What is wrong with people?

Oh, please, Mr. Unelected Guy who has no legal authority to do squat, let the Congress elected by the American people have a say in what you are cutting that we already appropriated. Bleep. Here’s a link to the article, if you want to read it.

Regarding Elon, I have read comments here and there accusing him of being on drugs. But this Atlantic article is the first thing I’ve read that explains it. His drug of choice is ketamine, for which he says he has a prescription. Ketamine tends to dissociate people from reality. This explains a lot.

Anyway — at WaPo there’s an article about the meeting between Republican senators and Elon,  in which Elon offered them a more direct way to contact him so they can express their concerns about whatever he’s done. He’s not allowing them to have any say beforehand. Josh Marshall has a critique of this piece, in which he says,

The gist of the whole story is that DOGE is making these guys nervous. They’re hearing from constituents who are upset. They don’t really know what’s happening. So they’re worried about more and worse surprises. The Senate and kinda the House is saying this is ultimately our choice. They’re kinda sorta trying to assert control. But not really.

See also Paul Krugman, who explains how Trump is setting up a cryptocurrency scam of world-shattering proportions.

There was a lot not to like about Trump’s speech yesterday, but some folks are pointing to this post-speech moment as the absolute nadir:

“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” Trump says while shaking the hand of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts after the State of the Union.

[image or embed]

— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 12:18 AM

Yes, it’s Trump deeply thanking Chief Justice John Roberts. For what? Keeping him out of jail?

Trump may be less grateful today. The Supreme Court sided with a lower court, 5 to 4, that at least some frozen foreign aid had to be unfrozen.

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated a lower-court order for the Trump administration to release frozen foreign aid, but it was not clear how quickly money would start flowing.

By a 5-4 vote, the court rejected an emergency appeal from the Republican administration, while also telling U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to clarify his earlier order that required the quick release of nearly $2 billion in aid for work that had already been done.

Although the outcome is a short-term loss for President Donald Trump’s administration, the nonprofit groups and businesses that sued are still waiting for the money they say they are owed. One of the organizations last week was forced to lay off 110 employees as a result, according to court papers.

Justice Samuel Alito led four conservative justices in dissent, saying Ali lacks the authority to order the payments. Alito wrote that he is stunned the court is rewarding “an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”

So Alito (and Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) think it’s outrageous the government must pay for contracted work that has been completed? I know stiffing the vendors has long been central to Trump’s business plan, but I didn’t know it was okay for the government, too. Especially since the 14th Amendment says the public debt of the United States must not be questioned. Anyway, Roberts and Barrett sided with the three liberals and said the debt cannot be dismissed. Whether it’s paid any time during this decade is another matter.

Just to show how clear-headed and decisive the executive branch has become — yesterday the General Services Administration released a list of 443 office properties that were being put up for sale. The announcement said these spaces were “vacant or underutilized.” Reuters:

The list includes the headquarters for several major government agencies, including the Veterans Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

GSA’s own headquarters were also on the list.
The list includes skyscrapers in Chicago, Atlanta and Cleveland, as well as several Internal Revenue Service hubs that process tax returns.

The list also includes the J. Edgar Hoover building that houses the FBI, although there have been plans to replace that building for a long time. But it hasn’t been replaced, yet.

That was the plan early yesterday, anyway. According to several reports, by yesterday evening all the D.C.-area properties had been removed from the list. And then this morning the entire list disappeared, to be replaced on the Web with a note that the list of properties would be “coming soon.”

Likewise the infamous tariffs may be off again, or not. I take it today the markets are bounding around like a yo-yo on word that Trump may be rethinking some of his tariffs. Or not. Most of these stories seem to be coming from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who appears to be trying to mitigate some of the damage. Lutnick says Trump will make an announcement today, but he hasn’t yet. Maybe he’ll exclude some products. Maybe he’ll pause the tariffs another month. Maybe. But, yeah, real decisive. Real clear-headed.

