to get a woman to marry you or a company to favor you) and woe (great sorrow or distress), which are simple but opposing ideas, then you shouldn't be in charge of anything and we should pay you no mind. So many of you don't like it when we call you out for your lack of education, but you really are ignorant on so many levels.
I'm guessing that self-educated Bill didn't pay a lot of attention in grate school...
Holy Crapola, Batman, the lady found me out. In fact, I’m mosty self educated and more worldly then I need to say. I am writing my second book and I’ll be going into a recording studio to record my compositions political stuff now that we are beset with him for 4 years. Oh btw, did you know Sam Clemens, aka, Mark Twain had extremely little formal education. I overcame my learning disabilities my way. And I’ve done alright for an uneducated person and I’m so sorry you need to interact with such trash.
How can one be "theoretically discriminated against?" WTF does that even mean? And why should any of us care about theoretical discrimination when ACTUAL real-life discrimination hurts actual real live people every day?
Your missive has all of the maturity of a seventh grader held back for an additional year. Are the playground monitors aware of your absence?
In any case, it is not your remit to "accept their lifestyles" because you are not the gatekeeper for how anyone other than you should live. The fact that you think otherwise is why you're so keen to embrace the open authoritarianism now on display in the Trump administration. Were you in the minority you would be the first to howl about the discrimination and cruelty that you're suffering at the hands of ignorants, and you would be right to do so.
I defy you to identify one material harm that you suffer because anyone anywhere lives as queer. I shan't be holding my breath.
I do love your cat profile pic, though.
My first book is “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums “ and my second book will be “Katz on Cats and Other Animal Tails.”
Why should men be allowed in women’s sports?
To play ball? That was a joke. I do have a sense of humor.
No, his DEI EO restores affirmative action for incompetent people who are white, Asian, and/or male. See Pete Hegseth as the latest example. For those of us old enough to have lived through and barely survived the “white male is always best” era, this is a return to dodging the fallout of disastrous decisions large and small.
exactly.
The tariff fiasco wasn’t and isn’t a tempest in a teapot. It was and is bullying, chills business investment, and shows blatant disregard for contracts.
Mass migration has just begun. It’s a process of human osmosis that no one is going to control.
The sooner you dupes stop bleating about gender identity and using fascist propaganda to stir up other rubes, the better.
What you people can’t seem to understand about “DEI” is that there are actually qualified people of color for every job in the country.
Including president.
its a ploy of conversion thinking...disregard...they really do have their ugly fingers EVERYWHERE .... dowsers
Shoo, deplorable. Git.
Sure, him, her, they them.
I know you probably neither know nor care about how other cultures, sometimes in other times and places, viewed gender and gender identity, but you might be surprised to learn that some American Indian tribes believed that there were as many as 7 different genders, and that all had their place in society. Similar beliefs arose in other places at different times in human history. The point is that "gender" is a cultural construct that is somewhat but not entirely related to physical characteristics.
Frankly, what any of us believe about someone else's gender identity is irrelevant. For the most part, it's none of our damn business how other people view themselves.
Honey Buns, didn’t you read me? I hav no problems with anyone bing who they ant to be. Just don’t thrust it in our faces all day long. And another thing, go ahead put it in our faces. It’s your partial fault the animal we have in the White House today.
There it is again. Such a child.
Shoo, deplorable. Git.
Read any scientific works lately? It might help to understand the issues you're concerned about or is it your 'belief system' that anchors your attitudes. The bigotry, racism and misogyny represented by your remarks sadly reveals a great deal about you.
Maureen: Scientific reports. Like the Cass Review on mutilating children? 😎
Typically RW ploy. Take one report, resummarize it to fit your agenda, and then claim it represents the totality of scholarly thinking on a topic.
You people are a fucking joke.
Ego: Europe has largely followed the Cass Review and have stopped mutilating children.
it would be wasting my breath to respond about "mutilating children" so go forth and keep yapping
Brigitte: That’s because you are not intelligent enough to compose a reasoned response.
.intelligent..people exist here with FACTS ...are you part of the conversion thinking like they use at Fox ??? Won't work here
Stop being so emotional. You are conditioned to believe only what you have reinforced yourself to believe and nothing else.
Pot, kettle.
Stand by...
