Showing posts with label The Second Trump Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Second Trump Administration. Show all posts

Friday, June 5, 2026

Court Watch Part VII. When the last law was down.

Lawyer, St. Thomas More, who was executed for his adherence to his faith. 

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts

The Justice Department is going after James Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell "8647" on a beach somewhere, asserting it was a death threat on President Trump.  Apparently this is due to the old use of the term "86" to do away with and "47" for Donald Trump's completely illegitimate but widely accepted illegal claim to be President.

It wasn't.

This prosecution will go nowhere whatsoever, but it is more evidence that everyone in the Trump Administration is essentially a fascist with no regard for reality or the rule of law right now.  We are in monumentally dangerous territory.  It's 1534 in the United States with Donald Trump our King Henry VIII.

And the spirt of the age has spread:

What Gray did was flat out illegal.  Gray is relying, in essence, on the advice of the Attorney General and when that's a defense, the attorney client privilege is waived.  The AG's office knows that, but it has to defend the privilege  It's being pretty assertive about it.

Gray needs to suffer the penalty of the law here.

Nobody is more opposed to abortion than I am.  I wouldn't allow for the largely bogus "rape and incest" exceptions that many people will.  But this is really beyond the Pale.  Powell should be ashamed of itself for even appoint this guy to its city council.

Elsewhere, in a nation where we brought a modern justice system, it's still functioning.

South Korean court extends prison sentence for wife of ousted president 

May 5, 2026

Headline in the CST:

Judges reject Trump push to obtain state voter rolls

But of course our Secretary of State, Chuck "If you disagree with me you are a radical communist, fascist, monarchist, podiatrist" Gray just handed Wyoming's over.

May 16, 2026

Smith hasn't been confirmed as US Attorney for Wyoming yet.

May 21, 2026

It appears that Trump's settlement deal in his IRS suit may actually prove to be a bridge too far for Senate Republicans.  

The deal, which frankly is the epitome of corruption, would create a slush fund to pay pardoned January 6 criminals for their inconvenience in being prosecuted as traitors to their country.  That's what they are, and they should not have been pardoned, but Trump sought to go one step beyond that and reward the pack of Horst Wessels.  Frankly, as soon as possible, the pardons should be unrung as illegitimate (Trump isn't a legitimate President and can't pardon anyone).  Anyhow, Republicans are openly balking on the slush fund, amazingly.  It must be really angering constituents, or just too much to stomach.

Indeed, they not only are balking, they sidetracked the ICE funding bill, showing that they're actually willing to do something that is guaranteed to send the Orange Mussolini into a screaming fit, but the fit will pit Trump's ICE demands up against his now open and obvious corruption and the hemorrhaging of the US budget.  It'll be interesting to see where this goes, as once they break with Trump, their relationship with Trump is broken, and if he doesn't come to heel, they can't.

By way of an analogous example, Massie wouldn't come to heel on the Epstein files, but he was one man.  Once it's a pack, it tends to grow.

So, a match is on.

May 29, 2026

A court ruled that Trump's adding his name to the Kennedy Center was illegal and ordered it removed within two weeks.

A different judge enjoined the IRS settlement slush fund from going forward.

June 2, 2026

Trump's insurrectionist slush fund seemed to be getting questioned by the court and now the Attorney General is saying it won't occur.

While Wyoming's Congressional delegation didn't protest it, a lot of Republicans in Congress were finding it to be a bridge too far.

June 3, 2026

Lawyers ask Wyoming Supreme Court to intervene in Gray voter data complaint

June 4, 2026

A Wyoming district court held that the whiney fascist crybabies leading the GOP have to follow state law and seat elected Republican precinct members, something another court did two years ago. The state central committee didn't want to do so as that keeps it from picking fascists.  

It argues that its a private entity and doesn't have to follow state law. . . except of course when it comes to getting preferential places on ballots, having the state run party elections for it, and getting to pick members of certain offices when they become vacant. It's fine with all of that.

Satire aside, this would have been an opportunity for the Court to wipe all of that out, and it should have.

June 5, 2026

Wyoming GOP sues state, challenges constitutionality of ban on pre-primary candidate endorsements

All they really have to do is to quit having state funded primaries.

Last edition:

Ballroom Batshit. A demented president goes full bonkers. The 25th Amendment Watch List Fifteenth Edition and Court Watch Part VI.

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. Economics in the Dementia Ward.


May 1, 2026

We're constantly told that tariffs are good for everyone.  But then monarchs come and they're lifted.

He's lost his mind.