Summing it all up: Do read Paul Krugman’s latest, America is trapped in a burning Tesla. Apparently some of our tycoons of industry and the stock-market players haven’t fully realized that Trump and Musk have no idea what they’re doing. Something major is going to break, and probably sooner rather than later. And Krugman thinks Social Security is the most likely candidate.

Oh, and DOGE plans to leave a massive nuclear waste site unattended.

The world has only one working deep geologic repository for nuclear waste — and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is trying to close down the 90,000-square-foot building in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where workers are tasked with directly managing the radioactive site.

Two sources confirmed to NOTUS that the General Services Administration is trying to end the government’s lease for the Skeen-Whitlock Building in Carlsbad, where at least 200 people work to supervise highly radioactive waste from the U.S.’s nuclear defense activities.

Maybe Elon thinks he can just sell it “as is.” Charming property! Needs some TLC and cleanup!

Tonight is Trump’s annual speech to a joint session of Congress, usually called the “State of the Union” but not when the POTUS is new. I have no intention of watching, because I’d rather get root canal than listen to Trump give a speech.  I will follow commentary on the web instead. If you want to come here and make comments yourself you are welcome to do so.

Dems have been debating whether to attend, or not. House Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries has been telling members to attend, but bring guests who are being hurt by Trump’s policies. Oh, and he’s telling them to behave; no unruly outbursts. I think if I were in the House I’d stay away.

Trump picked today to kick off his tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and to increase tariffs on China. The stock market is tumbling.

Regarding the tariffs, do see Trump’s Most Inexplicable Decision Yet by Rogé Karma at The Atlantic. It begins:

If you were setting out to design a trade policy that would harm the American economy while undermining political support for its leadership, you might come up with something like the tariffs that Donald Trump just imposed on Canada, China, and Mexico.

I’m not seeing any opinion pieces on the tariffs that think they’re anything short of a disaster for the U.S. economy, and possibly the global economy. But they aren’t really “inexplicable.” Trump thinks they’re a brilliant idea because he’s a moron and he has no clue what he’s doing. There’s your explanation.

J.D. Vance touched off much outrage in Europe over remarks he made on Fox News. The BBC:

The US vice-president has sparked a row with his comments about a potential peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

UK opposition politicians accused JD Vance of disrespecting British forces after he said a US stake in Ukraine’s economy was a “better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.

The UK and France have said they would be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peace deal. …

… Vance’s comments came as the US paused military aid to Ukraine, following an explosive spat between President Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

Zelensky left the White House before a proposed deal on sharing Ukrainian minerals with American companies could be signed.

Speaking about the proposal, Vance told Fox News: “The very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine.

“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

Sir Keir has said US security guarantees – such as air cover – will be needed to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine again, if there is a deal to end the war.

However, Trump has so far refused to pledge this, instead arguing that US workers in Ukraine as part of a minerals deal could provide such assurances. …

Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge pointed out both the UK and France deployed forces alongside the US in Afghanistan, adding: “It’s deeply disrespectful to ignore such service and sacrifice.”

The whole “minerals deal” thing is dishonorable, IMO. Not that Trump or Vance understand the concept of honor.

Some of today’s news — This is in Rolling Stone — FAA Officials Ordered Staff to Find Funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink:

Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation. 

The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”

And this is from The Hill: White House backs Israel blocking aid to Gaza. I guess if the Palestinians won’t voluntarily get out of the way of Trump’s luxury real estate development deal for Gaza, they’ll have to be starved out.

And here’s another, from Politico EU — Russia celebrates US foreign policy that now ‘coincides’ with Moscow’s worldview. Of course it coincides with Moscow’s worldview. When Trump’s lips move, that’s really Putin’s voice you’re hearing.

The latest I’m hearing on Ukraine is that European leaders are still meeting in London to come together on a plan to aid Ukraine and stop Russia. From the New York Times:

Gathering in London at the invitation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, the leaders vowed to bolster support for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after his bitter clash with Mr. Trump last week. But several also expressed hope that the two could repair their breach, underscoring Europe’s reluctance to cast off a trans-Atlantic alliance that has kept the peace for 80 years.

