The Borowitz Report

Things continue to spiral down into catastrophe with POTUS47 and his bosses Elon and Vlad, and sure, I've got opinions and thoughts about that, but I'm not going to share them just now because (a) I'm at least a day behind the news and whatever I post here now would likely be obsolete already, superseded by even more catastrophic horribleness; and (b) this is one of those "things other people said" posts.

Leading off, Andy Borowitz. The satirist has been on a roll of late, and, sure, he's been given a mountain of material so you can only imagine what didn't make his cut for publication. Here are a few of Andy's recent gems:

RFK Jr.’s Confirmation Hailed By National Alliance of Funeral Directors

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary on Thursday received a rousing thumbs-up from some of his most prominent supporters, the National Alliance of Funeral Directors.

“For years, the funeral industry has suffered as a result of the Democratic Party’s unabashed anti-death agenda,” the group said in an official statement. “We are confident that Secretary Kennedy will make death great again.”

But the confirmation drew a less enthusiastic reaction from one of Kennedy’s detractors, the worm who spent several years feasting on his brain.

“As a worm, you’d expect me to be pro-death,” the worm said. “But this is insane.”

In a more muted comment, Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “Well, at least I won’t be the biggest quack in the government.”

Putin Agrees to Negotiate with Musk over Ownership of Trump

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Vladimir Putin has entered into negotiations with Elon Musk over the ownership of Donald J. Trump, the Kremlin confirmed on Tuesday.

Those negotiations, however, are proving contentious, as the Russian president is arguing that, having fully owned Trump between 2017 and 2021, he is entitled to a majority stake now.

For his part, Musk claims that he purchased Trump outright by spending nearly $300 million on his 2024 campaign.

In one heated exchange, Musk reportedly told the Russian leader, “You’re being greedy, Vlad—you already own Tulsi.”

Europe United in Belief That JD Vance is a Prick

MUNICH (The Borowitz Report)—Crediting the vice president with ushering in a new era of European solidarity, attendees at the Munich Security Conference left Friday’s session united in the belief that JD Vance is a prick.

“I came to Munich full of skepticism that we as a group of nations could find common ground on anything,” Danish delegate Hartvig Dorkelson said. “That all changed the moment that asshat Vance opened his mouth.”

Though he was grateful that all the nations of Europe could agree that Vance is a ginormous dick, Dorkelson warned against taking this historic consensus for granted.

“I worry that our unity could be short-lived,” he said. “So we must invite that fucker to speak again next year.”

Next up, via our friend Craig, is US District Court Judge Ana Reyes, who presided over a hearing regarding POTUS47’s executive order banning transgender Americans from the military. She had the following exchange with Department of Justice lawyer Jason Lynch, after failing to get a clear response from Lynch about whether the language of the EO is prejudicial. “The government is not willing to take a position [that] to categorically call a group of people selfish is demeaning?” she said. “The answer is ‘yes it is,’ ‘no it isn’t,’ or ‘I can’t say.’” Lynch continued to evade, which begat this:

REYES: This is a policy from the President of the United States affecting thousands of people ... [that calls] an entire group of people lying dishonest people who are undisciplined, immodest, and have no integrity. How is that anything other than showing animus?

LYNCH: I don't have an answer for you.

REYES: You do have an answer, you just don't want to give it.

The EO also attacks "radical gender ideology," a term no lawyer has been able to define in court.

REYES: If you can't articulate what radical gender ideology means, how is the defense secretary going to know what it means?

LYNCH: I'm loathe to speculate [what the president meant].

REYES: It's not like I randomly picked you off the street. You're the government's representative here.

May we have more like this from the courts, please.

Batting third, Joanne Carducci (AKA @JoJoFromJerz), who on a podcast dubbed Elon Musk "Phony Stark," which made me laugh heartily.

And the cleanup hitter, a poor sap named Staci White in Nebraska, who voted for POTUS47 and has entered the "find out" portion of FAFO:

Dang, why didn't I just pick Kamala?

Good question.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Andy Borowitz, Posted on February 20, 2025 at 12:29AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The world sucks, and other observations

Quality TV as an escape from the world crumbling around us

It's been a rough week. Following a rough few weeks. I mean, in the world. I've already mentioned how it's been influencing my state of mind, and it continues to. But there is life beyond the chaos and destruction raging all around us. For now, anyway.

Some stray items and thoughts on the past week or so:

• I had some folks over the other night for food and conversation and general socializing, which was good. It was good in that some of these folks I hadn't seen in a long time and it's always good to catch up a bit; it was good that some people got to meet some other people that had only existed as faceless anecdotes before; it was good in the very base sense that human interaction is necessary. I've not had as much of that as I'd like of late.
• Some of the human interactions of late weren't good, though, including a near-fistfight at one of my umpiring shifts the other day. It made no sense to me, was based entirely, it seems, on some machismo bullshit carried over from prior seasons—the sort of Phil Nevin/Anthony Rendon/Jesse Winker-type posturing I have no patience for even on the best of days—and it ruined an otherwise decent afternoon/evening. I had to stop being Fun Umpire Guy on a dime and immediately shift into Guy In Charge With Authority, warn players, and was a hair's breadth from ejecting multiple men and women (!! it's almost never the women, but this time...) before one of the team captains settled his crew down a literal instant under the wire. There are on occasion days when I half-expect some sort of nonsense to occur during a shift, but never in the winter time. The teams that sign up for winter league are the die-hards that play all the time, that are so familiar to each other and to we the umpires that it's generally easy-going. (The real assholery tends to happen in the summer, when guys that are bitter about not making their JV teams in college sign up for a slot and ruin things with uber-competitiveness.) Fortunately, my relationship with the involved teams is good enough that when I saw a bunch of the players the next night everyone was cool and ready to play a conflict-free game, but hoo-boy was I not receptive to being told by rec-league softball players in a stakes-less environment that I needed to abide by some macho code of utter crapola because they were pissed off about a guy on the other team lining one back through the box. Half a dozen f-ing Phil Nevins in my face at the end of that game. Get a grip.
• Apple TV has some really good programming. If you've got budget for only one streaming service, that's probably the one you want—not just the best-of-the-best Ted Lassos and For All Mankinds, but there's great stuff in Severance, Silo, Shrinking, The Big Door Prize, The Morning Show, Sunny, Dark Matter, and the two shows I binged through in the past week: Constellation and Shining Girls. Both are just single-season, eight-episode series; the former deserves a renewal and more but won't get it, the latter wrapped up at an end point. Constellation—I had to watch it with that name, right?—is a mind-bending story following an astronaut who survives a massive accident on the ISS and returns to Earth to find things not as she left them; we learn over the course of things that two other former astronauts experienced much the same thing in years past and it's a WTF sort of mystery and psycho-thriller sci-fi exploration with quantum physics. Shining Girls is a more gritty, Earthbound murder-mystery sort of thing that also hinges on mind-bending quantum physics weirdness that stars Elisabeth Moss and only disappoints a little bit when it gets to the end and the source of the mind-bendiness is located but remains unexplained. Ambitious and well-done, both of them.
• Ty France has a job again. The former Seattle Mariner first baseman signed for the upcoming season with the Minnesota Twins and explained to reporters why he's coming off of some bad seasons. Spoiler warning: I was right. France had some smallish injury issues last year, but as he said to the press, it wasn't really the injury. He doesn't name-drop former Mariners manager Scott Servais or former Mariner "batting coach" Jarret DeHart, but he said that after he hit a rough patch early in 2023, he focused on analytics—Stacast-type nonsense like launch angles and barrel rates—which are the only things DeHart seemed to know anything about or care at all about. “There was a lot of it—the analytical side—where I tried to tap into, that I shouldn't tap into,” he said. “I should just worry about being a baseball player and hitting the ball.” After leaving the Mariners and the Servais/DeHart school of not-hitting, France started coming back into his own with Cincinnati. “When I’m at my best, I’m not focused on analytics. I’m just simplifying hitting ... the last year or two hasn’t been fun baseball for me. I think my time in Cincinnati last year, having that reset, I found that joy again." Do I still think Ty France is going to win a batting title or two? Well, I'm not as sure as I was when he first came to the M's, but if he can stay away from Jarret DeHart and keep from getting hurt too much, then...yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
• And, back to the collapse of the nation, I thought last night's "A" block form Rachel Maddow was worth passing around. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and though it's not like Hanford is in my back yard, it is in my state. And similar issues are rampant across the country now that POTUS47 and his boss Elon are taking a blowtorch to the government. It just astounds me that this is allowed to happen—every single elected Republican, it seems, is on board with destroying the United States. The Senators just confirm these dangerously unqualified and destructive cabinet officers without objection, the Representatives in the House have the power to impeach all of these agents of chaos and disaster but don't see any need. They've all got to go. All of them.

Tagged Politics, TV, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Rachel Maddow, Umping, Posted on February 19, 2025 at 2:21AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Crisis Overload

Our new DNI is a threat to national security

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.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on February 12, 2025 at 9:01PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

We're not even three weeks in

The Bizarro Cabinet just got another supervillain, as Russell Vought—architect of Project 2025, champion of pain and chaos, and admitted enemy of the Constitution—was confirmed by every Republican in the United States Senate. (It's fitting that our new Director of the Office of Management and Budget shares a surname with the evil corporation that employs Homelander and the other psychopathic superpowered maniacs from the comic-book series and TV show "The Boys"; I mean, it makes it very easy for him to be on brand.)

All of the Republicans in the Senate have just declared themselves to be anti-American and in blatant violation of their oaths of office. Every one now is under grounds for expulsion. Of course, they're also running the joint, so they won't actually be expelled. But I want Democratic leaders to remember this and other confirmation votes when they regain Senate control, assuming we actually have elections in 2026.

This guy, along with Kash Patel and possibly Tulsi Gabbard, is the most dangerous of all of POTUS47’s absurd nominees. RFK Jr. and now-Secretary of Defense Hegseth are also horrifyingly bad, but Vought is straight-up destruction personified. And all 53 Republican Senators voted "aye."

Assuming we survive this presidential term as something still resembling the United States of America—and, yeah, that's a big "if"—I don't see how the Republican Party can come back from what it's become. Its very name has already become an Orwellian term of irony, just as Presidential Puppet-Master Elon's "Department of Government Efficiency" is really about being "efficient" in destroying the government.

I realize people out there don't want to come here for yet another screed about the political hellscape we now live in. It'd be more fun to post about the great TV on now—anyone watched "Paradise" on Hulu yet? It's terrific—or how I'm eager to see the upcoming Fantastic Four film, or even complain some more about the Commissioner of Baseball being a fool and a disgusting boil on the face of the sport. But the calamities just keep coming and the speed at which our country is dissolving into oligarchic chaos is relentless.

I am heartened that Democratic leaders have (belatedly) started standing up for us, the law, and sanity. I am hopeful that the pushback we have already seen is but a glimmer of the backlash to come. But normal avenues of resistance seem impossibly inadequate to the moment—yes, regaining control of Congress in the Midterms will be enormous, but we have to get there first and still have elections not under the control of King Elon and his puppet the orange-faced moron.

We'd have a real chance at saving ourselves from this self-inflicted bloodletting if even a portion of elected Republicans respected their oaths. But today they have doubled down on betrayal. They are insurrectionists just as much as the January 6th rioters were, and if they are not ether stopped or driven to grow consciences, that war Captain Pike told folks about in the SNW pilot seems inevitable.

Please absorb the two videos below for further edification. And please make use of the link in the sidebar to write your representatives and let them know you want this country to remain a democratic republic.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Star Trek, Posted on February 6, 2025 at 7:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

In which I parrot Craig C again

An neo-Nazi has staged a coup and it must not stand

I was going to write a bit of a screed today about how Elon has completely upended critical parts of the Federal government in defiance of law and without any authority to do so. I hadn't quite landed on how to articulate it, though, by the time I read today's edition of Craig Calcaterra's "Cup of Coffee." And, once more, Craig said what I would have said, only better. So I'll simply share his words with a "yes, 100% that" concurrence.

Since Friday, people working for Elon Musk, who do not appear to be government employees of any kind, have taken over the United States Treasury's and the Office of Personnel Management's payment mechanisms, have downloaded the most sensitive personal information of millions of Americans imaginable to private servers, and have locked actual government employees out.

Musk and his people have also taken over the General Services Administration, which is the agency responsible for government contracting. Which means he has taken possession of all the financial and personal information of everyone who does business with the federal government, including the details of government contracts, bids, company filings, and other information.

Musk and his people also have taken over the U.S. Agency for International Development, specifically taking control of its security systems, personnel files, and intelligence reports much of which is classified information and which pertains to thousands upon thousands of U.S. government workers operating overseas, many in classified roles. When Musk's people arrived at USAID headquarters its security officials, quite properly, attempted to bar access. Musk's people threatened to call in U.S. Marshalls and take the information at gunpoint, after which they forced their way in, took possession of the information they sought, and placed USAID officials on leave.

Which is to say, Elon Musk has, unilaterally and without any legal authority whatsoever:

• Unlawfully taken control of the United States Treasury and intends to unilaterally cut off payments to disfavored populations both here and abroad in defiance of Congress, the courts, and the American people;
• Unlawfully taken possession of personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans and thousands of U.S. government workers and has unlawfully downloaded that data to his private servers; and
• Unlawfully obtained the financial and personal information of everyone who does business with the federal government, including classified information.

It is impossible to overstate the levels of illegality we're witnessing. Off the top of my head this would appear constitute theft of U.S. government property, theft of public funds, the violation of taxpayer confidentiality, the unlawful releasing of names, sources, and methods of U.S. overseas activity, and I'm sure multiple other offenses. Just as it is impossible to overstate the illegality, it is likewise impossible to overstate the seriousness of this situation. If any other person or actor had done even a fraction of what Elon Musk and those at his command have done over the past three days they would find themselves in federal prison for decades if not for life.

That being said, I honestly don't know what can possibly be done here given Trump's dictatorial control over government right now, the certainty that he would prevent the DOJ, FBI, or any other authority from investigating any of this, and the certainty that he would issue preemptive pardons for Musk and his team should anyone even think about snooping around. But a coup has occurred. A coup perpetrated by a drug-addled Nazi sympathizer and a small team of extremely young men who likely have no idea how many laws they have broken, even if that's no defense to their crimes. The nightmare will not end unless and until Elon Musk and those he has ordered to infiltrate the United States government are in shackles.

Every Democratic Member of Congress, starting with ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, and the ranking members of committees dealing with national security and government contracting should be holding emergency news conferences, raising the alarm, and demanding access to federal facilities, with TV cameras in tow, so it can be documented what they find or, more likely, how they are unlawfully turned away. As for the rest of us: this is the sort of thing for which a general strike is the only possible response, not that I expect such a thing could be effectively pulled off in this country.

Honestly, though, I have no idea what happens next. We are in completely uncharted waters. Nothing like this has ever happened in this history of the United States. But something has to happen in response.

Tagged Politics, Craig Calcaterra, President VonClownstick, Posted on February 3, 2025 at 5:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Week 2: It just continues

At the risk of doing the very thing I was advocating against doing the other day, this is another Outrage Post regarding POTUS47. Triaging the firehose of fascist actions is proving to be awfully difficult, what with so many things being RED ALERT level nightmares.

45/47 and his flunkies, with apparent heavy involvement from Elon Musk, have invited Federal workers to quit by implying an offer of nonexistent severance packages. They have violated the Impoundment Act and have indicated they will do it again and again. 45/47 flew a planeful of deportees to Colombia in chains on a flight with torturous conditions, got into a social media slapfight with Colombia over it, traded concessions, and crowed to the MAGA dupes that he'd just pwned Colombia when they in fact succeeded with their demand that deportees be treated humanely and not escorted by armed soldiers (45/47 won a concession from Colombia allowing him to continue using military planes). He claimed that he'd sent the MILITARY into CALIFORNIA to turn his imaginary spigot on to give Los Angeles more water and crowed about it as some sort of real achievement when it was all in his imagination. His OMB nominee perjured himself in admitting during a Senate hearing that he champions the Big Lie.

All of that is horrifying and that barely scratched the surface of what's gone down in the past two days.

My top-line concern for this brief time period, though, is the attempted firing of at least 17 inspectors general. (This actually happened on Friday night—when administrations often will, in West Wing parlance, "take out the trash" when the fewest people will notice—but I'm catching up to it late. Triage is hard.)

The Office of Inspector General was established in 1976 as one of the post-Nixon reforms designed to protect the nation from a corrupt chief executive and/or corrupt government officials. The job of Inspectors General is to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse in the executive branch of the Federal government. Initially this office was limited to a dozen IGs in the department of Health and Human Services, later it was expanded to cover other agencies and departments. There are now 72 IG positions, tasked with policing waste, fraud, and abuse by policy and policymakers.

45/47 tried to fire 17-20 of them (reports vary on the number), all without cause.

To no one's surprise, the firings are illegal. Inspectors General operate independent of an administration, and though a president can fire them for cause, he must submit a written rationale for the firing to Congress and give 30 days' notice. The only rationale made in this case was that the firings were "due to changing priorities." Since the only purpose of IGs is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, this was a tacit admission by the POTUS47 administration that their priorities are to not root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Couple that with all of the actions taken in the administration's first nine days and the obvious conclusion is they want to commit vast amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse and not be held accountable for it.

Which, I know, shocker. Who'd have though that a guy who headed up a fraudulent "charity" and a fraudulent "university," who routinely refuses to pay contractors, who grifts as frequently as he breathes, would be up to his cotton-candy-swirl combover in waste, fraud, and abuse?

It's not the first time a Republican president has tried to purge IGs, of course. Reagan fired the lot of them (there were only 16 then) in 1981 only to rehire five of them under pressure from Congress. Bush41 also tried to fire the whole lot but was thwarted by backlash from within and without the government. 45/47 fired several during his first term after his first impeachment.