Cont:

May 3, 2026

Discount airline Spirit dissolves.

 It was a victim of high aviation fuel, something brought about by Donald Trump's illegal attack on Iran.


May 4, 2026


This has been in the news for awhile, but I haven't posted it yet.

Frankly, the impact of pipelines is mostly in their construction, to it's temporary.  At least for the state.  These pipelines tend to transport Canadian oil, so the impact is less than it might seem.

And the state has got to get over its addiction to petroleum.

Regarding petroleum, the U.S. is now exporting a record amount due to the war with Iran, which doesn't help U.S. citizens whatsoever, as it cause the price of the product to rise, and accelerates U.S. depletion of the resource.  Export of it, save for conditions in which the petroleum cannot be refined here, should be banned.

For that matter, as a resource that nobody contributed to putting in the ground, some thought should be given to nationalizing the resource in some fashion.

Some members of Congress are threatening to ban the import of Chinese electric vehicles as the GOP searches for ways to make a bad situation worse.

May 7, 2026

Headline:

Trade Court Rules Trump’s 10% Global Tariff Is Illegal

A panel of federal judges found that President Trump could not legally impose the tariff on most imports.

No surprise whatsoever.

Anyhow, now this money will have to be refunded too. And Mad King Donny still hasn't refunded the money owed from the last such ruling.

May 13, 2026

Inflation rose to 3.8% last month with the fastest rise in prices in three years, caused by an illegal war with Iran which the demented Mad King Donny has no idea how to end.

Mad King Donny has gone to China.  It'll be a disaster. The best possible result would be if he just gets lost over there, thinks the Chinese babes are cute, decides to marry one, and stays.

June 4, 2026

Casper's car radio store, Car Tunes, is closing after forty years.

And now this:



As an Agrarian, I really hate this.

June 5, 2026

And another one I hate:

If we're going to be Socialist in regard to coal, which we shouldn't be, why not just nationalize the industry?  I ask this seriously, as now we're spending public money on a dying industry.

And not one that's just dying, the rest of the world is racing beyond fossil fuels while the ancient leaders of the United States continue to believe its 1954.

With this pathetic news, we'll start a new edition of this thread.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 3. The Wharton Way.

Friday, May 29, 2026

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 139th Edition: Um, I have to wash my hair that night.

One of the ways to tell if you are held in social esteem is to invite people to a party and have them come up with excuses not to show up.

That's happening to Trump.  Trump was planning a "Great American State Fair" with a host of performers, most of whom have already begged off.



This isn't even up to date, as since this was posted C+C Music factory says he or it (I don't know anything about that act) has said nope as well.

McBride says she'll be on tour with the Dixie Chicks.  Bret Michaels says he never planned to go to a political event, which this has become, and is concerned about the safety of his people.  Young MC has also said he never intended to go to a political event.  I'd be surprised if any of these people show up.

Somebody will.  It'll likely be country acts that trend heavily far right, which a few do.  But this level of rapid backing out is fairly remarkable.

The reference to state fairs is interesting.  Are state fairs a big deal anywhere anymore?  I'm sincere.  They still occur, but I don't think they were what they once were, so that's an oddly nostalgic reference, I think.

On other spectacles. . . 

I've hesitated to say it, as its controversial, and can be taken the wrong way, but MAGA contains a heavy element of white trash in it.  Not everyone by any means.  I know a few very well educated supporters of Donald Trump, and a few who are supporters for what I'd regard as regional reasons.  But there's some flat out white trash as well.  "Professional" wrestling is a white trash theatre, and Trump is hosting an event on the White House grounds.  

Figures.

Hosting a wrestling event gives lie to the entire "I need a ballroom as if I don't get one I'll be in danger" crap.  It'll be a big, stupid, hootenanny.  If you were concerned about safety, you wouldn't host it.

It's so unfortunate that Trump is President for the 250th Anniversary of American independence as he symbolizes everything the nation rebelled against.  It's like simply closing a page on American democracy.  We had local democracy and colonial rule, went to democracy, improved our democracy, and then crashed into oligarchy.  It's questionable if the nation will be able to recognize itself after Trump is done destroying everything he touches.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 138th Edition: Congress is having hearings on UFOs.

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

We Investigated Social Security Offices. What We Found Will Shock You.

 


I'm not shocked.  Life in Trump's America.

People who depend on Social Security are billionaires who get trips to Epstein Island. Why would Trump care about  them?

Friday, May 22, 2026

Una más, por favor. An illegal war with Cuba, 1.ª Edición.