“We are at a crossroads in history,” Mr. Starmer said after the meeting. “Europe must do the heavy lifting,” he declared, but added, “To support peace, and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing.”

I can tell them right now that Trump isn’t going to agree to anything that Putin doesn’t like.

Update: Here’s another one. Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Offensive Cyberoperations Against Russia

Today Trump, Vance, and others of the administration disgraced our country. They also showed the world that Trump cares more about Russia and Vladimir Putin than he does about the United States. I’m just now catching up, but I am utterly appalled and disgusted. When we ever pry MAGA out of Washington we must issue an abject apology to Ukraine and to Volodymyr Zelensky. But there will be no living this down, I’m afraid.

David Frum, The Atlantic, At Least Now We Know the Truth.

Ilan Goldenberg and Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, Trump and Vance berate Zelensky

Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing, Politico, Russian state media briefly enters Oval Office during Zelenskyy meeting

Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, It Was an Ambush

The United States has formally left the “free world.” The United States has broken the post World War II world order that we led for so long. It’s over. And our nation is utterly disgraced.

More on the fallout of yesterday’s House budget resolution vote: My representative, Republican Mike Lawler, put out a statement:

I’ve been trying to keep track of what’s going on with the House budget bill. They’re voting on it now. I’m personally sweating this, as you know, because I’m personally screwed if I lose Medicaid benefits. The plan is to pass a massive bill that can get through the Senate via reconciliation, to avoid a filibuster. Assuming this bill passes I’m hearing that Senate Republicans have already said they want changes.

Well, it passed. This is frightening. Now let’s see what happens in the Senate.

A lot of these Republicans are in districts with a lot of Medicaid recipients. I guess they’re more afraid of Trump than of their voters. At the very least, they’ve given the Dems a great talking point — Republicans are cutting your health care to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is pretty much the truth. And of course it isn’t just Medicaid. I understand there are also cuts to Veteran’s benefits and food assistance. So they’re literally taking food out of the mouths of babies to give more money to the rich.

The faithful are not likely to hear the budget bill described that way on Fox News.

This just popped up in the New York Times:

The blueprint sets the contours for the legislation that House Republicans will now turn to writing. It puts a $4.5 trillion upper limit on the size of any tax cuts over the next 10 years, but does not dictate which taxes should be reduced, a complex and politically tricky question of its own that could take months to sort out.

It also calls for slashing $2 trillion in spending over the same period, without specifying which programs should be cut, though top Republicans have targeted Medicaid and food aid programs for poor Americans. And it directs increases of about $300 billion for border enforcement and defense programs.

So it sounds as if there’s a lot of detail still to be worked out before there are definite cuts.

Regarding today’s news about the Joint Chiefs —

Side note. There are eight members of the joint chiefs. the chair is black. the CNO (navy) is a woman. the other six are white guys. chair and the cno got fired tonight.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 9:34 PM

Sometimes things really are what they seem to be. Hegseth had been badmouthing the head of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, as a DEI hire.

Obviously Trump wants the  military to be personally loyal to him so that he can use the military to put down all opposition. I question whether he can replace enough officers quickly enough, though. No matter who Trump puts in the Pentagon there are likely going to be a great many career officers remaining who really believe in duty, honor, country, and the Constitution. That can’t change overnight.

Or, at least, we can hope. This guy writes,

Everyone will look around and ask themselves if someone is getting promoted because they are the best officer or because they are loyal, so political affiliation will be something everyone pays a whole lot more attention to. To be clear, there are at least three kinds of officers in the military: those loyal to the Constitution, those who are MAGA types who believe in this shit, and, most importantly, the careerists.  Those will do what it takes to get ahead, and have just been signaled that to get ahead, one has to do whatever Trump and Hegseth order.

There’s a long tradition in the U.S. military that says career officers should be so apolitical they don’t even vote. They can vote if they choose to, but many do not.

