By Lambert Strether.
Readers, my head cold continues, as does my stuffed-up stupidity and whinging. Ugh. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Davidson College–Main Campus, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, United States.
“Country diary: A bird that had existed only in my imagination becomes vividly real” [Guardian]. “We’ve come to church this morning in search of a fictional bird… So far my only sighting of the UK’s largest finch has been in my Collins Guide to British Birds…. Something moves near the top of an ash by the church tower. There, on a leafless branch, sits my first ever hawfinch. A hunk with buff breast, slightly darker crown and a warm cinnamon back with the slate-grey wing patches that tell me it is a female.
She’s eating something – most likely a yew berry. Unaffected by the toxicity, she’ll make light work of the seed inside the red fleshy aril with her specially modified bill, capable of exerting a force in excess of 450N. For a bird with a reputation for being elusive, her Latin name, Coccothraustes coccothraustes (the kernel-crushing kernel crusher), has the all subtlety of a sledgehammer. Looking at her hefty bill and thick-set body, I can’t deny that she is manifestly – and magnificently – real.” • They found the bird!
In Case You Might Miss…
- DOGE as a revolutionary NRx (neo-reactionary) project.
- DOGE seeks to avoid FOIA.
- DOGE given sysadmin privileges at Office of Personnel Management with days of the Inaugural.
- An atmospheric Turner.
“Dog’s sudden illness reveals region’s generosity” [Ashland Daily Press (SD)]. • Dog gets a wheelchair…
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Trump Administration
“DOJ sues Illinois, Chicago over ‘sanctuary city’ laws” [The Hill]. “‘The challenged provisions of Illinois, Chicago, and Cook County law reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,’ the lawsuit states.” • Unsurprising, since sanctuary cities are a form of “nullification” of which John C. Calhoun would be proud.
DOGE
“Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit” [SAGE Journals (BP)]. Fight through the academic prose on this one: “This paper examines the impact of neoreactionary (NRx) thinking – that of Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman in particular – on contemporary political debates manifest in ‘architectures of exit’… Approaching NRx thinking just a few years ago might have been a mildly diverting exercise; a chance to ‘connect some philosophical ideas … using some very silly right-wing nutjobs who were nevertheless … interesting’ (Sandifer, 2017: 1). As MacDougald (2015) describes, NRx writing often appears as ‘little more than a fever swamp of feudal misogynists, racist programmers and “fascist teenage dungeon masters,” gathering on subreddits to await the collapse of Western civilization’. As such, it reads like ‘all the awful things you always suspected about libertarianism with odds and ends from PUA culture, Victorian Social Darwinism, and an only semi-ironic attachment to absolutism’. However, post-2016, as Sandifer (2017: 1) expresses it in her own inimitable style, ‘everything went to shit’ and suddenly these otherwise ‘batshit crazy’ ideas, associated software projects and social prototyping experiments began to manifest across a whole range of global cultural, political and technological imaginaries. As hard as it is to fathom, NRx thinking now forms a significant part of the theoretical universe that contemporary political figures and ‘proto-theorists’ such as Dominic Cummings (in the UK) (Cummings, 2020; Lewis et al., 2002; Mulhall, 2020; Volpicelli, 2020; Wolf, 2020) and Steve Bannon (in the US) (Goldhill, 2017; Gray, 2017) draw upon and are attempting to promulgate into mainstream political discourse. As Nagle (2017: 53) explains it, supporters of NRx ideas seem to have been more adept at ‘heeding the ideas … of … Gramsci’s theory of hegemony’, especially via social media (Daniels, 2018), than have those on the left more usually associated with them (Mouffe, 2019).” • This was thrown over my transom a few days ago; and today, this–
“Subject: Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries” (PDF) [anonymous]. Interesting memo, embedded for distribution at the end of today’s Water Cooler. “Rather than operating as an ally of the Trump administration, Musk has hijacked its ambitions for his own purposes. His rapid takeover of federal infrastructure mirrors the broader ambitions of the neoreactionary (NRx) movement—a small group of Silicon Valley elites who reject democracy and seek to install a “CEO Monarch” to rule by technological and financial dominance. This network includes Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, David Sacks, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. Once considered fringe, purveyors of this ideology have now been embedded into the core of government operations. Musk’s maneuvering demonstrates a long-standing strategy of this elite class: not dismantling government, but replacing its power structures with ones they control. DOGE has not reduced bureaucracy—it has privatized it. Treasury has not been made more efficient—it has been placed under a billionaire’s influence. TikTok has not been secured from foreign threats—it has been delayed so Musk can position himself as its gatekeeper. President Trump, far from asserting dominance over the administrative state, may now find himself hostage to Musk.” • Normally, I don’t care what confirmed enshittifiers like Thiel, Andreessen, Srinivasan, Sacks, Yarvin et al. think, as long as they stay in their cuddle puddles; none of these rich dudes are as insightful as they think they are (and all are subject to “Big Man” syndrome, where nobody says “No” to them, which gradually poisons their worldview of that is actually feasible). And normally Lambert the Cautious wouild prefer to connect many more dots before any pronouncement. I remain cautious because I don’t know the provenance of the piece, although it doesn’t read like it was produced by the DNC. The remedies — “Launch Immediate Congressional Investigations; II. Strengthened Conflict of Interest and Ethics Recommendations” — are very weak — What, no General Strike? — suggesting to me it comes from the NGO ambit, from a shop like Indivisible. I will say it’s the first piece I’ve seen that gives an account of DOGE’s extreme speed and secrecy. Know your enemy (and that goes for MAGA, too. Which side do you thing Thiel and Andreessen were on in the H1B fight?) Oh, and before anybody screams CT, what this looks like to me: “The first FlexNet I’ve seen that attempted to seize state power.” NOTE Adding, it’s nice to have another explanation for Mush’s frenetic behavior than Special K: By this account, he must see himself as point man for an actual revolution; I would imagine Lenin has a lot of short nights in 1917, too.
* * * “‘What Musk is doing is illegal’: Bernie Sanders slams DOGE gutting agencies” [CNN]. • Yes, that’s the point. See above.