21 de mayo de 2026

Having not really completed anything meaningful with Venezuela, other than having tasted blood and developing fondness for it, and having gotten us into an endless war with Iran we're losing, King Donny the Mad is about to launch a war against Cuba, starting with a claim that Raul Castro, age 94, must be brought to justice over a US civilian aircraft that was shot down by the Cubans in 1996.

Oh horse poop.

Some in Demented Donnie's administration have been drooling over a chance to attack Cuba since the easily manipulated narcissist illegitimately moved back into the Oval Office.  Military action against Cuba has been a desire of displaced Cubans and their descendants in the US since 1959.  If the US attacked the island and removed the government, Lil' Marco would claim it as a victory attributable to him, one way or another, in the 2028 Presidential campaign he's clearly running in.

That's part of the problem.  Influential "Republicans" (there are no real Republicans left anymore) like Marco and the Robot Ted Cruz would do anything for a Cuba Libre other than actually live in Cuba.

Of course, with this administrations lust for territorial acquisition, as desire expressed by some imperialist Republicans going into the Spanish American War, the annexation of Cuba with the goal of making it a state, would be the more likely goal in the short term.  If Trump, or Marco, pulled that off, the irony would be that it would be solidly Democratic and admitting Puerto Rico as a state would happen immediately thereafter.

Probably the only thing that's really been holding this up has been the commitment of forces to Iran, where Iran is deploying Muhammed Ali's old "rope a dope" strategy and refusing to surrender even though King Donny assures us he won and the war is over.  Actually defeating Iran will require a ground invasion that even Donny, who can choke down killing schoolgirls, can't seem to muster up the will for and which the American public doesn't want.  The war itself has already achieved a level of unpopularity matched by that of the Vietnam War after Tet.

But, the thought is, this will go better. . . or at least Cuban Americans will like the result.

The threats against Castro started a couple of days ago.  Within the last twenty four hours China, which Trump went to and acted like a orphaned puppy, has warned the US to knock it off.

May 22, 2026

The future of Cuba belongs to the people of Cuba is terms of how they're governed, what the system looks like and so forth, but the national security threat, that's 100% something we're going to focus on because that's about America.

Marco Rubio.

What crap.  

Cuba has been a Communist country since 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrow the authoritarian government there (it wasn't obvious he was Communist at first).

They have not attacked us since then. 

We have, however, effectively attacked them, landing Cuban contras there in 1961.

Rubio knows this, however.  His parents were immigrants from Cuba who came over before the 1959 revolution, and who actually planned on returning to the country before the Communist nature of the revolution became apparent.

And that's part of the problem here. Cuban Americans are never going back to Cuba, but they imagine Cuba Libre with the same zeal as Irish Americans imagined a Republican Ireland.  In the latter case, that unthinking zeal helped contribute to decades of strife in Ireland, and here it's contributed to decades of misery in Cuba.

Efforts to force a political change in Cuba should have ceased in 1961 when John F. Kennedy withdrew air support for the Cuban contras.  There was no good reason at all other than anger not to normalize economic relations with Cuba at least by the early 1980s.  That's what we should do now.

Ho Chi Minh wouldn't recognize Communism in Vietnam today and, if transported from wherever his soul went to, he's be convinced that South Vietnam had won the war and reformed itself.  If we weren't keeping Cuba on the trophy shelf of failures, the same would be true for Cuba.

But we live in a dangerous age.  Donald Trump is desperately searching for something for Americans to remember him by (and we certainly have plenty to recall right now).  Marco Rubio has the misplaced child of immigrants probable loyalty to an imaginary paradise or imaginary would be paradise.

We're cruising right back into Havana's harbor where every American military adventure to date has been a disaster.

Remember the Maine.

Thursday, May 21, 2026

National Park Service Uprooted on the National Mall


When I become President, every golf course in the United States will be grazing land.

Same thing with shopping malls.

National Park Service Uprooted on the National Mall

I know how to play golf, but I don't golf.  It's boring and sanitized.  The kind of sport for people who want to go outside, but fear the outside, or are hopelessly urban.  Granted, that's not the fault of all of the hopelessly urban, and that's the place for golf.

Golf is one of those sports that underwent an evolution in my mind when I was quite young.  I won't say that is rational or correct. 

My mother was a first rate golfer.  My father didn't golf at all.  None of the men I knew when very young golfed, and when I came to know some that did, as I aged, they were men who didn't do the things, or didn't do them to the same extent, as the men I knew.  Golfing men didn't hunt much, they didn't fish much, they weren't going to be found at brandings.  They all tended to be from the upper upper middle class, or the lower wealthy.  In my mind, they were effeminized as they were playing what seemed to me to be an effeminate sport.