By not voting, I am walking in the boot prints of our greatest officers: George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Patton, to name a few who didn’t vote while in uniform, and those of the modern era that tread the same path — David H. Petraeus, Martin Dempsey and, by all appearances, Mark A. Milley, the current Army chief of staff. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is an especially instructive case, because he faced the grimmest temptation to tamper with the election of 1864 during the Civil War. And yet, crucially, Grant chose not to vote.

Obviously, having Trump lackeys in charge will reduce military effectiveness, no matter how much Pete Hegseth fancies himself a “warrior.”

The Independent (UK) describes Gen. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, the guy Trump plans to make head of the Joint Chiefs:

The president recalled Trump and Caine meeting in 2018 during a visit to Iraq during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019.

It was then that the general told the president he believed ISIS could be defeated in one week rather than two years, as his advisers said at the time.

“‘One week? I was told two years!’” Trump recalled saying.

Trump said Caine replied: “‘We’re only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria, but if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over, from the base you’re right on right now, sir.’” “‘They won’t know what the hell hit them.’”

Trump also recalled asking the general his name, to which the president said Caine replied, “Razin.” After Trump asked for his last name, he reportedly replied: “Caine, Razin Caine.”

Trump also claims Caine put on a signature “Make America Great Again” hat while they met in Iraq.

“‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir,’” Trump said, quoting Caine.

“Then he puts on a Make America Great Again hat. You’re not allowed to do that, but they did it,” Trump added.

Caine later told aides the story of the hat wasn’t true, according to The New York Times.

So, a Trump lapdog. Not someone who will be able to tell Trump anything Trump doesn’t want to hear. The military will be compromised from the top. Let’s just hope we don’t actually have to use it much until Trump is gone.

I’m far from a Rahm Emanuel fan, but he wrote an op ed for the Washington Post that’s worth reading. It was published before last night’s Pentagon Purge, I notice. It’s more about foreign policy, but the military is connected — Trump is emulating Putin and Xi. Watch it end in an ‘own goal.’ Here’s just a bit —

This is a turn that many in Washington have yet to fully appreciate. Trump doesn’t simply hero-worship autocrats — he shares their worldview. That’s the thread that explains his quixotic statements about Greenland, Panama, Canada and the “Gulf of America.” That’s why he’s threatening tariffs on Canada, Colombia and Mexico. Trump’s team is negotiating with Russia in Saudi Arabia over Ukraine’s and Europe’s fates without our allies at the table. His behavior is consistent with China’s foreign minister telling countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that because China is big and they are small, their voices don’t matter.

For the United States, this is a loser’s bet. First, it means giving up on the very policy that has brought credibility to our deterrence. Today, when Washington wants to impose export controls on semiconductors to prevent the Chinese military from gaining a technological advantage, our approach works because we act in concert with the South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese and Dutch. When the Chinese consider whether to further intimidate the Philippines, they weigh their plans against the possibility of a kinetic response from an American-led alliance that includes Japan, Australia and our European allies.

But Trump’s first steps on the world stage mean China won’t have to think twice.

There’s nothing to gain with Trump’s approach — but a lot to lose. Denmark is not going to sell us Greenland. Panama will not return the canal to the United States. Canada will not become our 51st state. And yet we’re eliminating the credibility and durability of our alliances to achieve goals that aren’t even worth pursuing.

Putin and Xi must be delighted. As Washington alienates its allies and squanders 80 years of international credibility, Trump is helping Russia and China achieve their explicit mission of replacing the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower. Moscow’s goal has long been to break up the North Atlantic alliance. Who would have thought that an American president would do its dirty work?

I don’t see Russia stepping up to preeminent superpower status, but China certainly could. Thanks to Trump.

The Senate confirmed Kash Patel as FBI director. With a team of incompetent and unqualified nitwits in charge of national defense and intelligence, we’re being left absurdly vulnerable to terrorist and military aggression. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping must be absolutely giddy.

One wonders how it is genuinely mediocre people rise to prominence, but it happens all the time. I read something at the Bulwark a couple of days ago that gave as good an answer as I ever heard. Jonathan Last writes that when he was much younger and writing for The Weekly Standard he read something by an economist named Kevin Hassett at the American Enterprise Institute that was obvious nonsense. Without going into details, it was. Just read Last’s Bulwark column. So Last met with Hassett to try to gently explain to him what he was missing, To no avail. “Hassett was unmoved,” Last writes. “Utterly and completely. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand me; it was that he didn’t want to understand. Invincible ignorance.”