Right. Stand by. Stand back. Be ready.
As with fire, responding only gives the comment more oxygen. Help put out fires by ignoring comments like these.
We can allow block and/or report.....
Oh silly. go and block me and you won’t be able to read this.
If Dave is worried about legal immigration I’m afraid he’s out of luck - both Private Bone Spurs and El Presidente Musk are all for it, after all you can’t expect universities to focus on STEM when there’s lucrative sports jocks to put through the mill Then again if the US hadn’t been so keen to open its regime change laboratory below its southern border there wouldn’t be such an issue with illegal immigration through it. Besides, you’re always going to need someone to do the jobs that white privilege prevents you from doing.
As to the comments regarding the Trans community and DEI - neither should be a concern to your manliness or whiteness, so your fake concern says more about you.
Like it or not, these are the three issues that got Trump elected. Of course, now that he is elected he has a much bigger agenda that was hidden from voters. At any rate, if Democrats continue to support these unpopular positions, they will continue to lose.
These positions are actually popular. Trump won this election by the thinnest margin *ever,* thanks to right-wing + Russian propaganda filling "X," Lies Social, Fox "We Pretend This is Factual News," and social media.
People whose heads are in those clouds think that Musk-Trump-Putin plans are great. The vast majority of Americans do not.
I call bs....ALL/most Democrats were aware of Drumpf's agenda. It wasn't hidden, but was out in the open for all to see: Project 2025. Only Republicans without critical thinking skills could miss what Drumpf's REAL agenda was from the beginning of his campaign.
You might want to familiarize yourself with it so you know what other egregious things are coming. There are about 900 pages filled with stuff that makes most reasonable people's skin crawl. Hint: it is a fascist playbook. It involves suffering for all the "lower" 95-99% of the population. Local Republicans will not be immune.
Elon Musk got Trump elected.
Praise the Lord and pass the Whisky, Michael.
The tolerance that I remember from youth has been dismantled by 40 years of right-wing media, and Trump's EOs are not the way to fix any of this, not that he cares about morality of any sort LOL. Just red meat for the base. A wise person said, "you cannot legislate morality," i.e., tolerance, respect for other people's differences, and your rights stop at the other person's nose. Trump loves violence and cruelty, hallmarks of his extreme narcissism. Let's start with him and Musk, and enforce the laws that we have.
How does asking an employer to evaluate someone who was discriminated against create privileges? White men invented racism and now want it restored so that can do more racism. All the impediments used to deny people equal opportunities were designed by white males as well as the anti-discrimination programs they want to destroy. Announcing the programs was sure to create a backlash which what they wanted.
Actually all races are racist. Ask any white South African who is now being discriminated against or Asian in the US who the Supreme Court has found was discriminated against by Harvard. You have an outdated simplistic view of the problem but then you are a simple person.
Oh yeah, I am insulted by someone who has sympathy for colonialists who took over countries because they had rapacious attitudes, better weapons and wanted other peoples’ riches. I didn’t know that whites were indigenous to South Africa. I thought people like you wanted migrants to go back where they came from.
Mitchell: Read this and learn something:
https://substack.com/@ivanaunfiltered/note/c-91023728?r=7ftfa&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Mitchell’s: What a stupid comment. Do you want Americans to leave the US as well or are you satisfied with simply mouthing senseless land acknowledgements about people who also conquered land here. Typical ignorance of history.
What exactly are you implying here: "People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions."
"Voluntarily reduce their own country's population"? It sounds a lot like you're encouraging genocide or culling of populations. While I agree we need reforms to a proper immigration/asylum system this seems pretty... draconian.
Andrew: Of course, voluntary use of birth control equals genocide on the planet you live on. Anywhere else you are a lunatic.
Somehow people like this always ignore the fact that poor women do not usually want to have baby after baby, and would welcome the opportunity to have access to birth control, enabling them to have a chance to adequately and safely care for the child or children that they wish to have, if any.
So what do MAGAs, in their infinite wisdom, do? Why, of course, they cut foreign aid for birth control, *ensuring* that too many children are born to those with the fewest resources for raising them, ensuring that desperate families will continually try to improve their situations, often via immigration.
If I didn't know you all were dumb as rocks, I would think you were pure evil, and enjoyed the idea of causing so much suffering.