Among other things, this move puts the lie to what Musk's "job" really is. We were told, after all, that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was there to find waste and identify inefficiencies. No, no, turns out they're just fine with waste—remember that planeful of shackled and sweltering deportees forced to sit in their own urine? They, and all planned future deportations, were on military aircraft at enormous expense, costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the typical method of chartering a traditional civilian-style jet in order to give the whole thing more machismo and, probably, to allow for more control over how poorly the passengers can be treated; in past years there were typically dozens of such flights per week, so even if we're conservative in our estimates, this administration is choosing to spend around a billion dollars or more, annually, on unnecessary photo ops and cruelty. If you're looking for efficiency and budget trimming, you want the IGs—actions taken by Inspectors General save the U.S. billions of dollars every year, at least they used to. No, Musk's real job is to be the unofficial Secretary of Corruption and Self-Dealing.

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are calling 45/47’s bluff, sending a letter to the president seeking clarification and rationale, as required by law, and noting, "IGs are critical to rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct within the Executive Branch bureaucracy, which you have publicly made clear you are also intent on doing." (Emphasis mine.) They know better, of course, they're just establishing a paper trail for the hypocrisy.

Maine senator Susan Collins, however, remains just as dense and clueless as always. She told reporters, "I don’t understand why one would fire individuals whose mission is to root out waste, fraud and abuse. So this leaves a gap in what I know is a priority for [POTUS47]." Really, Susan? You don't understand? I'll explain: He lied to you. It is not his priority, it is, in fact, the opposite of his priority. (How does Maine keep reelecting this person?) Susan, if you're still confused, go ask your fellow New England Senator, Elizabeth Warren. She sees it for what it is: “[POTUS47] is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”

45/47 has achieved his primary goal in running for another term: He escaped prison. Now he's on to secondary and tertiary goals: Inflict cruelty on people he hates and grift, grift, grift from the American people. Can't have oversight for that.

It's only Tuesday.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 28, 2025 at 11:35PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Pandemic II: Avian Bugaloo

The horribly depressing first work week of the doofus administration started off badly and just kept going, capped off with yesterday's confirmation by half of the Senate (and the vice-president who thinks women without children shouldn't be allowed to vote) of an incompetent, alcoholic neo-Nazi as Secretary of Defense. This leaves us in the unenviable position of wondering: in a crisis, are we better off or worse off if the SecDef is drunk off of his ass? Perhaps the best option is if he's passed out? It's tough to say.

Yet, the thing I'm even more upset about is that our new president—petty, vindictive, stupid excuse for a human being that he is—silenced all public health agencies.

(Aside: This all has had me thinking a lot about my mom in recent days. Mom was a professor of public health and, unbeknownst to me while she was alive, a seriously big deal in those circles. She would be utterly appalled by what's happening now, and in an odd way it has me missing her in a manner I really hadn't been since she died, given how all that went down.)

We all expected him to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization, that wasn't a surprise despite how incredibly dumb it was. What wasn't expected—but maybe should have been, given what we know of the guy?—was his putting an immediate halt to all communication from outfits like the CDC and the FDA and the NIH.

People who don't follow the news probably don't know this, but POTUS47’s department of Health and Human Services ordered a stop to publication of anything from these agencies. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is prevented from communicating with the public. The National Institute of Health cannot publish reports. The Food and Drug Administration can't tell us anything about our food and pharmaceuticals. NIH is the largest funder of medical research in the world, and its meetings were canceled and research was stopped across the board.

The administration insists this is merely a "short pause," but what is going unstated is, why? Why pause/halt/stop at all? Is it because, oh, I don't know, maybe POTUS47 and company don't like it when the public knows things and want to install a propaganda apparatus to public health communication? The exception in the "pause" order is for communications that are approved by "a presidential appointee." I fully expect that to be the new overall rule in some form or another.

Recall what happened when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. As POTUS45, the idiot-in-chief pleaded to "slow the testing down," saying that we shouldn't test because if you test, "you're going to find more cases." Then there was a tweet: "Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!" He didn't like that the world could see how the virus was spreading here. He didn't like that Americans could see how the virus was spreading here. (There's another possibility, unlikely but you can't dismiss it because of how stupid 45/47 is, that he doesn't understand that the tests didn't cause COVID cases. Again, the tweet said, "cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing." There is a non-zero chance that he didn't understand that the cases existed whether they were tested for or not.)

Further, he was infuriated that his nonsensical happy talk about how COVID would just "go away" and that injecting bleach was a viable treatment option was contradicted and condemned by actual experts in public health, doctors of many stripes, and people with even a rudimentary level of education and/or experience. His vendetta against Anthony Fauci was such that President Biden felt the need to preemptively pardon Fauci to protect him against potential action against him by the conspiracy mob of MAGAts, and all Dr. Fauci did was try to tell the public the truth about what was known regarding COVID-19. To 45/47, that was unacceptable.

Dr. Chrystal Starbird (great name, she's like a comic-book hero; she ought to be a member of Alpha Flight) of the NIH commented of the communications halt, "I don't think the people who just made that decision fully understand what that may mean in terms of implications for really important and critical research." Starbird is undoubtedly correct, but the more chilling thing is that it isn't just that they don't understand, they don't care. Which, given the timing of it all, should scare the bejeesus out of all of us.

 Firstly, we're just five years from the onset of a global pandemic that had enormous consequences. One would think the new administration would not want a repeat of that.

Secondly, we're already looking at a possible new problem, namely H5N1 and H7N9, or "bird flu." Are you among the people complaining about eggs being $9 a dozen now? Well, it's because of bird flu—chickens and other poultry are, you know, birds, and the infected ones are killed to mitigate further spread and thus there are far fewer hens to lay eggs. The outbreak is quite serious, and the prevalence of it has caused it to spread to other species. It's now in cattle, potentially infecting beef and milk. From poultry, eggs, beef, and/or milk—or from the secretions of the birds and cattle themselves—it has infected other mammals, including two of the most important ones (subjectively speaking), cats and humans.

Infected cats got it from raw milk (probably intended for people, not cats, but either way, WTF, people? Raw milk?!). CDC data (now outdated, of course) noted 67 cases of human infection, 63 from poultry and dairy farms and four with unknown points of infection.

But without research and monitoring and, you know, communication with the public, this will get worse. Right now the human (and pet) infection rate is small and the largest symptom people notice is the price of eggs. By doing nothing, the infection rate will rise, species jump will continue, mutations will likely occur, more food will become dangerous, and then we're off to the races. (Oh, and eggs will be even more expensive. Good job, people who voted because of grocery bills.)

So what better time to cut the legs out from under the CDC, FDA, NIH, and any other public health operation?

Even when the "pause" is lifted—with a newly installed unofficial Secretary of Propaganda clearing any messaging?—POTUS47 has nominated the worst possible people to head up HHS and the NIH. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., up for Secretary of HHS, is not just an anti-vaccine crusader, he's also a proponent of raw milk. What a combo right now! He's also completely unqualified, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for a POTUS47 nominee. Jay Bhattacharya, nominee for Director of the NIH, said attempts to mitigate the COVID pandemic were misguided and the best approach was to let people get infected and thus create "herd immunity." Actual public health experts and medical professionals called Bhattacharya's views reprehensible, irresponsible, unscientific, and, at the most generous, "fringe." Said one expert from the University of Saskatchewan, "Bhattacharya belongs nowhere near the NIH, much less in the director's office. [He] would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and actually the world."

Which nominee is worse, Kennedy or Bhattacharya? You know what, it doesn't matter, they're both utterly horrible and would be devastating to the globe if put in those jobs. Is the "pause" on communications until one or both of them is confirmed by the Senate? So they can order only irresponsible, unscientific, and fringe messaging to the public?

Kathleen Sebelius, HHS secretary under President Obama, had this to say: "You can't pick and choose when an infectious disease is going to break out. And in fact, [Kennedy]'s clearly not reading the news because we are, I think, a year or so away from a major outbreak of avian flu in humans. We've seen avian flu jump from birds to farm animals and from farm animals to farm workers. That's just a step away from a major outbreak of avian flu, which right now has no vaccine. Do I want people to stop researching what could be an effective counter to an avian flu outbreak? Absolutely not. Because it's coming."

This is just week one. Strap in, folks.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 25, 2025 at 6:42PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Snitching

The President has demanded that government employees rat out anyone working for the Federal government that is a "DEIA hire" (the A is for Accessibility, so not just no darkies, broads, or queers, but also no gimps and crips) so that said individuals may be purged from the payroll in favor of more deserving applicants. And he isn't just requesting snitches within the Washington agencies, he's opened it up to everyone and directed reports be emailed to DEIAtruth@opm.gov. As a patriotic American, I felt it was incumbent on me to do my part, particularly since the directive promised "adverse consequences" for those failing to report on DEI leeches and their sympathizers within ten days.

My email is transcribed below. 

To: DEIAtruth@opm.gov

Subject: unqualified employees

 

It has come to my attention that there are affirmative-action hires in the executive branch, none of whom are qualified for their posts and none of whom were hired on merit. All were given their jobs based on their race, gender, and backgrounds and have zero business being in government if we are to be, in fact, a meritocracy as President Trump has declared.

As the president and the Secretary of State and acting Attorney General have stated, such employees are wasting taxpayer dollars in a shameful attempt to undermine American values. They have taken jobs from far more qualified true Americans that happen to be of a different gender, ethnicity, or background. Some have criminal records and many are even born of immigrant parents and grandparents, people who were not even actual Americans!

There are dozens of these individuals, including the following: 

• Donald John Trump
• James Donald Bowman AKA James David Vance
• Elon Musk
• Devin Nunes
• Susan Wiles

In addition, there are several people being considered for jobs that are not qualified and are clearly DEI applicants to fill some sort of quota:

• Peter Hegseth
• Pamela Bondi
• Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior
• Linda McMahon
• Tulsi Gabbard
• Kristi Noem
• Russell Vought
• Lee Zeldin

If we are to reward merit and cease discriminating against worthy individuals in favor of unqualified losers in the name of "inclusion" then all of these people need to be shown the door. Get on that straight away, will you?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 24, 2025 at 3:31AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

American Carnage 2.0

What a week it's been, and it's only Wednesday.

I've been trying to keep myself busy—site update project, TV shopping, umpiring shifts, making a bunch of appointments I'd been putting off—to combat the utterly depressing events happening in DC. It only worked to a small degree, I'm pretty depressed anyway. (Aside—as a clinically depressed person I am obligated to point out that this is not the same version of "depressed" as what I usually contend with. It's just that English isn't broad enough to have a word that differentiates the two types properly. For today's purposes we're using the term as is commonly used by the masses who don't know from clinical depression.)

I did not watch or listen to or in any way engage with the inauguration of POTUS 47 on Monday. This is highly out of character for me as a politics nerd, but I frankly knew it would be unhealthy for me to do so this time. I knew what he was going to say, more or less, I knew it was all going to be lies and projection and, in the words of George W. Bush, "some weird shit." Which it was. I knew he would take the Oath of Office and mean exactly none of it, which is exactly what happened; he betrayed the oath within hours of taking it, just as he betrayed it countless times when he was POTUS 45. I knew he would then make his way to the Oval Office and commence "flooding the zone" with an obscene slew of executive orders that would be at best harmful and at worst utterly illegal, which he most certainly did.

The fact that this all happened on MLK Day was just salt in the wound, as the new president mandated government discrimination against LGBTQ persons on the day we were supposed to be celebrating the advance of civil rights. On top of that, he declared that he and his minions would begin firing anyone they didn't like at any position within the Federal government for any or no reason, which had previously been out of bounds.

One thing we should have learned from the POTUS 45 administration is that their "flood the zone" strategy worked then. The continual onslaught of awfulness was so overwhelming that it was simply impossible to cover it all, and attempting to do so gave every piece of it more or less equal weight. So this time around, I'm hopeful that we (that's a very broad "we," meaning anyone trying to educate the public on what's actually happening, anyone trying to counter-program the propaganda coming out of the mouths and keyboards of Republicans and Republican media) will learn to triage the components of the flood and call out the worst of the worst. The lesser offenses are for sure still offenses, still deserve to be fought, but when it comes to communication and messaging, we have to understand that most Americans (a) do not read well if at all, (b) are easily gaslit, and (c) respond to threats more than they do to logic. This gives the autocrats, and by extension the entirety of the modern Republican party, an advantage: they know how to manipulate people. Or, in the words of 45/47, "I love the poorly educated."

