Crisis Overload

Hi, Internet. I know, it's been a few days. And it's not like there wasn't a ton of stuff happening in the world to opine about.

New outrages from the POTUS47 regime are flying in on what feels like an hourly basis, but I kind of hit a wall. I mean, I can write here about how this country is looking into the abyss because of Republican support for a fascist president, or conversely about how at least the judiciary is still operating under the Constitution (for now) and how Democratic leaders have found their spines. But let's be real, my readership is tiny and this basically serves as a means for me to vent rather than a way to communicate with people who need to be told/shown what's going on.

I can, and have (repeatedly), written to my Congressional representatives, imploring them to not only do anything they can to stand in the way of the criminal behavior of POTUS47 and company but to in turn implore their colleagues from across the aisle to wake the hell up and smell the autocracy—a majority of both Houses of Congress appears content to simply allow their power as a co-equal branch of government to be usurped, something that very majority would rail against if it were being usurped by anyone else. (I've also written specifically to Senator Cantwell to chastise her for voting to confirm some of the unqualified and dangerous cabinet nominees. In what universe is fossil-fuel fetishist Doug Burgum an appropriate nominee for Secretary of the Interior?!)

It does make me feel like I'm doing something, as does my monthly contribution to the ACLU, but the fear and powerlessness is getting weightier.

Which is, I know, exactly what the autocrats want. So I can't let it overwhelm for very long.

Tall order, given that:

• Today 52 United States Senators confirmed a Russian operative to be Director of National Intelligence. International relations and alliances are now damaged in even more incalculable ways than they were by the confirmations of Pete Hegselth (who was booed soundly yesterday at a military base in Germany), Kristi Noem (who cosplays whenever she appears on TV and declared that migrants who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in recent days are given full due process despite having been given none whatsoever when apprehended), and Pam Bondi (who has issued threats promising reprisals to anyone—including the judicial branch of government—that "interferes with Federal law enforcement").
• Over the weekend the Vice President of the United States said that judges should be ignored and that the Executive Branch should defy court orders.
• On Monday POTUS47 fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency responsible for overseeing ethics rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch. I'm actually kind of surprised it took him three weeks do do that; I guess he didn't know the office existed before.
• Unofficial Secretary of Corruption Elon Musk held a press conference in the Oval Office yesterday—making unspoken power moves to show that he's the boss, not the guy sitting at the Resolute Desk—during which he lied his ass off about "waste" and "fraud" he's "discovered" while taking a meat-axe to government agencies and about being "transparent" about everything his alleged department does. He did admit to a couple of things, though—replying to a question asking how "we can trust what you say," Elon said, "Some of the things that I say will be incorrect"; on the subject of conflicts of interest, he admitted in between lies that "You can see: am I doing something that benefits one of my companies, or not. It’s totally obvious," and yes, Elon, it is totally obvious that you are self-dealing and favoring your own businesses.

I want to post about fun things. About the fact that today pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training and that Ty France got himself a gig. About the twists and turns in the second season of the amazing show "Severance." About some of the interesting nuggets in the book I'm reading, "What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing" (did you know Toby Ziegler was almost portrayed by Eugene Levy? Can you imagine??!). About comics, about staff parties for side gigs, about how quiet and serene it is on Super Bowl Sunday when one doesn't give a damn about football.

But instead I'm fretting about this. Because it's that fucking serious.

In the wake of the sanctioned-by-the-president theft of all Americans' taxpayer data, I have frozen my credit just in case. Elon can sell, possibly already has sold, this data to malevolent actors in and out of world governments. I suspect ID scamming and frauds of that nature will soon see a significant spike, though I wonder if we'll know about it given how many avenues of investigation have been decapitated and that the Senate is primed to confirm yet another criminal when they vote on FBI Director in the coming days.

Once again, everyone who decided not to vote because they couldn't be bothered to make a choice between the smart black lady and the stupid con man can go to hell.

Here are some bits that other folks said/wrote over the past few days that deserve sharing...

Craig Calcaterra on POTUS47’s cadre defying court orders:

At some point one of the judges whose orders are being ignored will have to either jail the DOJ attorney of record or issue a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official in order to force compliance. If they do not do that and, instead, allow their orders to be ignored unchecked, it will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

If a judge whose orders are being ignored jails the DOJ attorney or issues a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official and the agencies in question nonetheless continue to violate the orders via subordinates or by presidential order it will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

If a judge whose orders are being ignored either jails the DOJ attorney or issues a bench warrant for the jailing of an executive branch official and the president attempts to "pardon" them – nonsensical in this case but I wouldn't put it past him – that would be the same thing as the president declaring that the executive branch is not subject to the courts, which will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter;

Of course the president may simply say, without the pretextual use of the pardon power, that he doesn't have to listen to the courts, which accomplishes the same thing;

If the U.S. Marshals in charge of enforcing court orders and apprehending those who violate them refuse to comply with a court's order to jail the DOJ attorney or the executive branch official in question, the courts will thereby have been stripped of their enforcement power, which will by definition subvert the Constitution, thereby rendering it a dead letter.

If I have missed an option here – other than, you know, actual compliance with court orders – please let me know. But from what I can tell we are about to witness nothing short of the final conceivable stress test of the foundations of American democracy. We have never been anywhere close to this place before. There has certainly never been an executive branch that seems as willing to assert compete dictatorial control of the government as the Trump administration is at this moment. And, to be sure, there has never been a branch of the government that has been willing to cede its own power like the Republican-controlled Congress apparently is.

Mary Trump on Elon's presser in the Oval:

One of the reasons Musk's fits in so well with the Trump regime is because he has absolutely no sense of self-awareness, and he clearly missed the irony when he went off about unelected bureaucrats, considering he's kind of the poster child for those.

“If there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, and then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the President and the Senate and the house, then we don't live in a democracy if we live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop. We fix that feedback loop and that the public's elected representatives, the president, the House, and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large unelected bureaucracy.”

Bureaucracy is not a form of government. Democracy and bureaucracy are not in tension. Fascist states have bureaucracies, too, as we are finding out. Unfortunately, therefore, we have to continue to listen to this malicious Nazi because he has all of the power and let us not kid ourselves otherwise.

 Jeremy Novak:

Trump’s victory and MAGA’s ascendance is not the revolution. What we are witnessing in the executive branch of government right now is not the revolution.

It is a desperate power grab by elites.

This is the elites gone haywire, grasping for further power to ensure they are not held to account. It is what causes the regular people to rise up.

And it is the least self-aware power grab in history. The people currently running the government think they are the ones conducting the revolution. In reality, they are the establishment angering the common people of this country and sparking an uprising.

If anyone thinks that Elon Musk is the leader of the revolution, they are delusional. He has survived off of family wealth and government largesse to amass his fortune. He is the definition of elite. He has no idea what regular people go through.

The same is true for Donald Trump. Sure, he might talk like a regular person and endear himself to them as a result. But he talks like that because he can afford to. A normal person starting from nothing and trying to get ahead in life could never talk like the does; they’d never be taken seriously. Like Musk, he’s part of the elite.

Despite the revolutionary rhetoric of MAGA, they are really just cosplaying revolutionaries to keep their base fired up and voting.

 I better stop now. I've got other things to do.