Plus, people are not fleeing "over-population". They are looking for safety from threatening regimes, fleeing war and famine. Haiti isn't over-populated, nor is Venezuela.
Marcia: Both countries you mentioned are overpopulated for their environmental carrying capacity and ill governed shit holes. Neither is a reason to open our borders to them. They need to stay home and work to improve their own living conditions. We can’t take in the billions that want to come here or do you ignorantly advocate that?
The problem I have with your comments on the three points is summed up as “lack of any supporting data”
Agree on no men in women’s sports. It’s not fair.
We should fine/jail the people who hire illegals (no EO needed), I’ve seen far too many white UNQUALIFIED males get positions and move up the corporate/gov latter, including a manager who committe and was moved numerous times after sexual misconduct. A very close friend was kidnapped and raped by an AF Commander and then she was almost murdered by another. If you are so concerned about gender identity, why don’t you demand less toxic foods for pregnant individuals. Finally, it’s goddamm time you own your male misdeeds.
Drumpf hires undocumented immigrants. He should be fined/jailed for a start....
wow each one of those is dumb and nasty.
They had already approved that in December so not much of a concession, plus in retaliation Ontario and other provinces pulled ALL American wine and distilled products from their state liquor stores. This is a pretty big hit for some of the wineries and distilleries.
Also, the Canadian oil industry is talking with the Chinese to sell them all or part of the 4 million barrels of oil a day that we get from them to make gasoline and other products. That is going to definitely raise the price of gasoline in the US. And Irving Oil provides heating oil to New England to the tune of 95% of the heating oil used in New England. A 25% tariff on heating oil will force tens of thousands of families to make very hard choices.
I saw a map in December 2024 showing which states would be most impacted by Canadian retaliatory oil, gas and electric tariffs. It appeared to be mostly blue northern states, with Michigan and Wisconsin as collateral damage. So the flying monkey brigade may consider the harm done to American states a bonus.
Not much consolation, but KY bourbon already hard hit from warnings on alcohol. Now this.
Hmm.. this morning they said red states so who knows exactly
The Pacific Northwest gets a lot of Canadian petroleum products too. Good move by the Canadians. Look for new customers.
Not to mention Quebec hydropower sold to New England.
According to the Canadian Border Security Agency, Canadian agents seized 52 tons of narcotics coming into Canada in FY2024, of which 4.5 tons were confiscated at the Southern Ontario border with the US. I’d post the web address but that page with all the illegal things seized by Canada at its border has disappeared since yesterday. Regardless, here’s the page about the seizures at the Southern Ontario border: https://www.canada.ca/en/border-services-agency/news/2024/12/2024-year-in-review-for-southern-ontario-region-cbsa-intercepts-over-3000-weapons-and-firearms-and-seizes-over-4-tonnes-of-illegal-drugs.html
Perhaps his/her “secondary” role might be to block the very real and meaningful guns coming in from our U.S. border.
I'm retired. I am applying.
LOL!!!
I read somewhere that only about 43 pounds of fentanyl comes here from Canada. Not sure if that is accurate.
Yes, that was roughly the amount confiscated at our northern border. Contrast that with the TONS that were confiscated at our southern border.
A fatal dose is 2 milligrams. A little work with Excel shows that 43 pounds can kill 9,752,228 people.
That 43 pounds of fentanyl is only about 1% of what comes to us from other sources.
Yup also heard that - actually saw them compare it on MSNBC (Mexico vs Canada) and I spontaneously laughed out loud.
NYT comments from South America, eastern Europe, etc. to the article about DOGE take over of the US Treasury state that we US citizens aren't aware that this is a coup bigger than anything in their narco/klepto states. The whole outfit has been threatening federal workers, so wouldn't it be a GREAT time for ALL federal employees who face the public in their day-to-day lives (such as transportation) to GO ON STRIKE SUPERBOWL WEEKEND! That will get the attention of the Project 2025 kleptocrats. Maybe football rather than tech nerds will save us all!
A general strike has long been needed in this country to remind the owners of capital that their ownership means little without the labor provided by the 97% to actually turn that capital into money. Yes, federal employees should all go on strike, but the rest of us should support them by ALSO going on strike.
I’m sure some official can take on the additional duties.
I suspect Canada is also addressing port access through Vancouver, so they probably are just renaming the person already in place.
It is not “intimidated media”. It is media bought by their supporters (radio, tv,newspapers and social media), as well as the intimidated media that will echo the propaganda.
Both Canada and China start with "C" so perhaps that explains trump's confusion.
How come I picture Bob & Doug McKenzie sitting at the border in a couple of lawn chairs... "Got any fentanyl, eh? No? How 'bout back-bacon?"
Trump is forcing post-truth/performative politics on the remaining reality-based Democracies to weaken them and support his post-truth political fiction. It worked for Putin. It worked for Orban. It kinda worked for a while in Brazil. All the world's a stage. Where does Political Fiction/Post Truth not work? Anywhere there is regulated or now Facebook newsfeed and Twitter.
I hear the MacKenzies are candidates. Take off fentanyl eh!
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1886348443745976525?s=46&t=U7laPY1hHEa798qtlcpDpA
Please read Heather Cox Richardson's substack where she points out all that happened is Biden-era agreements were agreed upon. "Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory." Also Catherine Rampell in the former Washington Post.
Heather Cox Richardson is a brilliant historian. Her ability to take what is occurring and place it in historical context is invaluable when Trump is going off on one of his tangents. I thank the knowledge of such journalists as Richardson and Krugman in times like these.
I especially like the one where Trump says Mexico must have 10,000 troops on their side of the border. ( Mexico already has 15,000 stations on its border). What an ignorant dumbass.
Don't tell trump. We've placated the toddler for now
I know...it is strictly for the blackmailing effect.......beg, and no....not good enough ... I must humiliate you as well...you know that right
The Art of the Con. That’s what his book should have been titled. All the idiotic and cruel stuff is a smokescreen while he illegally takes bribes ($trump meme coin) from foreign governments, and lets Elon’s muskrats, the Heritage Project 2025, and Magaites run wild dismantling the our government.
2 things
- Musk wants to absorb government payments into X. There is some good writing on this in substack
- USAID helped overthrow apartheid is SA.
I very much doubt it is more complicated than that.
That was my theory also re: Musk and USAID: USAID was key in the United States involvement in combating apartheid in South Africa (can't read about it on the USAid website since it's down):
In 1986 Congress overrode a presidential veto on major foreign policy. During the 1980s, the American public increasingly resented the South African system of apartheid and urged the United States government to take major action. This led to bipartisan Congressional action to override President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act [CAAA] of 1986. This act imposed broad economic sanctions against South Africa to pressure the government to end the system of apartheid . . . the CAAA established policies and objectives that guided the early years of United States Agency for International Development [USAID] programs.
Yeah, it's certainly notable how many white guys who grew up in apartheid South Africa Trump has surrounded himself with. Sacks and Thiel, too.
As an aside, most of the pages that are down now can still be read on the internet archive for free. This might prove useful the way things are going.
I don't think it is that simple. The government of South Africa has never been overthrown and Apartheid was ended by the deClerk administration by due process of law admittedly pursuant to peace negotiations with the African National Congress which had a military arm that for years had been fighting a guerilla war inside and outside of SA. Those negotiations ended with a peace agreement that brought an end to Apartheid. There was no overthrow of anything.
My recollection is that the ANC had Soviet support. Are you suggesting that USAID was full full of CIA agents in SA at the time who were secretly sending arms and explosives to the guerillas ?? That is something I would expect Musk to say.
Trump got a quarter billion dollars' worth of assistance from Musk. He owes him.
Musk is carrying out Trump's revenge for him against many of those who, Trump feels, wronged him or are weak enough to be taken advantage of, and he is doing this in his own name.
Trump will allow Musk to do his thing for a while longer and, as it invariably happens with people in Trump's orbit, they will have a falling out. What is interesting here, with all of the data Musk stole, is how much insurance he's gotten for the day he and Trump no longer get along?
Musk has a relationship with the other two dominant autocrats of this earth, Shi and Putin. How much will that count when the day comes?
I agree with Paul, the catastrophe we are in, as a nation with a government, is a very serious one and we are watching the destruction of everything this nation was founded on.