“Musk’s Brazen Cost-Cutting Campaign Is Annoying GOP Senators, Treasury Staff” [Bloomberg]. Exremely deceptive headline, because way too bland: “Bessent, a figure of the traditional finance world, is more on board with the Musk crew’s mission than has been widely understood. As Bessent was building out his team in December, he interviewed Tom Krause, who is now a member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to a person familiar with the matter. Krause is now digging into Treasury’s systems and data. Among the topics they discussed during the interview was the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged, the person said. A group of roughly half a dozen GOP senators reached out privately to the White House to object to Musk’s accessing of Treasury systems, according to people familiar with the conversations. The senators indicated that the moves went beyond DOGE’s stated mission to save the government money. Yet the secretary they voted to confirm was involved in planning the moves now underway, even recommending Krause for the special government employee status he now is using to plumb Treasury’s servers.” • Lends some credence to the idea broached by alert reader hamstak that DOGE started work early, and somebody badged one or more of the “programmers” in before official project launch.
“Musk’s DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming security officials” [WaPo]. Another blandly deceptive headline: “Agents of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees — including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions — as part of a broader effort to wrest control over the government’s main personnel agency, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments…. Records obtained by The Post show that several members of Musk’s DOGE team — some of whom are in their early 20s and come from positions at his private companies — were given ‘administrative’ access to OPM computer systems within days of Trump’s inauguration last month. That gives them sweeping authority to install and modify software on government-supplied equipment and, according to two OPM officials, to alter internal documentation of their own activities.” Yikes. More: “Meanwhile, morale has plummeted, said three OPM officials, as DOGE agents have clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young DOGE team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them ‘idiots.'” Seems to be going well. More: “At least six DOGE agents were given broad access to all personnel systems at the OPM on the afternoon of Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, according to two agency officials. Three more gained access about a week later, they said.” And: “A former U.S. security official said DOGE’s access to Treasury’s payment system is alarming, describing it as a comprehensive map to U.S. expenditures encompassing highly classified programs and purposes. The agency said this week Musk’s agents have “read-only access.'”
“Day Seven of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Yours and WIRED’s Reporting is Actually Doing Something”” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. Does DOGE operative Marko Elez have read access (the press), or read-write (the blogs): “A source familiar with the situation who I asked about the current circumstances and the latest state of play of ‘read only’ versus ‘read and write’ had this to say: “Again, it’s a distinction that doesn’t matter too much to me. He shouldn’t have access to this almost 5 trillion dollar payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ He shouldn’t even be at Fiscal Service. None of this should be happening and it’s only going to get worse the longer ‘DOGE’ is here and the more they learn about what they can do and get away with.” In other words, while it’s good news that they are reacting to our reporting, the situation still remains catastrophic at best and we can’t relent until this has been resolved.”
* * * “The blatant lie behind Elon Musk’s power grab” [Vox]. “‘We have $36 trillion of national debt growing at a rapid rate,’ the billionaire investor Bill Ackman posted on X Tuesday. ‘All Americans must therefore make their voices heard loud and clear about how much they support DOGE, Elon and our president’s efforts to help our country. We cannot let DOGE fail as our country is rapidly on the path to insolvency.’ There are many reasons to reject this argument. The United States is not going to become ‘insolvent’ any time soon. And preserving the rule of law is likely more important to our nation’s long-term well-being than slashing federal spending…. DOGE, meanwhile, is ostensibly focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. But it is not mathematically possible to offset entitlement spending or tax cuts by eliminating such waste (and identifying fraudulent or wasteful disbursements in advance is easier said than done). Musk has claimed, without evidence, that there is $1.7 trillion in annual waste and fraud — a figure that nearly matches the size of the federal deficit. Yet when DOGE has actually tried to name specific examples of ‘wasteful’ spending, it has offered up programs that have negligible budgetary costs.” • And not, say, the Pentagon. Or the CIA’s black budget. And I long for the day when Stephanie Kelton is Treasury Secretary.
* * * “DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA” [404 Media]. “The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a records transparency law commonly used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable. Instead, DOGE is asserting that rather than reporting up through the Office of Management and Budget as the United States Digital Service did for years, it is reporting through the Executive Office of the President and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Under OMB, it was generally subject to FOIA. Under the White House Chief of Staff, records it creates are generally not subject to FOIA.” • Hi, Susie [waves].
* * * Oh for a moment of blessed silence without Elon’s yammering:
As a Special Government Employee Musk is subject to the Hatch Act…
…which prohibits any partisan commentary while on duty pic.twitter.com/laeQY12ob1
— Brett Bruen (@BrettBruen) February 6, 2025
So that’s alright, then:
Press Sec clarifies that Elon Musk will self-determine when there is a conflict of interest involving him and DOGE.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 5, 2025
* * * “DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers” [Wired]. And the deck: “Experts question whether Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who has gone by ‘Big Balls’ online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems…. Davi Ottenheimer, a longtime security operations and compliance manager, says many factors about Coristine’s employment history and online footprint could raise questions about his ability to obtain security clearance. ‘Limited real work experience is a risk,’ says Ottenheimer, as an example. ‘Plus his handle is literally Big Balls.'” • I’m sure Coristine will do very well. It’s curious we don’t know how many hires DOGE has. They’re presented as a small, elite crew, but “Big Balls” argues against that. 100? 1000?
“The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover” [Wired]. “[Luke Farritor] is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.” • A fascinating project, and one could wish that Farritor had continued as a scholar, instead of joining an neo-reactionary FlexNet.
2024 Post Mortem
“‘Uncommitted’ leaders stand by 2024 strategy after Trump floats Gaza takeover” [NBC]. “Even inside the Harris campaign, there was dissent about whether she needed to take a more aggressive stance for Gaza. A Harris organizer who worked on youth turnout said that senior campaign officials gave them an order: When they sent out mass volunteer or fundraising emails and people replied by asking about Gaza, they were told to mark it as ‘no response.’ The result? They seldom ended up engaging with voters on that issue. ‘We also didn’t create a new category for Gaza responses out of fear that category would be leaked. Instead we were told to mark them as ‘no response,” the organizer said, faulting top Harris campaign leaders for failing to address the issue. ‘The only ‘clowns’ out there are those who were in senior leadership and decided to abdicate on this issue, who silenced a Palestinian speaker at the DNC, and who told us to ignore it every time a voter asked us about Gaza.'” • So the Democrat regulars arranged to lie to themselves in their own polls. Reminds me of a continuing character in Nicole Hollander’s classic series Sylvia, “The Woman Who Lies in Her Journal”:
“Oh, right. Like you never thought of it.”
“Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular” [Politico]. “New internal polling, conducted on behalf of House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, found Musk is viewed negatively among 1,000 registered voters in battleground districts. His approval rating is upside down (43 percent approve to 51 disapprove) and his favorability is even worse (42 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable). And the survey was completed between Jan. 19-25 — before some of Musk’s more extreme moves as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. Pollsters asked respondents for their thoughts on ‘the creation of a government of the rich for the rich by appointing up to nine different billionaires to the administration,’ and found 70 percent opposed with only 19 percent in support — a stat that suggests Democrats have landed on a message that could gain traction with swing voters.” • But what about the good billionaires? Anyhow, I say “ride it out and wait for the midterms.”
“Democrats’ phones bombarded with calls to ‘fight harder'” [Axios]. “Congressional Democrats’ offices are being inundated by phone calls from angry constituents who feel the party should be doing more to combat President Trump and his administration.” But: “‘There has definitely been some tension the last few days where people felt like: you are calling the wrong people. You are literally calling the wrong people,’ said one House Democrat.” • But that’s a familiar tension, isn’t it?
Realignment and Legitimacy
“DEI Is a Failure Because the Civil Rights Movement Wasn’t About Elite Diversity” [Zaid Jilani, The American Saga]. “Not every critic of DEI is motivated by white resentment. Many people criticize these programs because they have little positive impact on diversity, anyway, and there’s a bunch of evidence that diversity trainings can actually make people more prejudiced.” Turning DEI into a self-licking ice-cream cone, since more prejudice requires more training. More: “The reality is that DEI is only tangentially related to the rights and opportunities of minorities. The civil rights movement was not about diversifying corporate or government offices with a few black or brown faces in places of power. It wasn’t about diversity trainings where employees roll their eyes as someone hired by HR lectures them for three hours about their privilege. It was about redistributing power to the masses of people who don’t have it, including white people.” • So it would be nice if we didn’t roll back civil rights too.
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Transmission: Covid
“Nearly 30% of cats, dogs owned by COVID patients had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies by 2021” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy]. “Nearly 30% of cats and dogs belonging to COVID-infected patients in central Texas tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, signaling previous infection, from 2020 to 2021, according to a study published yesterday on the preprint server bioRxiv.”
Variants: H5N1
Oh good:
Both severe cases of #H5N1 – including the death in Louisiana, and the teenager in critical condition in Canada- were D1.1 genotype viruses. This has now been detected in dairy cattle, where most of the infections in humans have been occurring (previous dairy spillovers were w/… https://t.co/05wyTbqyk9
— Abraar Karan (@AbraarKaran) February 5, 2025
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC January 27 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
|
|
|
| Variants [3] CDC January 18 | Emergency Room Visits★[4] CDC January 25 |
|
|
|
| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 3: | National [6] CDC January 31: |
|
|
|
| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens February 3: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 1: |
|
|
|
| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 13: | Variants[10] CDC January 13 |
|
|
|
| Deaths | |
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25: |
|
|
|
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Challenger Job Cuts” [Trading Economics]. US employers announced 49,795 job cuts in January 2025, above 38,792 in December 2024 but down 40% from 82,307 a year earlier. It is also the lowest January job cut total since 2022. ‘January was relatively quiet in terms of job cut announcements. However, we’ve already seen major announcements in the early days of February, so it seems this quiet is unlikely to last,’ said Andrew Challenger, Senior VP of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Technology led all sectors in job-cutting activity in January with 7,488.”
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US rose by 11,000 from the previous week to 219,000 in the last week of January 2025, above market expectations of 213,000. In the meantime, recurring claims rose by 26,000 to 1,886,000 in the previous week, ahead of market expectations of 1,870,000. Despite remaining robust against a historical perspective, the data was in line with the view that the US labor market is due for a slight degree of softening in 2025.”
Manufacturing: “The same Boeing passenger plane keeps being diverted after take-off… what’s going on?” [Independent]. • Registration code N819AN.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 39 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 49 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 4 at 2:10:42 PM ET.
Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament pic.twitter.com/9VJD4jpN89
— Impressions (@impression_ists) February 6, 2025
Public Health
“RealClearFoundation Launches the Journal of the Academy of Public Health” [RealClearScience]. “5 February 2025 (Washington, DC) The RealClearFoundation announces today the launch of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, a revolutionary new scientific journal publishing cutting-edge, peer-reviewed and open access research from the world’s leading scholars of epidemiology, vaccinology, global public health, health policy and related disciplines. The Journal was co-founded by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, formerly of Harvard University. Their shared vision is presented in Dr. Kulldorff’s inaugural paper, “The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward.” • Splendid to see one of the service providers from Stanford’s house of ill fame make good. (Up until this point, I have always considered RealClear* to be conservative, but solid. No more, sadly.
I am not wired today.
APPENDIX
Musk-NRx-Memo-February-5-2025Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From TW:
TW writes: “Hoarfrost, Christmas Day, at Patrick Marsh, Sun Prairie, WI.” Wow!
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
92 comments
Comments are closed.
Sung to the tune of “Camelot”
Our book was written many moons ago here:
“My God told me this land is always mine!”
No matter that you’ve lived a thousand years here
In Palestine.
We’re filled with zealous tribalized conviction
We truly are the favored Chosen Ones
The time is now at hand for your eviction
From Palestine
Palestine! Palestine!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre
But in Palestine! Palestine!
It’s time for Au Revoir.
Our rain is raining down on your keffiyehs
You’re in the way of Donald’s new Back Nine
In short there’s simply not
A less convenient spot
For you to try to live your lives
Than here…in…Pal…e…stine.
Palestine! Palestine!
Our Knesset has decreed
That for Palestine! Palestine!
Mohammed failed to write a deed.
We wish you well in finding a new homeland
Antarctica seems wonderfully benign
In short there’s simply not
A less convenient spot
For you to try to live your lives
Than here…in…Pal…e…stine.
Chef’s kiss … very funny!
Kash Patel’s nomination put on hold. From Forbes, utube. The comments section is worth a look.
BREAKING NEWS: Kash Patel’s Nomination For FBI Director Delayed In Senate Judiciary Committee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz1bmkP4o44
Any one individual Senator or another can do some damage here and there. ” The” Democrats will do nothing about anything. But one or another individual vengeful Democratic Senator might go ” full metal Tuberville” over some things.
The AI gouda done a better job: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2j15r1g09o
Too many ‘cheesy’ jokes come to mind. Best ask Wallace about cheese stats. He’s hard core, not one to be putty in anyone’s hands.
In re Musk and friends:
This reboot is way less entertaining than the original Southland Tales, and I’m surprised the studios approved it after the last one bombed so badly. Sure it was a disjointed, hot mess of a film, but to the extent you could still get the concept & vision the director was going for, it was kind of brilliant. For one, Wallace Shawn played a much better Elon Musk (with his own airship!) than Elon Musk does.
More seriously though, I think the important thing is to focus on doing what you can day-to-day without losing sight of the big, strategic picture. It was just a matter of time before the “norms fairy” (as Lambert has called it) kicked the bucket, and things like this would inevitably follow in the wake. In the end, what will probably put an end to all of these big doge schemes is when they crash and burn. The hard part will be getting to that point and dealing with the aftermath.
Stay safe out there, everyone, and keep doing your best.
I appreciate the encouragement – thanks!
None of us on here has very much agency. But each of us on here has a tiny little itty bit of agency. And we are permitted just enough degrees of freedom to use that agency a little bit one way or another.
So I will keep on living my tiny little witness on my ongoing part-time basis. I do have just enough agency over my home thermostat to choose to either set it to 72 degrees or to 64 degrees. I have set it at 64 degrees.
So there you go. Agency.
Good comment and observation. When you say ” In the end, what will probably put an end to all of these big doge schemes is when they crash and burn. The hard part will be getting to that point and dealing with the aftermath.” other people would say “The hard part, after Trump’s staff goes through the FBI/CIA/FDA/CDC and other secretive and corrupt agencies, will be dealing with the aftermath. The hope is that Trump can put an …. end to all of these big (CIA etc) schemes “.
It’s unclear to me that what DOGE is doing is Trumps intent. Musk is a kid in a candy store and is doing whatever he feels like, I suspect 99% for Musk, with whatever window treatment he needs to add for his conversations with the Donald.
Power’s funny when “ambition counters ambition”, when Trump sorts out he’s been played the show should be spectacular.
Or I’m wrong.
Or the things being uncovered are too outre to be ignored.
Joe Rogan is on the case. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9jXMEzCZY&ab_channel=JREClips
Partial list starts at 3:00 minute mark.
So we spend many billions on woke nonsense imperialism? We spend even more on the kind of imperialism involving actual bombs, and you can’t convince me that condoms for Gaza (or whatever) is a bigger waste of money than the F35. Rogin reading off the list without any kind of awareness of the budget just reinforces how distorting the Lib v Trump narrative is.
“But a CNN KFile review of Rubio’s past comments shows he has been for more than a decade a major supporter of foreign aid and USAID, which in fiscal year 2023 distributed more than $40 billion in foreign aid to more than 160 different countries.” https://news.wttw.com/2025/02/05/marco-rubio-s-years-strong-support-usaid-stand-contrast-his-sudden-criticism-aid-agency
Hate to cite CNN, but there are good points here. Maybe the big CIA schemes will go away, or maybe not, or maybe they’ll be smaller CIA schemes limited to the “our” hemisphere, e.g., Venezuela. Anyway, I have about zero faith that Trump wants to do away with CIA schemes, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Rubio’s former (current?) views have nothing to do with anything.
Deceptive headline indeed. Anyone in the room has been through the parties and hazing and has pledged loyalty.
My goodness. How is this obscure?
> My goodness. How is this obscure?
Had you been following the story, you would have noticed that the timeline for Bessent’s gift of privilege to Elon’s operatives has now changed. It’s much earlier than previosly reported.
“As hard as it is to fathom, NRx thinking now forms a significant part of the theoretical universe that contemporary political figures and ‘proto-theorists’ such as Dominic Cummings (in the UK) (Cummings, 2020; Lewis et al., 2002; Mulhall, 2020; Volpicelli, 2020; Wolf, 2020) and Steve Bannon (in the US) (Goldhill, 2017; Gray, 2017) draw upon and are attempting to promulgate into mainstream political discourse.”
Bannon hates these people’s f’ing guts, does a damned good job of explaining their vision in that Times interview, which–full of contradictions though he may be–is incredibly interesting, IMO a must-watch. (The snipped of Palxntyr’s CEO, noting that killing your enemies is sometimes necessary (yesterday) should make clear that some evil fx are now at the helm and we have become much of humankind’s outright enemy. Looks like you don’t need a sub to watch the interview with Bannon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/opinion/steve-bannon-on-broligarchs-vs-populism.html
> Bannon hates these people’s f’ing guts, does a damned good job of explaining their vision in that Times interview, which–full of contradictions though he may be–is incredibly interesting, IMO a must-watch.
This is a “theoretical universe,” not a team sport. People can hate each other’s guts and yet share premises and priors. Jefferson hated Hamilton, after all.
TBF, while I don’t trust Bannon whether he means the things he says or they’re deep-cover, I’ve always thought there’s a possibility he is actually one of America’s most fanatical leftists. Most people still want the honor & glory from their own team, but there’s a rare breed that hates the system so much they’ll go full Nechayevschina.
And most of those methods typically involve pretending to join the other side: butter up wealthy people, take their money, encourage their dumbest ideas, inform on more naive leftists to the cops, etc. IIUC he’s definitely familiar with a lot of the Marxist tradition too.
Who can say for sure though, and obviously, we all have to focus on what we can control and what we can know.
As I read it, the suggestion is that Bannon is a proponent of NRx. He is adamantly opposed, a professed populist while they believe in an aristocratic tech elite.
I don’t get the impression, from that interview among other things on Bannon’s side and on what I’ve read of the neoreactionaries, that they have the same premises and priors. Some of the same enemies, mainly, and a willingness to operate in a broad enough coalition against them. But neoreactionaries are explicitly anti-nationalist (Yarvin’s idea of a utopia, IIRC, is a high-tech corporate monarchic city-state in a world of such, with no room for what he thinks are more leftism-prone nation-states, while the oligarchs are transnational by the nature of their business and milieu), pro-market and technological progress-first. Bannon is, for all of his other oddities, fairly consistently a populist nationalist sometimes willing to compromise grudgingly with the marketists to fight the state establishment.
Agree with the exception of “marketists” although I guess that depends on your definition.
Thiel etc explicitly seek out monopoly opportunities. See eg: https://www.wsj.com/video/peter-thiel-why-monopolies-are-a-good-thing/3D9A5E99-02E5-42EB-8B10-ED8E37FA26DD
They seek to open markets up (for example prying open the defence budget from the Big 5 chokehold) but have no interest in competition as a goal itself.
Fair enough. I was thinking of their anti-regulatory inclinations most of all, but I’m sure the market isn’t an end in itself for them the way it had been for, say, hardcore Russian liberals and probably for other old-school economic liberals too. It seems to me that Thiel et al want a free market: free from government interference (unless it directly favours them, I suppose, or is it still taboo?) and free for them to take over more of it. While Bannon might reluctantly swallow that but at the very least has no real antipathy towards regulation (in the interview he’s strongly in favour of, say, Lina Khan and her work, but I’m not sure how consistent that stance has been or will be).
Thanks for the link.
I think a debate between populist Steve Bannon and populist Thomas Frank would be interesting. What would be the points of agreement and points of disagreement?
I can’t give you Bannon v Musk, but there was a famous debate between Thiel and Graeber:
https://davidgraeber.org/videos/david-graeber-vs-peter-thiel-where-did-the-future-go/
(edit: Bannon v Frank, not Musk)
iirc: Bannon was very close with Thiel during Trump1. Thiel bailed on Trump1 after Bannon was sidelined. They shared a desire to radically overturn things.
Since then, I’ve no idea but would believe they have parted ideological ways.
Wikipedia on The Hatch Act:
Italics mine. Further down:
Goes on to explain the exemptions which are not relevant. Hatch Act does not prevent free speech, just speech in support of a political campaign.
Hmm, about those early retirement offers…
Throw it on the bonfire of extra-constitional activities.
There you go.
Musk could undergo rapid unscheduled disassembly if he doesn’t go by the real rule book.
So I am going to attempt again…”These are not the budget cuts” you are looking for using Jedi mind tricks…
Yes I will suppose that in the ending of this effort they just might, might I say, get to the real true beef in this proverbial cow they want to slice and dice. So far they’re just offering up the chopped steak, but the porterhouse cut, the bone in ribeye cut so to speak is where the real budget cutting would have a possible and more broad impact. Treading carefully here would be a surprise but not surprising, and I’m highly cynical as it goes..The biggest impact budget items are gonna have to hurdle the hue and cry from US Senators like our own SC senior senator Graham…Ugh.
Adding…those fighter F-35 A planes are simply replica models intended for display only, not designated for military flight! If the military wanted a jobs program for shipyards in say Mobile, AL, or elsewhere on the Northeast coast just admit it is so.
The big “naval” shipyard on the North American Gulf Coast is at Pascagoula, Mississippi, along with a proper Navy base. Just west of there are the Keesler Airforce base and the Navy Seabee base at Biloxi/Gulfport. All are doing well.
The really effective strategy here would be to put some truly independent minded comptrollers in the Offices of Procurement.
Oh, let us say, emulate the Chinese here and make both the offering and the receipt of bribes a capital offence.
Follow the money.
AOC’s chief of staff is primarying Nancy Pelosi. [Yahoo News]
Part of me suspects he’s doing so with Pelosi’s permission. AOC can’t win me back this easily, not after seeing who she’s been hanging out with.
Lol, I agree. That’s got more than a whiff of theater to it.
I must admit, the idea of a catfight has its charms.
Bravo Lambert & commentariat! Keep it up!
That Turner is quite a piece!
What gets me is the joy in the painting. I suspect he loved parliament burning.
Sports Desk entry, as second generation professional football team owner passes away at the very impressive age of 102. Da Bears lone Super Bowl winning season happened long ago, back in the 1986 season. Admittedly the team had won championships prior to the SB era.
Just passing along, the Chicago Bears have zero or no particular role to be played in this weekend’s SB LIX playing on Sunday evening….
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/43720284/virginia-halas-mccaskey-bears-owner-matriarch-dies-102
I have also heard the upcoming “sports event” described as SB SUX.
A most excellent and quite hilarious comment from one or another of the ESPN offerings on Thursday morning, courtesy of former player Bart Scott…at least in their discussions on this current run of SB appearances by those KC Chiefs…
“No one wants to watch John Wick 6.”. And with all apologies to varied commenters here who have a soft spot for Andy, Patrick and even learned to accept that Taylor Swift is indeed a Chiefs fan, but that is a great line!
Sometimes even a blink pig finds an acorn. Here is one such time. It is titled ” I’m sure it’ll turn out fine”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/clevercomebacks/comments/1iis5ld/im_sure_itll_turn_out_fine
If this happens, those who have faith in Team DOGE should keep right on flying. And I hope that they do.
“They have no relevant experience”
Thank you Hillary – you have pretty much perfectly summed up the entirety of my encounters with “credentialed” federal employees for the past 4 years. I assure you, this is not just a DOGE problem. The more people like Hillary say things like this – the more angry those of us who have to deal with these incompetents get. She does not have to deal with the incompetents so how would she even know? She and her foundation apparently just get their checks sent to them every month from all kinds of federal NGOs. Dealing with problems is for us little people.
After innumerable encounters with agencies like CDC and FDA over the past 5 years that yielded zero results after hours on the phone, talking to so many who have absolutely no clue what they are doing, all the while dealing with people’s life or death issues – literally how dare she say such an imbecile thing. It is quite obvious that is so many of our federal agencies those with “relevant experience” are those that are the most incompetent.
The federal employees that have known what they were doing in my life were the uncredentialed ones. I no longer use the word uneducated because those without advanced degrees are often rungs in the ladder higher in general intelligence and common sense than the “credentialed” ones. I will give this warning again – if you encounter any health provider who has more than MD after their name – AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE. The gentleman at the CDC I had the privilege of dealing with a year or so ago – who had no business at all in that position – has literally 17 initials and 6 degrees after his name on the website. He had no clue in the world what he was talking about or doing. He did not know simple basic concepts about medical statistics. And this is not isolated at all.
The National Park employees with no degrees have been exemplary anywhere we have been as have been the IRS employees I have had to deal with. All uncredentialed.
The incompetence is so widespread, this is not the winning slam they think it is. It just reminds us all of the grief and frustration.
As long as the Dems keep shooting their own feet with this kind of stuff like Hillary did – when we all can see the vast problems – the more losing their side will be.
Thanks Doc. My dad always said “nothing beats experience.” Cut to now and my town library in the past few years has replaced most of the long timers with young people holding a Masters of Library Science. This isn’t to say the latter are incompetent or the situation is critical like that of medicine. But it does show how credentialism has become all. We have an educational industrial complex to go with all the rest.
As I said yesterday I know someone who works for the Interior Dept, is worried about her job, and she is very competent. So I think one must say that Trump’s scattergun approach to the issue of good government is unfair. But there is the competence problem you talk about. What to do?
Yes. There is risk equating employees with management. I’ve just finished up about five hours of shoveling snow as my trusty and extraordinary wife and partner in snow management is down in the city trying to piece back together her shattered dream of being part of saving the world. Is a managed approach out of the question? Mind you, I’m open to the idea that it no longer is.
Yes, but the hyper-financialized influences…like Private Equity in health care are a part of those changes.
The hyper-financialization is not changing.
>The more people like Hillary say things like this – the more angry those of us who have to deal with these incompetents get. She does not have to deal with the incompetents so how would she even know? She and her foundation apparently just get their checks sent to them every month from all kinds of federal NGOs. Dealing with problems is for us little people.
I guess I’ve been living with the illusion that Hillary and her crew were/are the incompetents. Unless her mission was to destroy anything she’s involved in.
Your comment about credentials and the common person is something that’s seen practically every day.
Sarcasm off now.
Fellow readers: Is this a picture of a striped skunk whose stripes have merged into one big pure white back?
Or is this a hog-nosed skunk?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Skunks/comments/1iivats/his_majesty/
When I traveled more frequently, I paid attention to the relative comfort of the planes. Legroom and such helped reduce the ordeal aspect of each flight and widebodies were mostly good except for the ingress/egress time.
If I fly much now, I may have to search out the registration or tail number of each craft, to the extent searchable, to see how airworthy it may be. What was once a type of commodity now has greater specificity and associated risk. What fresh hells await?
Mark Goodwin of Unlimited Hangout talking about a US bitcoin reserve. utube, ~1hr 26+ minutes.
DID THE US GOVERNMENT CREATE BITCOIN? W/ Mark Goodwin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XA8xhBxv_A
“A federal judge in Seattle has once again blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the guarantee embedded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that every person born in the U.S. is an American citizen.
[Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour]…granted a preliminary injunction to prevent it from taking effect nationwide. Coughenour’s injunction blocks Trump’s order from taking effect until the court case ends, or until it is overruled by a higher court.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-in-seattle-continues-block-on-trump-birthright-citizenship-order/
Turley did a piece on this saying Trump’s purpose may be more political than expecting the SC will overturn longstanding precedent and agree with him. It also says that in almost all EU countries now at least one parent has to be a citizen.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/02/03/spoiling-for-a-fight-why-challenging-birthright-citizenship-is-a-win-win-for-trump/
It’s not unusual for Trump to be “delighted” to foster division with a wedge issue based on dehumanizing the “other” and proposing ways to eliminate them.
Didn’t he get his start in presidential politics as a political pundit claiming he was “investigating” Obama’s citizenship?
Did turley mention that just about every EU country still has a health care system that still delivers healthcare? and much better than the USA? and that life expectancy in the empire continues to fall for most americans, and that fall correlates very closely with declining income? If he didn’t, well then to hell with turley.
If you’ll bother to read his column he’s just saying that Europeans have become less immigrant friendly as well but the situation is more complicated there because many of the immigrants are former colonial subjects.
And if you look at the contemporary statements of the sponsors of the 14th it’s not at all clear that they intended it to apply to anything but slavery. I don’t think his–yes Fox commentator–legal analysis is about health care.
“Subject: Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by – Neoreactionaries
Wait until everybody gets a load of the techno-feudal gospel they are going to use “soft power” aid for.
Didn’t like “transgender” aid? You’ll love “transhumanism” aid.
NRx is the Alien bursting from the distended stomach of the MAGA victory.
As in the movies, it doesn’t go well for the host, or the faces the Alien subsequently lands on.
Some facts about sanctuary cities. They in fact do NOT supersede any federal law. -Local police are not ICE, CBP, or DHS nor should they be. They are not to ask for status of anyone on the street. Simple. If someone is arrested, any ICE etc warrant shows up and the person is handed over to them. (this is hardly ever mentioned is it?)
-Local police are not supposed to tell those agencies if they arrest or ticket any ‘illegal’. But ICE and all the federal agencies can look at local police databases, fingerprints etc. And on the other hand , “The law says police can tell immigration authorities about an inmate’s upcoming release if that person has been convicted of a serious crime or felony, such as: murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and arson, among many others. ” Note: a serious crime.
-So is California some ‘illegal’ sanctuary? Of course not. ..”In the first two months of 2018 after the sanctuary law took effect, it arrested 8,588 people in California, or about 14% of all arrests nationwide, according to a filing in the lawsuit by Trump’s Justice Department. ” and “It is up to ICE to pick up individuals on their release. Between 2018 and 2023, California jails transferred more than 4,000 individuals to immigration authorities. At the same time, ICE doesn’t always show up when someone is released from jail or prison. For example, ICE picked up about 80% of undocumented immigrants released from state prisons between 2017 and 2020, according to a 2022 Senate legislative analysis.” here is one article. Local police in every sanctuary city cooperate completely with ICE and all the federal police forces. https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/01/california-sanctuary-state/?fbclid=IwY2xjawISBbBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHeBBJhVbin999QsmXViqnslhTkICIfXvz7IeLZk8JnSsiqoBatr9spO-Gw_aem_t8ssVCOj-srZkKQwmHvElw
Courts (1):
Courts (2):
Courts (1):
Courts (2):
The order should also include a check for backdoors, given the Elon’s robot dogs already infested the code when they had write access.
The order should also include a check for backdoors, given the Elon’s robot dogs already infested the code when they had write access.
Any other backdoors in our Fed system or all those Microsoft work stations? Or if it was a cheese would it be Swiss?
Of course if my tinfoil hat is correct those doors belong to the FBI, CIA,NSA,etc.
Personally I pretty much assume that we have no privacy from the latter. Didn’t Snowden say as much?
And I have to wonder if ALL Americans are kept on servers equally.
Lot’s of really quiet billionaires about the possibility of Elon rifling through their info.
Bezos and Zuck really don’t care?
I imagine some Chinese Government employee chuckling as he watches the DOGE ball in the Treasury database through some antique code fault from the late Reagan era. An AI sniffed it out for him or her.
Never mentioned in all this is what countries like Russia and China think about watching a billionaire being given the digital keys to the kingdom and having a bunch of kids rummaging through absolutely vital files that keep the country going. Certainly their own hackers would be keeping close watch on any opening vulnerabilities in the changes made to these systems. Do they watch with amusement? Or do they watch with concern that the US may find itself be thrown into chaos?
I expect they’ve been preparing for worst case scenarios regarding the US for five or ten years at least.
They will have noticed the Russian paper predicting a us break up published six or eight years ago if I recall correctly.
Like the Russians, they have government bureaucracy built for a purpose OTHER than giving money to those who provide bribes, I mean campaign donations that supports serious enquiry into national interests.
Re chaos–in the last few years here we periodically come to a point where the govt is either in danger of being shut down or actually does shut down due to disagreements over the budget. Somehow the republic survives and I do get SS and am not too worried about Musk and his script kiddies. Obviously destroying the federal payments system isn’t going to be a positive for Trump or Musk either so I don’t get the assumption that they are being utterly reckless.
Here’s Gilbert Doctorow with a suggestion of what is going on–a direct assault on the liberal state with its global enthusiasms. Which is to say to uncover the deep state you have to go deep. Of course people in DC who make a living off our current hegemonic stance see this as the end of the world.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/02/06/transcript-of-dialogue-works-edition-of-6-february-2/
As for Musk, when he bought Twitter and came out against censorship he became an enemy of that state and was increasingly being targeted by Biden and the Democrats. Of course it’s about him and his money and power but there’s also the power on the other side to consider.
Doctorow may be a bit too glib but you can’t dismiss out of hand that a Trump campaign for peace and not war is what is really going on. Doctorow says the announcement on Tuesday was unserious and meant to tie Netanyahu’s hands and force a continuation of the truce. Larry Johnson also seems to be coming to this conclusion.
https://sonar21.com/what-is-trump-really-thinking-about-gaza/
Alastair Crooke joins the chorus or perhaps has been leading it.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/02/06/the-greatest-geo-political-showmans-inside-out-political-solution/
They’re probably only seeing the pleebs info.
Like I said, strangely quiet from other billionaires.
Who’s in charge of enforcing that order?
I don’t worry about back doors so much as I worry about bypassing all the normal processes used for deploying or modifying software on a “mission critical system”:
Why DOGE’s meddling at Treasury could have catastrophic consequences for the US economy
https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/why-doges-meddling-at-treasury-could-have-catastrophic-consequences-for-the-us-economy/#post-heading
It’s just that making a small boo boo and busting the system for a while has extremely bad consequences.
It’s funny, I had to interact with all the IT contractors that kept the corporate workstations, laptops, smartphones, printers and servers running (mostly Dell), and when they found out what my group worked on, and that it would shut down the factory really quickly if it went down – they didn’t want to have a damn thing to do with that equipment. Too risky.
If this hasn’t been posted before, here it is:
This from CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research):
U.S. Blindsides Panama, Saying American Government Ships Will Get Free Canal Passage
Trump wants US military ships to get free canal passage.
It is a WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/u-s-blindsides-panama-saying-american-government-ships-will-get-free-canal-passage-af43055e
Panama has already shot down that bs claim by Rubio’s State Department. The US pays only about a million for transit of its warships which is not even pocket lint for the US so it sounds like Rubio was imitating what Trump would say to big note himself-
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/americas/panama-canal-state-department-hnk-intl/index.html
Looks like one of the Doge staffers w access to treasury is out https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/06/doge-staffer-steps-down-after-racist-posts-emerge/
Re; Trump administration
[Sports odds– plus a good article explaining the reasoning behind these odds]
How Long Will Donald Trump Last As US President?
[A lot of stuff in here, so I won’t summarize or attempt to excerpt]
https://www.gambling.com/uk/news/donald-trump-exit-date-odds
So 2028 is the year to bet on as the year of a Trump early departure from the presidency. And by doing a news-search, we can see that JD Vance is a very busy boy and working on burnishing his resume.
I may be one of the few commentators that listen to astrologers on a regular basis. That being said, my go to Canadian astrologer has been saying for a while that Trump any not make it through his presidency. Either health issues or fill in the blank. Pretty wild watching his first few weeks. Thinking I should get that passport issue cleared up soon.
So a J.D. Vance Presidency then?
If either he or a few peeps in the Trump 47 administration think that the McKinley administration was one to mimic and follow…well Teddy Roosevelt succeeded him but not in the best of circumstances. For a few myriad reasons the parallels to that era of robber barons wielding influence and power. Hey money equaled power then as well.
Back then times were decidedly different…I mean the buggy whip industry was still a legitimate business. But also…piles of horse manure.
Well, everyone, now it looks like “thinking outside the box” has a literal meaning.
Re; Covid
Would love to read this, but it appears to require a subscription to access the study:
Psychopathy and COVID-19: Callousness, impulsivity, and motivational reasons for engaging in prevention behavior
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/spc3.12900
So I’m writting a post (actual a series of posts for professional reasons on another website) regarding what appears to be a sharp-increase in unethical behavior since 2020 as related to the field of Industrial Maintainance, so working on researching for these.
However, I also am currently dealing with a psychopath (for real– not hyperbole) in my life: a Medicare Advantage broker/agent for United Healthcare who expedited the death of my step-mother and nearly killed my father. This actually takes precedence because there’s still an immediate safety-issue as well as an ungodly legal mess to deal with (long-story, but I’m writing about this too).
There’s quite a bit of overlap between the main subjects I am researching, although some aspects I am looking at are the possible effects of covid (both in the social and the physical senses) on the self-regulation of behavior within individuals. Aside from finding out that it’s still early in the study-game, I am seeing there are a growing number of studies out there on impulsivity and “increased moral disengagement and counterproductivity at work” caused by the pandemic:
Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumers’ Impulse Buying: The Moderating Role of Moderate Thinking
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8583521/
Job Insecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic on Counterproductive Work Behavior of Millennials: A Time-Lagged Mediated and Moderated Model
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8394277/
The social effects caused by this pandemic seem to be blossoming like weeds in the springtime, only I don’t think it’s Spring– yet.
German JUNGE WELT interview with Rafael Correa on coming Ecuadorian elections
machine translation from German:
“I have never seen such a rapid destruction of a country”
Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa on the sell-out of the Latin American republic and the possibility of a victory of the progressive forces in the upcoming elections
Interview: Pablo Iglesias
https://archive.is/FSeyr
You ain’t seen nutt’n yet, now that its President has US Exceptionalism ™ on the case.
Maybe Trump can declare Ecuador to be a Protectorate like he tried to do with Gaza. Or perhaps the EU can tell him to cancel the elections due to malign Russian influences coming from *checks notes* DeepSeek.
A report from Asianometry on DeepSeek:
DeepSeek’s Lessons for Chinese AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFTqQ4boR-s
I should note that I do not download, use, or interact with AI in any significant way so other than brushing up against the AI programmers at work (they came from the MIC side of the house, and they were very good and entertaining to work with), I have no real experience with AI. But I do think garbage in, garbage out should always be the cautionary rule when dealing with any computer intensive data applications.
There is no meat in this story beyond the quoted text but I’m betting additional details will be forthcoming:
DOGE was tasked with stopping Treasury payments to USAID, AP sources say
“Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular” [Politico].
The Dems will be kept running in circles with all the polling.
re: Subject Capture of Critical U.S. Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries
The Due Dissidence guys host a long interview with Mark Goodwin who comes to the same conclusion. A good bookend to the above article. Fast paced, informative about crypto and Silicon Valley and DARPA, understandable to people not expert in the field. He names the players in DOGE and their histories. utube, ~2hrs
Mark Goodwin on Digital Currency, Surveillance, DOGE, and the Coming Techno-Feudal Order
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bLTLn4lSqQ
Nothing good will come from DOGE in the long run. T is much less populist than he’s been presented as.
Thanks Flora.
Goodwin and regular collaborator Whitney Webb (of Unlimited Hangout) have been way ahead on this story.
I’ve been trying a few AI transcription tools for YouTube but I can’t find anything that satisfies me.
They transcribe the words well enough, but they output doesn’t separate the speakers or present it in an easy to read way
Anybody have a recommendation?
Jesus wept. So-
‘Australia enacted legislation on Thursday imposing mandatory sentences of at least one year in prison for individuals who display Nazi salutes or “hate symbols.” While officials say the updated law is meant to address rising hate speech and extremist behavior in the country, it has also raised concerns over its impact on freedom of expression.’
https://www.rt.com/news/612308-australia-nazi-salute-prison/
But over the past 3 years we have sent $1.5 billion to the Ukraine – including a boatload of military gear – who are rife with actual Nazis.
I think it is too early to try a general strike — but not too early to call for one on a specific date in a year or bit more. Perhaps May Day 2026. for example.
Cory Doctorow has called for a general strike in 2028, when the new, recently signed UAW contracts with all three big USA automakers expire. If no other good date comes up, I would promote Doctorow’s call for a 2028 general strike.
More near term, I’ve been thinking of a holiday shopping boycott. Assuming the country is split politically near 50 / 50, and assume that you can only get around half of the anti-Trump 50 percent to actually engage, it is possible that a national holiday shopping boycott could create a 20 to 25 percent year on year decline in holiday sales. And most retailers need the holiday sales to actually turn a profit for the year.
A holiday shopping boycott need not mean people don’t buy anything. It can just target big chains and online shopping sites for boycott. People can be encouraged to buy their gifts from small, local merchants, or — my favorite — attend some craft fairs, flea markets, and special events that include crafters. I’ve been attending antique engine and tractor shows for over 20 years, and almost all of them include dozens of vendors who make crafted goods for sale, including clothes, decorations, and all kinds of whimsical knick knacks. Many local churches and community centers also have annual craft sales, and some have quarterly or monthly craft sales.
Scott Ritter/Andrei Martyanov with Garland Nixon
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/02/garland-scott-and-yours-truly.html
TC 33:00 – Ritter suggests that European nations will each cut single deals with RU. And as such predicts the demise of NATO. I still don´t believe that one however. May be in 30 years due to economic constraints when the wealth has dried up completely. In order for the US to loot Europe they will have to pretend to retain some formal alliance for the coming years.
re: German culture / Palestine
Palestinian artist Fareed Armaly rejected the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Award by the German National Academy of the Arts. Today the Academy suspended the award for 2025.
Well done by Armaly.
Here his letter from summer 2024:
https://www.fareedarmaly.net/about/bio/biblio/2025-kaethe-kollwitz-prize/
“On July 24, 2024, I was notified by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin that I had been awarded the 2025 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. The jury was comprised of artists Ayşe Erkmen, Mona Hatoum, and Eran Schaerf.
On August 7, 2024, I sent my response to the Akademie, stating that while I deeply appreciated the recognition, I would respectfully decline the award.
February 6, 2025, the Akademie released their press statement on the Käthe Kollwitz Prize, which does not fully reflect the central reasoning behind my stance. Now that this prize and my response have entered the public record, I am sharing my full letter here for reference, as it provides the full context and considerations behind my decision.
PDF: Fareed Armaly – “Response Regarding the 2025 Käthe Kollwitz Prize” sent to Akademie der Künste, August 7, 2024″
I don’t just long for Musk to stop yammering but to be irrelevant period (and have before DOGE). Yet we dont always get what we want.
But for those who haven’t been following along, the Musk tweet was triggered by someone who is possibly right up with Adam Schiff as an enemy for the Trump inner circle. Goldman might as well have been gifted the NY Congressional seat after being a key legal counsel for the first Trump impeachment. His involvement in both impeachments is a key part of his resume and is no secret. Less discussed but also known was that he consulted and advised on many of the Trump lawfare cases most notably Bragg’s case in search of a crime that led to Trump’s 34 felony convictions.
I fully expect Goldman will be a Democratic version of MTG for Trumpians and MAGA before summer. He will never do it with her flair for the dramatics, but his style is equally polarizing.
About the Thiel/Musk/NRx crew: it feels like they are re-creating the SA.
“The Damned” (Visconti, 1969) is a very good movie about living during the rise of the Nazi state.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iP-8KynvwQ
“Night of The Long Knives” sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gymjH1Kg_s