So we should focus on meeting the bandwidth the public has and not exceeding it and thus shutting down all reception. With that in mind, the worst things to come of the first few days of this administration in the opinion of your humble webmaster:

• The Orwellianly-named "Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives" executive order along with the "Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce" EO. This is a rebrand of what, as 45, he called "Schedule F," the reclassification of all Federal employees to be subject to political hiring and firing. The "accountability" sought here is more accurately described as "be loyal to Trump or you're gone." This is a direct response to the experience of the 45 administration in which people like Miles Taylor and Andrew McCabe displayed ethical behavior and tried to stop policy moves that would harm the country. Those kinds of people will be pre-purged now so sycophants can take their place.
• Actions to promote climate change. Not to promote combating or mitigating climate change, but promoting the climate crisis itself. These include withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord as well as "any agreement, pact, accord, or similar commitment" to the Paris agreement; revocation of the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan; orders to "prioritize economic efficiency" in "all foreign engagements that concern energy policy"; orders to "rescind, revoke, revise, amend, defer, or grant exemptions from any and all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions" regarding the exploitation of oil and other resources in Alaska and to ensure that the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is open for drilling and destruction in the name of fossil fuels; and the rescission of all Biden EOs that reversed or mitigated pro-climate-crisis actions of the 45 administration. (In fact, all Biden EOs were rescinded, regardless of their content. I submit that the reason for this was more sheer pettiness than any policy aims.)
• Reinstatement of and draconian instruction regarding the Federal death penalty. The 45 administration executed more prisoners than all prior administrations put together, so this is no surprise. The language of the EO includes gems like this: "The Attorney General shall ... pursue Federal jurisdiction and seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer or a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country." Just an added bit of race-baiting and immigrant-terrorizing to put a cherry on top of the cruelty.
• And the worst of the worst: All of the pardons. POTUS47 pardoned everyone who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack regardless of the offense they were convicted of or actions they took. I believe this was done for one reason only—to ensure that he has a loyal mob of domestic terrorists who will work for him in the coming days, weeks, months, and years; who will go after people he publicly demonizes but can't legitimately prosecute. Innumerable people are already living in fear for their lives now that these criminals have been released. (Surprisingly, and somewhat encouragingly, one—and to my knowledge only one—January 6th rioter rejected her pardon. "Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation," said rioter Pamela Hemphill. "I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative. We were wrong that day, we broke the law [, and] there should be no pardons.") He also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, an online drug-dealer and money-launderer; I suspect this one was at the behest of Elon as Ulbricht is revered in cryptocurrency circles since he developed and promoted crypto as a tool of his narcotic crimes. For good(?) measure he also pardoned two DC cops who were convicted of murder, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. I extrapolate from the above graph and this item that in 45/47’s world it's a capital offense to murder a cop, but if a cop murders it's hunky-dory.

I'm not even including the attack on diversity and equity policy, the revocation of any and all acknowledgment let alone protection of minorities in the Federal government; that's reprehensible, but survivable. The real harm that does is to legitimize racism and misogyny to those Americans who want to feel freer to wear their white-supremacist attitudes openly and beat down on anyone else. It's awful but can be dealt with socially as well as by policy. Also, the whole "Department of Government Efficiency" garbage; it's a real thing now, although advisory. I don't think he made it cabinet-level, but that probably doesn't matter. It's still basically toothless as Congress controls spending; all it can do is recommend. Not included here is the withdrawal from the World Health Organization because we've already lived through a pandemic under this idiot and know he'd ignore anything related to the WHO anyway. Also, I didn't include the EO that was the most blatant betrayal of his oath of office, the attempt to declare and end to birthright citizenship to anyone not born of American parents—that's unconscionable, but so clearly unconstitutional that even this illegitimate and corrupt Supreme Court would have to bend itself into a pretzel to come up with a way to justify ruling that a President can amend the Constitution with an executive order. It'll be challenged very soon and if John Roberts allows a ruling like that he will have destroyed any remaining trust in the Court's validity.

Also this week we had Elon Musk enthusiastically give sieg heil salutes to a cheering MAGA crowd, white supremacists marching in DC in celebration, and the Bishop of Washington calmly implored 45/47, to his face, to be compassionate and merciful and respectful—basically, to be more of a Christian and less of an asshole—and in response the president(!) posted on social media that the Bishop "was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater" and that "she and her church owe the public an apology!"

The cruelty is the point. That and the grift.

Soon enough the rubes that voted for the first convicted-felon President will see that he won't do a damn thing for their bank accounts (despite the EO deceptively titled "Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost of Living Crisis" that actually says nothing of any substance) and nothing in their lives is better for having him in office except that they feel better about using the N word, R word, and various other slurs in public and feel freer to beat on their wives and girlfriends. Or, more likely, they won't see it even though it'll be obviously staring them in the face because, as noted, they're easily gaslit.

So they have to be told. Repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms: The President lied to you. He thinks you're stupid. To him you are merely a mark for his con game. Your groceries are more expensive, not less; your freedoms are more curtailed, not greater; crime is up, not down; the country is less respected, not more, yet he is telling you otherwise. The President is a stochastic terrorist (look it up) that lies to you to make you afraid of people he doesn't like and pretends he's your friend while he robs you blind. The trick is going to be to find a way to do it that actually gets through.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 22, 2025 at 8:25PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The clown cabinet and the phantom infield

Pete Hegseth does not care that he is in no way qualified for the job he's been nominated to

I've been busier than usual the last few days, so stuff has happened and I've yet to catch up on it all. But some thoughts on a couple of things I have been following:

• Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense began today in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and, rather predictably, it sucked. Hegseth himself was a bloviating fount of machismo and bullshit—talk of "restoring lethality" to the military (has the army been using stun guns all this time? Are Navy missiles somehow designed to deliver fungal mushrooms and not mushroom clouds?) and "patriotic," "America-first" goals—who avoided answering any question of substance while making sure to get all the boot-licking talking points in to show his would-be boss, the once-and-future (gag) President VonClownstick, that he'd be an obedient and obsequious toady.