What kind of catastrophe? I think it's pretty much a complete catastrophe. Putting Trump and Musk aside, it's pretty clear the other oligarchs have thrown their lot with Trump. No one will save us to return us to what we had.
===
Things Trump Did... Day 15 | Blog#42
The onslaught of destruction goes on...
https://open.substack.com/pub/rimaregasblog42/p/things-trump-did-day-15-blog42
We have ever so quickly become a gangster state - a Rogue on the world stage. We have seen that there is a fine but fuzzy line between RWNJ and full Nazi, and neither can stand anything which is not to their liking and which they cannot control. And they are berserkers when it comes to control. If they can't control it, they will burn it to the ground. Add to that a vast sucking need to monetize and convert public wealth into personal profit and you see the underpinnings of the catastrophe we are in. It may be that rightwing politics has really become a flag for a large organized collection of personality disorders and mental illness.
"IF may be that rightwing politics has really become a flag for a large organized collection of personality disorders and mental illness." This really seems to be spot on.
All too true, sadly.
The 'organized collection' has little education especially critical thinking skills.
The thought of what havoc Musk can (and is almost certain to) wreak with that information is beyond terrifying.
Rima Regas! I remember you from . . . uh, where? . . . comments on NYT articles? Wherever it was, I always enjoyed and learned from your thoughts. So glad to “see” you here!
It was the comment section of the NYT. Glad you're here!
I saw your name and thought, "I knew her!" but couldn't remember where from until I saw a reference to the Times' comment section you made on BlueSky... Good to see you again!
We don't need "saving" we need to get our sht. together and work together and "put the screws" to the Democrats in order to get them to understand that they too can be primaried.
Amen, sister!
“Trump will spin this as a victory; low-information voters and some intimidated media outlets may go along with the lie.”
And Fox News, of course. I was curious after the Mexican “deal” and checked their site. Trump victory! It screamed.
Aughgh, indeed.
It is done...all the once balance news agencies folded too after ABC caved to the legal suit ........ same old constant Mob techniques exactly he has been using since day one after Roy Cohens teachings ON STEROIDS
Which is why we need legislation that BANS professional liars like FOX from pretending to be journalists, reinstates the Fairness Doctrine, and provides robust support for publicly-supported news media.
"Which is why we need legislation that BANS professional liars like FOX from pretending to be journalists, reinstates the Fairness Doctrine, and provides robust support for publicly-supported news media." Myself, I'd prefer unicorns with wings who could carry us around to whatever lollipop farm we might want to visit at the moment.
I would not be surprised if sales of Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice start to slip in Canada even with the temporary settlement. The stores will put them back on the shelf, but Canadians are free not to buy them. If you don't want your leg gnawed off, don't poke the beaver.
You're right! The same people booing the US national anthem are free to not buy Florida OJ and Jack Daniels. That would help - Republicans don't fear anything until it hits them in the wallet.
Trudeau is urging people to do just that and I doubt the new “agreement” will change Canadians’ minds about buying American products. However it won’t make an impact on Republican rank and file if the media doesn’t make it clear that the economic pain is the result of Trump’s destructive policies. There was little coverage during Trump’s last term about crops rotting in the fields in states like Alabama and Florida because of Trump’s crackdown in immigrants so I seriously doubt there will be this time given how much more intimidated the media is now.
My Canadian friends say they probably won't go back on the shelves now and perhaps not later. It's often difficult to rile up a Canadian, but once you do ...
The damage has been done.
Stores have already taken US liquor off the shelf and people are boycotting American goods. Trudeau just gave a powerful speech:
“ Trudeau himself urged Canadian shoppers to “buy Canadian”—and specifically to pass up “orange juice from Florida” and Kentucky bourbon. He listed other categories of US exports that would be penalized in Canada. Around the same time as the speech, the premier of British Columbia specifically banned “red state” American liquor from the province’s state-run liquor stores.”
https://fallows.substack.com/p/what-the-right-kind-of-nationalism
You can also listen to the speech and Fallows great analysis.
can't say I blame Canada. I say stand tall. Certainly not what our Congress is doing.
Yes, Trudeau was specifically targeting RED states and what they export!
I really loved the weapon pointed directly at the red states.
I would not be surprised if the Star-Spangled Banner continues getting booed at hockey games played in Canada.
Maybe it just won't get played.
Florida orange juice production is down 95% since 2004.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/florida-orange-industry
No one needs orange juice
LOL!!!
True. A lot of Canadians are angry. At an NYT article on Sunday there were a lot of Canadian commenters, saying they were canceling their NYT subscriptions and rescheduling vacations in the US.
I thought it was a bit much as NYT doesn’t support Trump nor do most of its readers. So I’m not canceling.
The problem is the NYT (along with WAPO and LAT) don’t not support Trump
Great final line. Maybe a new T shirt business!!
Increases in Canadian border security will be directed toward interdicting the flow of illegal guns from the US.
And that fentyl czar is gonna be stopping northern shipments
That's very similar to Mexico's border security concern, FWIW. Weird!
It’s the same problem, although the levels of violence are a lot lower. Estimate is that in Ontario, 90% of the handguns used in crimes are illegally smuggled from the United States.
The Arsenal of Democracy
The Arse of Democracy
I hope they're all confiscated and melted into plowshares, so to speak.
Good! Let's ban gun exports altogether, and put some gun manufacturers out of business.
That's a big plus.
I started in IT back when it was called Data Processing, that makes me old enough to have been a COBOL programmer. What do I know to be true? Elmo and his muppets will never figure out COBOL or CICS, it just aint never going to be Python or any of the languages used today. And I also know that if career civil servants skip email and communicate on paper writing in cursive, the muppets will not understand anything being said.
Musk's programmers are very very smart programmers.
They'll know enough COBOL in 2 days to run simple queries, and complex queries in 2 weeks.
I read blog posts by one of 'em, whose last names starts with K. He writes extremely well and is a malicious exploiter of the cult of trump (my bet), or an Ayn Rand acolyte blinded by partisan ideology. If he's the former, he'll be selling all kinds of stolen SSN & EINs along with attributes interesting to all sorts of buyers, from business competitors to the intelligence services of countries he likes. Maybe he likes Hungary, or some place where he has family... Without inspectors general, and in Patel's remake of the FBI in trump's service, there will be no investigations or prosecutions. He can make many millions in the next year.
Once you know one programming language you can easily learn another.
COBOL - that's what I was trying to say earlier. Musk kids may be smart but hopefully not that smart.....but maybe smart enough to screw it up. Love that note about writing in cursive. LOL!!! According to my great grand daughter (she's 11) only the smart kids know how to write in cursive. OMG!
As an old fart, I tend to agree with you - re debugging COBOL or assembly codes for those mainframes built in the 60s. Heck, I don't even think most of those" smart Musk kids"" in their 20s could even calculate the value of Pi if computers stopped working...
Hilarious to think that cursive might be our salvation!
I wonder if this will compel the federal g’ment to inform me that my data was breached.
Aren’t there laws governing that my data is protected and in the event there’s a breach they must tell me?
In other words, how is it allowable that the most sensitive, most regulated parts of our federal system is being raided (and no one knows the reasons) with no one or no entity stopping it?
Who knows if the equipment being used to do this is even secure? Aren’t there laws on that?
But her emails….
We now know the limitations of the law.
Law is always dependent on the willingness of the majority to respect it. That's the Number 1 reason why Trump should NEVER have been allowed to run for office at all
Right? You would think it would be so encrypted that those young Hackers would have a hard time accessing it....so someone had to give permission....I hear it is old equipment and not many are well versed in it......and yes "but her emails" LOL!!!! Divert, divert, divert
Yes there are such laws, but the MAGA King and his toadies ignore the law - and get away with it. Will the law ever catch up to them? We can only hope, we can only hope.
It's tricky with having a decimated FBI. That sort of thing is their job...
A recent comment by someone in the NYC office of the FBI indicates they have no intention of bowing down to Trump. Don't give up hope!
💙🌊
Yeah, or at least it >was< :(
I assume all of my data is breached.
I wonder if the fact that congressional salaries fall under the umbrella of "all federal payments" will help encourage a response here. Also, the idea of federal databases or code bases getting dumped into grok makes me ill.
Do Republican politicians actually rely on their salaries?
Actually a lot of them do need the paycheck. $174,000 a year isn't wealthy, but considering the myriad ways to get into the House, it could be the best job a lot of these guys have ever had.
No. Their salaries are the least of their worries.
I wouldn't bet on COBOL to keep the bad guys away. It's old but not that complex compared to many other programming languages, so many programmers could get familiar with it in a couple of weeks.
The institutional knowledge is another matter. The complexity of these old, cobbled together, systems is much more than “a simple matter of programming.”
Yes, I agree. More than the language used, the complexity of the system will be the main pain point. But it's not an uncommon task, as a programmer, to have to modify some over-complexified messy mountain of code garbage.
How bad that is in this case, I've no idea though...
Also many of these systems also contain BAL (Basic Assembler Language) which is supported by IBM on their mainframes. I have been a programmer for almost 50 years and BAL was my first computer language and then COBOL. There are also several other mainframe languages that government systems use, like RPG-2 & 3, PL1 and Fortran.
I have former co-workers that are contractors for the Department of Treasury that maintain and modify these old mainframe systems.
Occasionally, Congress has authorized major system upgrades to various government systems only to pull the plug on their implementation weeks before delivery throwing away tens of millions of dollars in upgrades.
Many of call this "shelfware." There is also "vapor ware," where companies sell a new system and never deliver it. CSC did this many times between 1985 and 2005.
Need a VMS programmer?:-)
You would think they could all (FBI, CIA, USAID, etc) secure their systems in a heartbeat....wishful thinking (watching too many movies)
You need to be very experienced to mess around with the Data Division of a COBOL program.
The Europeans have warned you that a person who speaks like a Nazi, makes threats like a Nazi, acts like a Nazi is a Nazi.
We have been there and the public school here works well to teach history, in the USA it doesn't and now you have a Nazi oligarchy.
I wish the Braves to fight for Freedom.
Public schools teach history in the US. The problem is that the US, like Europe, has always had Nazis.
And they've been voting Republican for decades.
Yes, but there are now states actively fighting against teaching that history, like the history of slavery.
True
We've never faced something like this before. You wake up in the morning and it looks the same as it did the day before. I started getting worried in the GW Bush era and was seriously considering leaving for Canada. But I wouldn't leave my parents.
You just can't imagine it actually happening to you.
Solidarity. If you can leave the US with your family.
Prof Krugman is usually crystal clear. This morning Heather Cox Richardson is more succinct. Both the Canadian and Mexican 'concessions' were in place under Biden.
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/february-3-2025?r=f23gi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Exactly.....and those MAGA folks swallowed his lies hook line and sinker. Astounding.
The MAGA cultists are convinced the tariff thing was a huge Trump win. It’s unreal.
Everyone!!! Defund the Coup! Stop paying your Federal Taxes and let the Trump Admin know you won't pay them until Musk is fired and DOGE is totally disbanded.
It's a simple and familiar message."NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION"!
Good luck with that! I'm not interested in a LEO knocking on my door...
Totally love that idea :-)
Don’t they understand the value of Soft Power? Which is why USAID exists.
Apparently Soft Power isn't "manly" enough for the insecure babies running the show.
Well, yeah.
Elon understands how America used soft power to get rid of apartheid, and he's mad about it.
No. They don't.
They don't teach that in High School
Yeah. Remember when the Trump tax rebates had his name on the checks? They will use the name and contact information to personally intimidate each and every American to inject fear.
That was incredibly creepy (the tax rebate checks.)
I always thought that they were poorly targeted. I was able to telework so I saw no loss of income, yet I received both stimulus payments.
And don't even get me started on the one-time-use debit cards they sent out. The US Treasury has no problem writing checks. Why did the government have to spring for debit cards that all eventually got trashed? I'm guessing a debit card processing company made a good profit off of that deal.
I often wonder if the higher ups at the PO, IRS, and the 12 major US banks that the US Treasury uses to process payments for it are all in cahoots. The IRS wouldn't accept those Trump stimulus checks I endorsed back to the US Treasury in lieu of payment for taxes. My credit card bill was one day late this month (7 days actual travel time!) and I later discovered that Priority Mail isn't guaranteed in the small print on the sign at the PO, unless it's the Express version. Communications with the credit card company by mail during Covid era ended up involving the IRS. I really appreciated the debit cards sent out during the Biden era of Covid, as that time was worse for me financially than at the beginning of Covid.