So Last began checking Hassett’s other work and found he had a clear record of making wildly wrong predictions about the economy. But instead of hurting his career, Hassett kept getting promoted up the ladder at AEI.  Conclusion:

My lunch with Kevin Hassett was the moment in which I stopped believing in meritocracy.

People succeed in life for lots of reasons. Intelligence, nepotism, charm, luck. So far as I could tell, Hassett had none of those. He was dim, ordinary, tiresome, and not particularly lucky, either.

He was merely the product of a system that needed people like Kevin Hassett to exist. And this system was designed to protect and promote the Kevin Hassetts of the world, irrespective of how silly they were.

Specimens like Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and even Donald Trump succeed because they are the products of a system that needs them to exist. This organization is not necessarily formally organized, but it exists. Trump’s specimens serve a larger purpose they themselves probably don’t understand.

Oh, and naturally Donald Trump made Kevin Hassett the Director of the National Economic Council. Being wrong a lot is no impediment in the Trump White House, as long as you tell Dear Leader what he wants to hear.

I read something else this week I wanted to mention in the post yesterday, but it was running a bit log so I left it out. But the Independent (UK) reiewed a book I remember reading about awhile back. A Very Stable Genius by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig was published in the U.S. in 2020, but I take it that it was just released, or re-released, in the UK. Here’s a bit from the review:

“Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Mr Trump reportedly asked John Kelly, his then-chief of staff, when they took a private tour in 2017 of the USS Arizona Memorial, a ship commemorating the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during the Second World War.

“Trump had heard the phrase ‘Pearl Harbor’ and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else,” write the authors, who quote a former White House adviser concluding the US president was “dangerously uninformed”.

This gives us a sense not only of Trump’s bottomless ignorance but of the insulated world he lived in all his life. Most of us born in the 1940s and early 1950s grew up watching World War II movies and listening to our parents and their friends talk about the war. Trump, obviously, did not. He must have even missed From Here to Eternity. His father — said to have been a Nazi sympathizer — knew New York real estate. And Trump seems not to have ever been the least bit curious about anything else. That’s his whole world. No wonder he thinks strategic alliances are just arrangements in which foreign countries pay us to protect them. And since he knows nothing about history, he can’t possibly fathom why western Europe has no interest in appeasing Putin.

Here’s another bit from the review:

During a meeting with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister’s “eyes bulged out in surprise”, the Washington Post reporters claim, when Mr Trump told him: “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.”

China and India in fact share more than 2,000 miles of common border.

Mr Modi’s expression “shifted from shock and concern to resignation”, with aides telling the authors the Indians “took a step back” in their diplomatic relations with the US following the meeting.

And this:

When Mr Trump early in his tenure agreed to feature in an HBO documentary in which all living presidents read from the constitution, Mr Trump blamed others in the room when he struggled to read the text.

“It’s like a foreign language,” he allegedly complained.

There really was such an HBO feature, called The Words That Built America. It was directed by Alexandra Pelosi. They must have done enough takes of Trump’s reading that he didn’t come across as illiterate. But this may be why he still doesn’t know how the federal government is structured and what the role of POTUS actually is. He can’t read.

During his first term he claimed Article II gave him the power to do whatever he wants. Which of course it does not. Article II has 12 or 13 paragraphs, most of which are about how a president is elected, compensated, and sworn in. The actual job description is in the next four paragraphs, in which the words “Advice and Consent of the Senate”  are featured prominently. And then the last paragraph is about impeachment. But those four paragraphs provide a remarkably limited job description.

Trump is way too stupid to see how the, um, characters who are running his government are setting him up to fail. They’re all in way over their heads. They are all compromised up the wazoo. The real world is going to catch up with them all eventually. I hope not too many innocent people will be hurt, but I fear they will be.