  Democratic Senators tried to hold Hegseth's feet to the fire to a degree, but thanks to the limitations on their time and an apparently coordinated effort from the Republican majority (gag) to dismiss every point brought up by a Democratic questioner, their efforts basically failed to move the needle. Still, Mark Kelly and Tammy Duckworth each refused to accept a non-answer to their questions but it mattered not since Hegseth talked over them and essentially filibustered them until time ran out. Republican Senators made excuses for Hegseth's disqualifying behavior and incompetent background. The committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) kicked things off with an invitation for Hegseth to bullshit his way through dismissing the reports of his awfulness. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma by way of system 892) channeled his MMA performer persona and equated Hegseth's drunkenness and infidelity to behavior of Senators in the room in a weird attempt to negate the troubles associated with a potential Secretary of Defense showing up to work drunk off his ass.

  Every Republican on the committee revealed themselves to be one or more of the following:

  • Themselves unqualified to hold their own job
  • Uninterested in the function of the role of Secretary of Defense
  • Obsessed with "wokeness" as a barely-concealed avenue to promote their own racism and misogyny
  • Spineless cowards who bend the knee to Trump over all else

  The Democrats all said good things and made as much as they could out of Hegseth's myriad negative qualities, but nothing put the former Fox "News" anchor on his heels, nothing made a lick of difference to any of the Republicans, and in some cases the questioning was too cordial. Duckworth was not, her time was well spent and appropriately aggressive, but Jack Reed's genial "I do not believe you are qualified for the overwhelming demands of this job," while substantively on point, conveyed no sense of scale. Jean Shaheen and Kirsten Gillibrand took Hegseth to task for his misogyny, Gillibrand doing the better job, and Hegseth simply did not care. Tim Kaine (D-Virgina) brought up his spousal abuse and womanizing, but Kaine did it all with kind of a smile, which is usual for him and not special here, and wasn't able to hold his own. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took on Hegseth's about-face on his sexist remarks after being nominated, and thankfully wouldn't tolerate his attempt to filibuster her, but again did not get any suitable answers. Hegseth wouldn't even answer a question about whether he would abide by the pledge he wants every general to make to not work for the defense industry after leaving the service.

  Duckworth was the star of the hearing, among other reasons for pointing out Hegseth's financial improprieties and noting that "our adversaries watch closely at time of transition, and any sense that the Department of Defense is being steered by someone who is wholly unprepared for the job puts America at risk." But even that made no difference to the Republicans.

  As Tom Nichols put it in a piece covering the hearing for The Atlantic, "America's allies should be deeply concerned; America's enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune."

• Item two is far less important: the Seattle Mariners' offseason. After having a conversation the night before with a friend about what the actual hell the Mariners' front office is even trying to do to address their many needs before Spring Training begins next month (from what we can tell from the outside, nothing; though surely things are being attempted that have flopped, unsurprisingly given how stringent the budgetary decree from above is), I had an umpiring shift that included a game with a player that works for Mariner de-facto GM Jerry Dipoto's department of baseball operations. I asked him when we were going to hear anything regarding the gaping black holes around the Mariner infield and he suggested that, while his official answer was "no comment," perhaps something was imminent. Now, I don't know how high up the chain this guy is in the baseball ops office, he might know a lot or he might know next to nothing, but he does seem to know more than I do, so I was keeping an eye out and sure enough, the Mariners made two player acquisitions in the days that followed. Sadly, they both mean very little and neither fills a need for regular players at first, second, or third base.

  First of these moves was the signing of free agent Donovan Solano, late of the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins. Solano has played third, second, and first base, put up pretty good on-base numbers, and looks like an excellent guy to have on your bench. But he's 37, has never been an everyday player, and while a useful pickup appears at best to be a platoon partner for Luke Raley at first base. At least he comes cheap.

  Next was Tuesday's purchase of Miles Mastrobuoni's contract from the Cubs. Mastrobuoni had been DFA'd, meaning the Cubs had no use for him, and in nine years as a pro he's managed three uninspired partial seasons in the Majors as a utiltyman. He did have a few good Triple-A years, or partial years, but the ceiling for him seems to be a replacement for the more interesting and more versatile Sam Haggerty, who the M's sadly let go earlier in the offseason.

  Way to get my hopes up, anonymous softball player. Psych! (Not really, I remained skeptical throughout.)

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on January 15, 2025 at 12:02AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Miscellany

Weird but fun, Interior Chinatown is worth a watch

Today's post: A random assortment of disjointed stuff!

