RFK the Lesser was confirmed as health secretary. I’d wring my hands about it, but even if somehow he had been rejected I can’t imagine Trump putting anyone competent into that position. I hate to think of the devastation if there’s another pandemic in the next four years. I believe Kash Patel is up next, and he’s made it out of committee.
This morning I read House GOP Makes Official Its Plan For Devastating Cuts To Medicaid at TPM. I knew this was coming, but it’s personally upsetting as I was just able to get on Medicaid last year. It’s been great so far. I’m getting the same medical care I would have gotten with normal insurance, but all my co-pays and deductibles are gone. I’m even fully covered if I have to be hospitalized for something. If that goes away I may have to make hard decisions about what health care I can actually get without running up a debt I can never pay. So far I haven’t heard anything specific about ending housing subsidies, but they’ll get to it eventually.
It’s hard to keep up with the nonsense. Now I’m reading Trump is proposing what he calls “reciprocal tariffs,” which seems to mean that other countries aren’t supposed to impose higher tariffs on our stuff than we impose on their stuff. Exactly how he expects to enforce that, I have no idea. I see that back in the early FDR Administration there was a law called the Reciprocal Tariff Act that was intended to facilitate negotiating lower tariffs to undo the damage of Smoot-Hawley, but that was way different.
This comes about in part because Trump is obsessed with trade deficits and believes they are a bad thing that happen when other countries are “unfair” to us. Even the Cato Institute says that’s not how it works. But even if trade deficits were really bad, as I understand it tariffs are not the best tool one might use to correct the situation. He really is a moron.
You’ve probably heard that Trump and Putin are negotiating with each other about ending the Ukraine-Russia war with no input from Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Comparisons to the 1938 Munich Agreement between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler abound. And Trump continues to be confused about who started the war.
Trump was asked if he viewed “Ukraine as an equal member of this peace process?” Trump responded: “It’s an interesting question. I think they have to make peace. That was not a good war to go into.”
So, yeah, everything’s going to hell. Quickly.
Stuff to Read:
David Graham, The Atlantic, The Trump Supporters Who Didn’t Take Him at His Word
Philip Bump, The Washington Post, Trump, Musk and America are headed for a very rude awakening
Paul Krugman, Elon Musk Is Faking It
Mitch is in the position of "nothing to lose." He's on Trump's "enemies" list. The rest of the Republicans are like kids in school when there's a shooter in the school with an AR-15. They just don't want to be noticed. They know it's not going well and the idiots they confirmed will be totally incompetent puppets of mostly incompetent reactionaries.
I said "mostly" because sone of the architects of Project 2025 know what they want. The problem is: they have power only through the White House. Musk is running his own playbook, which isn't synched with Project 2025. Musk is trying to grab control of the money so everybody who wants a piece of the action has to go through Musk.
BTW, watch Space X get a blank check for the moon project. Boeing's is laying off 400 people with the moon project. Musk still thinks the Mars project can make him money. (Here is where the House may balk – they will not want to finance a black hole the government pours money into, which will go into Musk's pockets. When Trump/Musk try to just do it, since Musk had his own entrance into the Treasury Building, the House Freedom Caucus will know they are without power.
I see the potential for sooooo much discontent in the alliance of incompatible factions. Trump will be throwing some of them under the bus soon. The tax cuts for billionaires will expire if they are not renewed. The Freedom Caucus knows it's a "must pass" for Trump and for Big Money. If the Freedom Caucus passes tax cuts without gutting the budget, the compromises in the budget bill won't cut deep enough for them. I expect the Freedom Caucus to hold tax cuts hostage for the elimination of ??? (You fill in the blanks.)
They are going to eat each other.
They are going to eat each other. As for McConnell, his No vote is particularly galling and meaningless since he was the principal architect for the right's capture of the courts, which enabled all of this.
Junk politics, all out of style, some moldy, others hanging on by a fading memory. Krugman goes a bit further and suggests only an illusion of a solution. It seems to be that when a mayor is charged with millions of dollars of theft from housing, this would be aimed at correcting government waste. Instead, his prosecutor resigns because corrupt governance is over-regulated. So, we are trading the illusion of thrift by Muskrats for an increase in wasteful governmental corruption practices. Now that is an artful deal. Not as good as selling a banana and a short strip of duct tape for millions say, but…what are the odds of either? Where is Douglas Adams and the super improbability drive? Someone hit the big red button on both of these.
I have never forgotten the story of the Pope returning a blueprint of an extravagant building project to a group of cardinals and bishops with only one comment. In Latin, " are you angels?". It took them weeks to decipher, but not for weak Latin skills but for weak reality skills. The huge project did not include a single bathroom.
This mistake will be the downfall of the current administration. Not only can they not admit their own limitations they wrongly project others all have magical and superhuman qualities without normal human characteristics. I am not saying these writers have not identified real weaknesses, but they may have missed the biggest and most critical weakness. Forgetting they are dealing with humans. What would you expect from a cluster of dis-empathic power grabbers.
At least the words of Ronald Regan will ring true at last. Government will cease to be a solution for any problem and only exist as a problem. It is beyond the Reagan dream. A complete and utter dystopia. All our troubles will vanish in a great sea of horror.
Regarding the Drumph supporters who didn't take him at his word: It's only partly due to each person glomming onto the few things that he says that they like, and pretending the other things that he says are for "entertainment value". During the campaign, on any given day or week, he'd make sure he said everything anyone might like, even if he was contradicting something else he said earlier. Also, he'd say different things (sometimes complete opposite things) in different places (different audiences). Bottom line is this: I don't think that he has ever in his life viewed saying things out loud as having anything to do with communicating some truths about himself. His decisions about what words to say have always always been a result of him asking himself the following question: "What words do I need to say in order to get what I want for myself?" He simply does not have a normal grasp of the purpose of communication. With him is is totally and only a tool of manipulation. Most ordinary citizens are not capable of dealing with this. He “seems” genuine to them because he talks coarsely like they talk.
Thanks. That is the best definition of a sociopath aka psychopath aka crook I have ever read.
Thank you , Bernie !!!
I think you will be surprised to see how low the bottom is,… every time you think you can imagine a bottom, go six or ten times lower. Fox "news" propaganda works wonders to steer resentments and the capacity of the inhabitants to be satisfied on a diet of gelatinous Arby's "roast beef" and Jack-in-the-box deep fried tacos is never ending. And MLM churches do the rest.
Seems to me that Americans do not even have a concept that there might be a better path and only aspire to a narrow measure of dollar-based success with no imagination to think otherwise. Super uneducated lot with no desire for self improvement (unless it can be purchased, perhaps on payments).
To the Sewer and Beyond!!
Out of the mouth of babes,"You're not the President, and you need to go away"
It's supposedly from the Onion, FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States, but it feels like real life.
Like all fascists, they're going after the weakest people first: revoking trans rights, and those getting subsidies like Medicaid. They are setting the stage for massive civil disobedience once the pains of various kinds hit the masses. I expect much of this to be restored, it's a question of how big and deep the interruptions in payments. They are sowing the seeds for a blue tsunami in 2026.
Ongoing Coup, by Arizona's AG Chris Mayes. Finally, a hero, somebody in power is telling it like it is.
Re: trade imbalances, they're a natural occurrence, and it's been (I believe) literal centuries since they were seen as a problem.
In the old days, the major powers would want to engage in trade only when it gave them a "gold advantage" – more gold coming in than going out. But if you don't trade with Cheapest-country, your workers, your industrialists, you manufactures, are spending more than other countries for supplies, etc.. So it was realized hoping for a positive trade balance didn't actually accomplish anything good.
So: we have a trade deficit with China, because we need our cheap electronic crap, and they're the cheapest source. If a tariff changes that, we're not going to *onshore* – we'll buy from the next cheapest country – while other countries can still save money, buying from China.
Now, there are "market failures" in international trade – situations you don't want to get into. In some of those, a tariff is the right response, but "we need Canadian oil and lumber more than they need our exports" is *not* a market failure. It's why every economist, no matter their leanings, will perk up and say YES!!! if you ask "is trade good?"
Cheaper, or higher quality, or whatever competitive advantage exists, it's always good to have more trading partners than fewer, because that maximizes the chances everyone gets plenty of what they want. Putting up special barriers to one country doesn't make really good sense, unless they really are harming us, rather than buying our soybeans and pork, and selling us cheap crap that we nevertheless want.
Maybe we should try to convince Trump that Adam Smith was Hitler's earliest nom de plume; it's not like he'd notice the date discrepancy!