That view of golf hasn't changed much for me and indeed its been reenforced as I've grown older.  I know that there are some really manly men that golf, but I don't know very many.  Of guy's guys that I know that golf, there's one really nice guy I know who does, and that somehow fits him.  He's a computer guy.  And there's one that's just too out of shape to do anything else, and you can be pretty out of shape and play golf if you use a cart.  Neither of them are effeminate.

I don't think, actually, that these feelings are as unique as a person might think.  At one point in time lawyers were associated with golf (not anymore) and some golfed as they felt they had to.  This was particularly the case with new lawyers.  I've known at least two new lawyers who golfed as they thought that's what lawyers did.  Interestingly, of those two lawyers, I know a third person, a woman, who insists that one of them is "gay" just by her observations of him, even though he's been a married man for years.  Maybe the golfing was too effeminizing.

In a weird sort of way, Donald Trump emphasized this a couple of years ago when he simply gushed over his probably totally fictional observations of the size of Arnold Palmer's penis.

Seriously?

Oddly enough, golf was definitely associated with lesbianism at one time.  This was the case for decades, and in some ways it cuts against what I'm noting here.  As a sport, it was a sport that women could participate in and do very well as professionals, and so perhaps, maybe, women who were sort of masculine in their internal inclinations participated at a higher rate that would have simply existed in the general population.

Oddly, golf at one time was highly segregated in every imaginable way.  Blacks flat out weren't allowed on private golf courses, but often women weren't either.  Lawsuits were required to end that.  Wealth played a role to play on private courses, and still does.  Indeed wealth played a role in keeping women off of golf courses, as business deals were conducted on them from which they were omitted, and that helped bring about the lawsuits later on.

All that probably offends my Irish egalitarianism.

I can't say much for golf. 

Golf also seems to me to be the ultimate boring urban upper middle class excuse for a sport, at least at one time.  Manly men might shoot hoops, or go play flag football, or something, but at one time towns and real estate developers put in golf courses as it was the default sport for aging white people.

Tennis is the other urban sport, or was.  It's joined by basketball and pickle ball in that category, the latter being a newer sport whose existence I don't understand.  The thing is, however, that to play any of those sports well, you really need to be in shape.  The same kind of guy that can really drive a tennis ball over the net can drive a baseball right down the field at lethal speed.

Supposedly golf has declined in popularity in recent decades, and its notable that at the same time the demographics of the country are changing.  Golf was heavily racist at one time and indeed it was more recently than a person might imagine, although there have been some really notable Hispanic and Black golfers.  Golf is apparently of Scottish origin, where it would have been pretty darned manly, so its an import of the British Isles.  People from other cultures don't really have any roots in it, and for that matter, lots of European Americans don't.  Shooting was the sport for Germans, and competitive shooting, like polo, was a major military sport.  Shooting was, and in fact is, a major civilian sport in many parts of the country.  Basketball is an American sport, as is baseball, and both were played by rural and lower middle class demographics at first.  Basketball is particularly interesting this way as it comes from farming country with bitter winters, so its a good indoor sport for a lot of pretty athletic people.

Football is actually of British origin, but the origin is from the British lower class and it reflects that origin to this day.  Hunting is a male human universal, which recent anthropology suggest had more female participation in antiquity than previously imagined.

Gardening, hunting, shooting, walking, running and nearly anything just seems to have more merit that golf.  But it hangs on in the minds of the elderly, a game of privilege from their youth.

So that a bloated old man with money would choose to wreck things for golf, makes sense.  People tend to hang on to the era in which they were young, and the wealthy have more of an ability to do that than other people.  The super wealthy have the ability to afflict that on everyone else.

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Thursday, May 20, 1976. Kleptocracy.

The President of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko endorsed kleptocracy, the practice of public officials stealing tax money for personal use, in a speech at a stadium before 70,000 people and millions of listeners, noting that he himself "personally spent on average more than 35 percent of the national budget on himself" during the 1970s and 1980s.

He warned; "If you want to steal, steal in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight you will soon be caught."

He was eventually overthrown and died in exile at age 66.

This sort of open corruption used to be pretty much a third world thing, and I guess it still is in some ways.  Now, of course, we're seeing corruption of a different type, but rivaling, or exceeding it, in the United States, which pretty much informs the world of what we now are.

The acrylic bubble of the Montreal Biosphere, designed by Buckminster Fuller for Expo 67, was destroyed by a fire during remodeling.