• The dishwasher saga is over, with a new one purchased, delivered, and installed and the old one carted away to whatever scrap heap such things are taken to. I hadn't initially planned to replace the broken one so quickly, but holiday sales at Lowe's convinced me I was better off spending $600 now, on a good one on sale, than later on a cheaper one at regular price. It works, it's quiet, and most importantly, it doesn't leak into Rachel's kitchen downstairs.
• I've spent a chunk of time doing maintenance on this here website, including recreating the sketches page and beginning to populate it with stuff readily available, i.e. mostly stuff from the last few years that was either already scanned into my computer or at hand in my currently in-use sketchbook. There's other stuff in my hard drive already digitized, things that were on prior versions of my blog, but they were posted in the olden days of the Internet when nobody had a screen resolution bigger than 800 pixels and are thus pretty lousy scans. I'll have to find the originals and rescan them at some point. Anyway, the current format has clickable icons that produce a fullscreen image and a button to continue to "notes and comments" that takes you to a page for that individual sketch and any blathering I may have done about it, plus a commenting form just like a blog post. Click anywhere other than the button to close the fullscreen image and return to the sketch menu.
• I had my Christmas the other night at K&E's place, enjoying delicious food and talking about the world and also TV. All three of us love the Hulu show Interior Chinatown, starring Jimmy Yang and Chloe Bennett. It's a wacky comedic sendup of action movies, the Law & Order franchise, and meta-storytelling that takes place both within a Law & Order-style TV show and around a mild-mannered Chinese-American's family in a fictional Chinatown neighborhood. Recommended. We also agree on the greatness of Michael Schur's A Man on the Inside (Netflix), which I discussed briefly earlier but deserves a second recommend. The Diplomat (Netflix) also works for all of us, and we commented on the overlap of cast and crew from The West Wing on it (even though neither of them have ever really watched West Wing, which is really a bummer for them). Shrinking (Apple TV+) wasn't something they'd seen but which I think is terrific; they liked Slow Horses, which I've not sampled to this point. I'm very much into Silo (Apple TV+) and, naturally, the just-concluded (boo) Star Trek: Lower Decks, but know better than to try to convince K&E to watch those.
• I was gifted the book What's Next on that early-Christmas evening, and though I've yet to start into it, I am anticipating some great West Wing reflections and truly wonder how it will feel to revisit the details of the fictional Bartlet Administration while living in the impending nightmare of Trump 2.0, Now With More Oligarchy.
• I just learned that baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson died today. One of the all-time greats, Rickey was a fantastic character with is arrogant self-assuredness, his speaking in the third person, and his generosity to others. Despite being exactly my kind of ballplayer—the stolen base king! Consistently walked more than struck out!—he was never one of my favorites, maybe because he took the steals record away from one of my faves, Lou Brock, or maybe because he spent his career primarily with the Oakland A's and the hated New York Yankees. He did spend part of one season in Seattle as a Mariner, in 2000, in the waning days of his very long career, and was always fun to watch no matter who he played for. My two favorite Rickey Henderson anecdotes come from other players. One, from former Seattle Mariner Harold Reynolds, who won the stolen base crown in 1987 with 66 steals (because Henderson was injured that year) and got a postseason call from Rickey congratulating him but also containing Rickey-style mockery, with Henderson ending the call with "Rickey would have had 66 by the All-Star break." Two, from fellow Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who was Rickey's teammate with the New York Mets; Piazza recounted how Rickey voted when teams would be divvying up the postseason bonuses among the support staff. “Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people—whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant—Rickey would shout out 'Full share!' We’d argue for a while and he’d say, 'Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!'” Apparently Rickey died from pneumonia, less than a week shy of 66 years old. Bummer.
• Earlier this week, Craig Calcaterra referenced a Washington Post article called "America's Best Decade" in his newsletter. The article analyzes results from polling 2,000 American adults on which decade was best for 20 different things, like best movies, best economy, best music, best reporting, and so on. There are some interesting (though not surprising) things, like Republicans are twice as likely to think the 1950s were awesome as other people are (hey, Republicans, that being the case, let's go back to the 90% marginal tax rate that existed then, which made for a lot of the circumstances you say you want!), or that people think the "best music" is the music they listened to in their formative years. But Craig's takeaway was surprise at the generational consistency of people liking their own youth (not just the music, but everything). "Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age," says the article. "The good old days when America was 'great' aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices." There's a handy graph to illustrate:
  

  

  
  If they'd polled me, I might have skewed the results just a smidge. I mean, if I followed the pattern, I'd have my bests coming in the 1980s, and frankly there was a lot about the ’80s that wasn't all that. I mean, sure, those years were largely good for me (well, not ’89), but thinking big picture not so much. I'd say... Best Music? 1970s. Best Movies? I'm not really big into movies like some people, so I don't have a real feeling on this, but I guess the 2000s? Best Fashion? Hell if I know, but certainly not the ’80s; maybe the ’60s, since it spanned a lot of stuff. Happiest Families? Again, WTF do I know, but I'd say maybe 1990s since (a) women had far more agency than in prior decades, and (b) economically things were stable and good throughout. Most Moral Society is a question that inevitably tracks one's politics and I'd be tempted to say the 2020s if not for what happened last month to show us how many millions of Americans are still racist, misogynist, cruel asshats. Most Reliable News Reporting? 1970s again, though it really depends on how you quantify; there's a lot of fine reportage more recently, but also increasingly widespread BS from the dawn of cable TV forward. Best Economy? 1990s. Best Radio? I've no proper context for this, but given how much more radio was a thing the further back you go, maybe the 1940s or ’50s? For me, again the ’70s. Best TV? Right now, man. So much great TV being made even as the TV delivery system is transmogrifying. Least Political Division? Um...never? I mean, now is the worst in ages, but there's always been a lot; maybe the ’40s, what with the war being a unifying purpose. Best Sporting Events? For me, that's limited to baseball, really, and in this area I fit the trend—1980s baseball was great and I wish we could exhume Bart Giamatti to be Commissioner again. Best Cuisine seems like a dumb category, as food doesn't change, really, it's how we eat that changes. I like good food whenever it's eaten. Anyway, kind of an interesting survey.

Tagged Site issues, Politics, West Wing, Baseball, TV, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on December 21, 2024 at 8:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Bizarro Cabinet Spotlight: SecDef

The incoming POTUS has named many, many utterly horrible people as cabinet nominees. Some of these incompetent and dangerous buffoons and clowns (clowns with the arsenal of the Joker, by the way) will be confirmed by the incoming Senate. We can only hope that enough Republicans in the new Senate have actual standards befitting their office and the worst of the worst get rejected.

Our worst-of-the-worst spotlight today is on the Department of Defense. The nominee is one Pete Hegseth, who is a Fox "News" personality and wholly unqualified for the gig. But he is, like the incoming POTUS, a sexual assaulter who pays off women to keep them quiet, which likely makes him an A-one perfect candidate in the eyes of the man nominating him. He's also appears to be one to give Rudy Giuliani a run for his money when it comes to who's drunkest.

Prior to becoming a weekend anchor on Fox, Hesketh headed up two veterans advocacy groups, Concerned Veterans of America and Veterans for Freedom. He was forced out of both due to frequent intoxication and misuse of funds, among other reasons.

A report on Hesgeth's conduct with CVA described a series of drunken appearances at CVA events which were "embarrassing, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events." One person who worked with Hegseth at CVA said, "I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary."

With VFF, Hesgeth mismanaged funds so thoroughly that the group had run up nearly half a million dollars in debts while having less than $1,000 on hand. “There’s a long pattern, over more than a decade, of malfeasance, financial mismanagement, and sexual impropriety,” said a former Hegseth associate. “There’s a fair dose of bullying and misinformation, too.”

That part makes him basically twinsies with POTUS 45/47. The alcohol abuse isn't something they have in common, but he was seen at a bar in 2015 shouting, with a companion, "kill all Muslims!" in a drunken chant, which no doubt 45/47 finds endearing. Oh, and he has white-nationalist tattoos and one of an American flag with an AK-47.

But not to worry. It's just the Defense Department. Not like he'd be heading up anything important or influential in any way.

We're so screwed.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on December 3, 2024 at 4:49AM   |   Permalink   |     |