It was rebuilt, but without the transparent panels, and reopened in 1990.

Baseball great Ramón Hernández was born in Venezuela.

Last edition:

Friday, May 7, 1976. Jacelyne Khoueiry at Martyrs' Square.

Saturday, May 16, 2026

The Manchurian Candidate. It's like Donald Trump and MAGA really are the Reds.

The hammer and cycle in red. . . it might as well be the symbol of the Trump presidency.

We've remarked before on how the GOP has adopted the color red, the color of the far left, as it's own.  That's beginning to seem more appropriate than ever.

Our dim illegitimate chief executive has gone to China and returned.  In the process, it seems clear that he's getting ready to abandon Taiwan.

Trump's entire trip to China was a complete and utter humiliation for the United States.  An embarrassment of the highest order.  But it fits a pattern.

Trump loves Russia's Putin.  He's super impressed with Xi.  He's kind of a bit of a fan boy to Kim Jong Un.  He loved Orban who was a Putin ally.

If our adversaries from former Communist states had conspired to place into office a man to act as a sleeper agent, they could not have succeeded more wildly than Donald Trump has done without being one. . . presumably.  He's brought a US that was already in trouble down from a world power to a second rate collapsing nation.  It's utterly incredible.

Friday, May 15, 2026

China is Closing In on Taiwan.

With China having just been visited by our extraordinarily weak, and increasingly demented chief executive, this really bears watching.


Trump's illegal war on Iran has depleted US weapons reserves massively and wasted them on hard ground targets, something military analysts know is ineffective.  We have less of an ability to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan now than at any point since. . . well. . . probably 1947.

The likelihood of it happening his high.

The likelihood of Trump doing utterly nothing if it does happen is also high.

In 1949, when mainland China fell to the Communists, Republicans howled over "who lost China?"  In 2026 or 2027 when Taiwan falls, they'll probably just kneel to their beloved, Donald Trump.

The question will be, why?

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 136th Edition.Wyoming Republicans, not realizing they're Democrats, are criticizing Democrats, who are moderate Republicans, crossing over.

I saw an old friend getting hot and bothered by this today.  The small Democratic Party is having an  internal debate about its members switching their registration over to Republican so that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates stand a bitter chance of losing.   Truth be known, almost all moderate Democrats in the state did that decades ago, some later running as fairly successful Republicans.  Cowboy State Daily Carpetbagger Dave Simpson has written an op ed about checking the "label" of Republican candidates.

Indeed, check it.  Most of the WFC candidates don't belong in the GOP at all. They aren't Republicans.

My old friend is supporting Brent Bien, who spent 28 years sucking on the government tit before taking a retirement (more sucking on the government tit) and is upset with Degenfelder and Barlow.  I'm not keen on Barlow either, but if you spend almost 30 years working in an institution that's funded by the taxpayers and then come out with a no taxes policy, you are some kind of hypocrite.  

And yes I'm speaking of a military career. Yes, there's a lot that's honorable about a military career, but I'm pretty familiar with it and you never have to 1) send out a bill, 2) worry about the competition, 3) worry your employer isn't going to have money to pay you, 3) work for fifty years before you retire, if you can ever retire, 4) worry that you line of work is just going to cease to exist.  Sure, you do have to worry about violent death, that's very true.  Like the Potts character says in Major Dundee; "that goes with the pretty girls and the pension", but the chances of that, while very real, are much less than they're made out to be for most career military people, although they are real, and the risk of violent death goes with a host of other professions too for which such worries do exist and you aren't going to get a "thank you for your service!" accolade and aren't going to be regarded as a hero.

Being a logger is actually the most dangerous job in the U.S., followed by being a commercial fisherman.  In a location specific sense, being a taxi driver was, and may still be, the most dangerous job in the U.S.

Anyhow, the criticism is that Barlow and Degenfelder might not adhere to, well:

Meine Ehre heißt Treue

Oh my, think for yourself, can't have that.

Anyhow, my friend is no doubt part of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus which is demanding loyalty oaths from Republicans.

But they aren't Republicans.

They're Dixiecrats through and through.


You'd be really hard pressed to find a Dixiecrat issue that the WFC didn't adhere to, somehow.

And you'd be hard pressed to find a Republican here who was part of the party in the Nixon or Reagan era who wouldn't look at the current party with utter disdain.

Ironically, being in the state GOP at the present time must be real torture for people who hold a no foreign wars, American First, white people only, sort of view, when their "Republican" President holds a war of the week, himself first, let's annex Venezuela and make it a state, sort of view.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 135th Edition. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus