#I know the biden administration is trying new things and whatever but

[boy-gender]

Guys please check on your friends and the people in your communities. The recent supreme court decisions have left a lot of people in really despairing positions. Reach out. Even if we cant help each other financially we can support one another emotionally.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump’s Tiktok two-step is a lesson for future presidents

I'm about to leave for a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me on Feb 14 in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and on Feb 15 for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will. Maybe Tiktok'll buy so many trumpcoins that he forgets about. Whatevs.

The important thing here is: Congress passed a (stupid) law and Trump said, "I've decided not to enforce that law" and then that was it:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-01-31-trump-administration-test-supreme-court-tiktok/

Sure, there's some big rule of law/checks and balances/separation of powers problems here, and there are plenty of laws I'm mad about Trump not enforcing (like the law that says corporations can't bribe foreign governments, say). But this one? Sure, it's fine. The problem with Tiktok is that it invades our privacy in creepy ways, not that it is owned by a Chinese company. I don't want Zuck or Musk or (especially) Trump invading my privacy.

Congress hasn't passed a consumer privacy law since 1988, when they banned video store clerks from telling newspapers about your VHS viewing habits. That's why Tiktok is a problem. Pass that law, and if any president decides not to enforce it, I'll be mad as hell and I'll be right there in the streets next to you, in head-to-toe CV dazzle, with all my distraction rectangles in Faraday pouches, shlepping a placard bearing the Social Security Numbers of every Cabinet member in giant writing.

But the point is, the president defied Congress, which is a thing that Very Serious Grownups told us radicals Joe Biden mustn't do under any circumstances, lest the resulting constitutional crisis tear the country apart, or, at the very least, alienate so many voters that Donald Trump would become the next president.

We let Very Serious Grownups call the shots, and Donald Trump is president. Maybe we should stop listening to Very Serious Grownups?

Look, presidents ignore Congress's laws all the time. The Comstock Act (which effectively bans transporting pornography and contraception) is almost entirely ignored, and has been for generations (though Trump's creepy Heritage Foundation puppetmasters have promised to bring it back). The Robinson-Patman Act hasn't been enforced since the Reagan years, which is a damned shame, because Robinson-Patman would put Walmart, Amazon, Dollartree and Dollar General out of business (Biden started to enforce Robinson-Patman again during his last year in office):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

I'm not trying to say that enforcing (or ignoring) the Comstock Act is the same as ignoring (or enforcing) the Robinson-Patman Act. The Comstock Act is bad, and the Robinson-Patman Act is good. I am capable of making that moral judgment, and I would like to have a president who does the same.

The fear about Trump ignoring the laws and procedures is justified, but not because of the damage he's doing to laws and procedures – it's because of the damage he's doing to the people of this country and the world.

Take the records that Trump has destroyed – vital data about public health and other subjects (thankfully, most of this was saved from destruction by the Internet Archive). The most important fact about that act of destruction is the harm that will result from it, not the failure to follow procedure.

There are plenty of times in which I am OK with people ignoring the law and destroying records. In 1943, Dutch guerrillas bombed the civil registry building in Amsterdam, to keep the records of where Jews and other disfavored minorities lived out of the hands of occupying Nazis. The firefighters on the scene kept their hoses running until any paper that hadn't been burned was reduced to slurry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing

I'm fine with destroying records that wicked, vicious authoritarians would use to harm my neighbors.

Remember when Biden tried to cancel student debt? He could have started off by destroying the records of who owed what, so when the courts overturned his administrative action, it would have been hard or impossible to collect on the debts that were still held on federal books, or whose records the feds had (no, I'm not suggesting that Nazi death camp deportations are equivalent to unjust student debt collections, but if you agree that sometimes it's OK to illegally destroy records, then all we're left with is haggling over the specifics).

Sure, this would have been a constitutional crisis, but, as Ryan Grim says, "It is apparently unconstitutional for the president to instruct the Department of Education to restructure and forgive some student loan debt but it is ok for DOGE chair Elon Musk to just get rid of the whole department. Anywho."

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1888973174819164663?t=Cd8fl4FWjY5zsOlQWZGv4g

Canceling debt isn't forgiving debt. Student borrowers have been preyed upon by colleges and lenders. People who borrowed $79.000 and paid back $190,000 can somehow still owe $236,000 do not need to be forgiven, because (unlike Trump) they haven't sinned. Rather, their debts need to be canceled (like Trump):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Trump's shown us what a president should do when the courts get in their way: fight back. Worst case scenario is the court prevails, and a bunch of Fedsoc judges (up to and including the Supreme Court) set binding precedent that reduces the power of the president, which would be, you know, great. Best case scenario: Americans are freed from these crippling, fraudulent debts and, you know, vote for Democrats and against Trump, instead of staying home because they don't feel like the Democrats have their back.

Defying unjust court decisions isn't Trumpian – it's Rooseveltian. Roosevelt (following in Lincoln's footsteps) spent years discrediting and weakening the Supreme Court's power, using his bully pulpit to rob them of authority and build the political will to pack the court, which he was on the brink of doing when the Supreme Court surrendered:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

Democrats developed an online organizing playbook, and it worked, so Republicans took it, improved on it, and won elections. Republicans have developed a devastatingly effective constitutional hardball playbook. Democrats should steal that playbook and run with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war

I rang doorbells, made phone calls, and shelled out money for Democrats in the last cycle because I wanted them to do stuff that helps Americans, not because I wanted them to follow procedures. The fact that Trump is building offshore concentration camps and has deported our neighbors to them (to name just one of many cheap dystopian fanfics that Trump is LARPing) should be the kind of five-alarm fire that sent South Korean lawmakers scaling the barricades last month.

This is the kind of crisis where I'd expect Democrats on the Hill, at a minimum, to be refusing to give Trump and the GOP anything. Call quorum on every vote. Debate every amendment. Raise every objection. Vote against everyting. Do not confirm a single appointee. And any elected Dem that refuses to play along? Kick 'em out of the caucus. Oh, we can't afford to do that because we can't afford to lose a single lawmaker? How did that work out with Kirsten Synema and Joe Manchin? Shoulda kicked them out after the first vote, shoulda raised money for any real Dem willing to primary them. Should have shunned them in the hallways and refused to invite them to the Christmas parties. We should do that to Fetterman. Party unity got us nothing under Biden. Party unity got us Trump. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome isn't actually the formal definition of insanity, but it is nevertheless very, very stupid.

For the past four years, Very Serious Grownups in the Democratic machine kept telling us that we couldn't expect the president to do anything, or Congress to do anything, or the Senate to do anything, because the Republicans would stop them. Or the courts would stop them. Why fight when you know you're gonna lose? Because sometimes, you'll win. And even if you lose, you'll go down fighting.

Better yet, if you lose in just the right way, you'll force Trump's judges to take away powers from the President and the administrative agencies – take away the powers Trump is now wielding like a sledgehammer.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/11/you-and-what-army/#student-debt

[uboat53]

Well, we're rapidly approaching inauguration day which means Trump is going to be president soon. Given that, it's time to inoculate you against a monumentally stupid perception that I can't believe has hung around for an entire decade.

Donald Trump is not smart. He's not playing 5-dimensional chess, he's not finding new ways to solve old problems, and he's not operating on a level most of us can't comprehend. The next four years are going to be hard enough and Trump's administration will undoubtedly do some genuinely terrible things. It will be terrible enough without having to over-analyze and obsess over every nonsensical utterance the man makes. He's actually extremely simplistic and predictable, just in a way that most people have way to much dignity, integrity, and/or shame to attempt.

This week's sideshow is no exception. For those who missed it, Donald Trump has been threatening to militarily seize Greenland, annex Canada, retake the Panama Canal, and rename the Gulf of Mexico and I've seen far too many breathless articles wondering what the strategic intention of these bombastic threats are. Is he trying to obtain concessions? Is he setting up a strategy that will pay dividends down the road? Is he doing something we can't understand yet? Will he follow through with it?

None of that, guys, it's a lot simpler and stupider.

Look, right now, Trump's having a rough time. Biden is doing popular things that Trump wants to undo but will find hard to undo because, you know, they're popular, his attempt to appoint a bunch of incompetent cronies to major executive branch posts is going poorly and it looks likely that a lot of them won't get confirmed, the Senate is also refusing to go on recess to allow him to recess appoint anyone, the debt ceiling didn't get raised or waived, so now he's got to deal with that pretty much immediately upon taking office, he's being forced to admit that he can't do anything about grocery prices or inflation, you know, the two main things he campaigned on, it's looking pretty likely that Jack Smith's final report is going to get a public release before he takes office and can block it, and Republicans are in complete disarray about how to pass even the border and tax bills they agree on much less anything else.

Not only are those not things he really knows how to deal with, they make him look weak. So he does what he always does when he feels weak, he starts shouting about something batshit insane that he thinks makes him look strong instead. Threatening military invasion is stupid, but it's a strong stupid. Not like failing to address any of the problems in the US economy and government or being revealed as a traitor to the country, those are weak stupid things.

This is what he always does, it's so predictable that I don't even have to actually read what he's shouting about to know he's trying to distract from something. You can do this every time. Remember in September how he accused Harris of having the questions from the debate in advance? Yeah, turns out now that FOX News gave HIM the questions from their town hall in advance. Remember when he went on a tirade about immigrants in November of 2018? Yeah, turns out he was trying to distract from China approving a bunch of trademarks for Ivanka. Every time.

So stop driving yourself crazy wondering what incredibly complex game Trump could be playing and start looking for whatever he's trying to distract you from. You'll always find it and, once you do, you can say "ah, okay" and get on with your day and, when someone bring it up, you can then show off by explaining to them exactly what's going on. Trump's not playing hyperchess, he's trying to distract you from the fact that he's losing a game of tic-tac-toe.

[treasure-mimic]

I'm sure that saying at this point "I don't know what's going to happen" comes with the connotations of "I don't know what that fucking guy is gonna do" but like, genuinely and from multiple directions, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm sure it's a very cold comfort to hear these things for the people going through it worst right now. There's no but there, it's going to be bad. I don't have good news, I just have other factors that I think are worth considering right now.

Biden does still have time to do, you know, something. Project 2025 is a public document that's very open about its intentions, the Biden administration is provably aware of and opposed to it, Biden could use his last months in office, now that he's not concerned about the optics of him or his party, to force closed the loopholes that the incoming Trump administration is very openly planning to use. In a best case scenario, he might try and force through some kind of Supreme Court reform or restrictions on a felon's access to the presidency. I don't have a lot of faith in the current administration, but even if they do something, even if they do something that's undone during the Trump administration, it'll waste his time and occupy his attention and that's worth something.

There is a looming financial collapse on the horizon. A lot of financial institutions have been holding on for dear life until the election, either to keep bad publicity from hitting Biden or in the hopes of a Trump presidency. Now, obviously that sounds bad, and it is, but it's very very likely that we're already in a recession and those at the economic bottom have already been hit. The ones who are going to be taking the brunt going forward are large corporations (and their workers, unfortunately) and financial institutions. Now, the main difference in the outcome was going to be the difference between a Harris administration and a Trump administration, Trump is extremely cozy with billionaires and make no mistake, they are gonna get bailed the fuck out. But that is going to be a massively unpopular decision on both sides, in the midst of an open recession, and as we know the sitting president always takes the blame for whatever happens under him, even when it's not actually his fault. Trump is already set to lose a lot of ground by midterms before he's actually done anything. And all of his ideas are bad and not going to make things better.

Say what you will about him (he's a piece of shit) but JD Vance is not Mike Pence. Pence had a spine and a metric ton of violent bigotry, Vance has neither. Vance is a sycophant and an asskisser, but if you look into what his actual beliefs are, he seems to care more about common sense anti-big business financial legislation more than he cares about culture war social legislation. I don't think he'd be anything close to a "good" president, as nebulous and impossible a concept as that already is, but I also don't think he's going to put his weight behind the outright discriminatory shit that Trump has incentive to.

Finally, just remember, it's only four more years of this shit. After ten years of Donald Motherfucking Trump, he's done his two, and the republican party seems incredibly directionless once worshiping the ground he walks on has lost its political meaning. He's going to sit on his ass and shitpost and scam and whine and spew bile til the day of his last cloying god-forsaken breath, but after this he's gone. It will not be good times. But it will be over.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Order in a pizza or something. Listen to something soft, sorrowful, and soothing today. Call it a night early if the mood strikes you. Go out and do something fun this weekend. The world will still be here when you get back. Don't follow me for this, it's the last I'm gonna be posting about it.

Here's some nerd shit for the SEO.

[ahiddenpath]

Life Talk

Discussing how I'm dealing with Things beneath the cut.

I doubt I'll be able to say anything about the US election results that you haven't seen a million times before. I wasn't sure if I should bother commenting. I'm not sure where I am in the processing stages, so... Forgive me if my tone is weird. I definitely feel weird.

First thing's first; I've anticipated this outcome since people started blaming Biden for inflation. That's a typical thing in American politics; whoever is in charge currently is blamed for everything, which often causes the presidency to swap from D to R and back, regardless of where problems began. Of course, if voters really were worried about the economy, well... The Trump tariffs are a laughably, horrifically bad solution. But... I don't think the average American voter understands tariffs. So like. Whelp. There's a very real reason why Rs want to gut public education. Well, there are several, but yeah, a less educated populace is easier to fleece.

Obviously there are a million other horrible things going on here; if I tried to get into them all, I would never finish this post. But I can't say I'm experiencing shock or betrayal. I knew many Americans hate women, POC, the queer community, and others more than they care about their own self interests. Although most, I think, are simply not educated enough to understand that their self interests are at risk, and many others were sucked into the far right cult stuff years ago. Rs always scream about the liberal media, but so much American media (and social media!) is owned by the right, or is at least paid off by them. I'm wondering, as education continues to fail, especially given the next administration, will Americans have any hope of thinking beyond whatever Facebook posts and news in the pocket of (or in fear of) the right tells them?

We're in a bad way, but this didn't happen on the day of the election. We've been living in this environment for years, now. Are things about to get worse? Yes, of course. I think it's an important time to remember who your friends and loved ones are, to lean on them and check in on them, to do stupid fun stuff with them. And I think it's time to step away from the doom scrolling and inventing horrible what-if scenarios. Obviously this is a scary time; I'm not trying to diminish that. But spiraling causes pain now, PLUS more pain later if the bad thing comes to pass.

I've seen some interesting posts with actionable ideas. Get a passport ASAP, look into moving (to blue states, out of climate change buffer areas, or internationally if you can, although obviously that is not easy nor readily available), think about if your industry will be impacted by tariffs and sweeping federal government layoffs, get sterilized if you know you don't want kids, get that medical appointment you've been pushing off. Actionable stuff is productive! Spiraling isn't. Although uhhh, that's easier said than done. I'm just trying to push myself in a better direction, here.

As for me, here are some fractured snippets of how I've been feeling:

-Mourning. Shit, I'm 35. Trump will be in office until I'm 39. My child bearing window is closing. Are we not having a family bc of orange oompah loompah and his country and world destroying policies?

-I'm aware that I will be buffered from some things, purely because of how I look, where I live, etc. And the fact that I'm married to a safe man who adores me affords some protection. I feel weird about it, but must acknowledge it, so I don't get uhh. Disconnected from people who are more vulnerable than me. I think that Democratic politicians who mean well, but don't experience what so many Democrat constituents go through/suffer with for various reasons, becoming so... Out of touch and unrelatable... Um, I think that played a role in getting us here. It's difficult for these politicians to organize or affect change when their life experience is... Just overall safer by default. And this applies to people who aren't politicians, too, just on a less official level.

Those of us who are comparatively safer for various reasons need to hear people who are less safe and acknowledge that some things impact us differently, and we need to prioritize what the most vulnerable need.

-On the day before the election, I started Googling how to become a witch and books on witchcraft. I did it with a wry grin, because I'm aware that magic/witchcraft/New Age stuff/tarot/crystals/mysticism/etc surge in popularity during times of political and economic strife. Meaning that they are SUPER FUCKING POPULAR right now, and have been for a while. You might know that I'm a Seeker (tarot practitioner), but I'm also a scientist. I'm... not the most spiritual person.

But, like, FUCK IT. Time to become a witch. Time to creep into the wild woods and make a hut and live with the bears. TIME TO CURSE SOME MF-ers!

I told my reasonable friend. Here is our conversation:

Hidden: So I'm googling witch books.

Friend: No. We don't turn to magic in the face of tragedy. We drink hot cocoa.

Hidden: FINE I GUESS (hrmph!!!!)

I told another friend the same:

Friend: How are you holding up?

Hidden: Googling how to become a witch. So... yeah.

Friend: How... how DO you become a witch?

Hidden: IDK, that's why I'm googling it.

Sigh. I might still buy that book on the history of witchcraft and paganism. What, it's history! xD

-Otherwise, I've been weirdly fortunate that work has been so demanding. I've been learning more about in silico analysis lately (using huge protein databases to predict how developable a new antibody based drug might be, which residues to change, and how immunogenic your antibody might be). I'm learning and doing so much that I come home exhausted, but like. Maybe that's the lack of sleep on Tuesday night talking.

-I've been leaning into the animal of myself these last few days. The soft, squishy, vulnerable meat of me. Sleep and work and food and relying on my partner bond with my husband. Listening to his heartbeat, feeling the low rumble of his voice when we cuddle, letting skin on skin release safe and happy hormones.

-I think I need to get off reddit and its eternal doom. Like, permanently. Tumblr and Insta are the only other social media I use, but Tumblr is all digimon and Insta is all cats and dolls. I'm hoping the political posts that aren't primarily actionable die down on Tumblr soon, so I don't need to spend less time here, but obviously people need to post what they are going to post. If I'm here less, this is likely why.

Most of all, do what you can to beat back despair. I don't really have comforting words, except that you're not alone. Other people DO think and feel the way you do now. Let's all try to be there for each other, distract one another, and maybe have some hugs and hot drinks. Or like... start a coven, idk.

You are loved. Ask for help if you need to, offer it if you can.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

“No, you should be worried about the supreme court as that is the entity in charge of deciding such things”

Ok but who appoints Supreme Court members. Which person was it that stacked it and let us lose Roe. Also the Biden administration *has* done good things. Not specifically Biden himself but the people that are only there because a democrat is President. I cant remember all the specific things that were done for the queer community but there’s now a cap on inhaler prices and maybe insulin prices (last i remember hearing about the insulin was that there were plans to tackle the ridiculous cost).

There’s a good chance 2 Supreme Court members could die in the next 4 years, or they’ll step down if trump wins so younger conservatives can take their place. The fact that the supreme court is apparently currently trying to get rid of OSHA, is terrifying. We all know those rules are written in blood.

You can do and say whatever you want but saying the Biden administration has done absolutely nothing in the past 4 years is wrong. Saying the president doesn’t matter, the Supreme Court does, when the president is the one who appoints new members, is wrong.

How much viagra do you have to give the man to gargle his cock and balls this much? You’re going to kill him.

[spurgie-cousin]

Hoo boy SpurgieCousin, these anons sitting out the election to protest the war in Gaza or voting 3rd party to teach the democrats a lesson, or whatever their reason is have me stressed! As an elder millennial, I remember Ralph Nader peeling away enough 3rd party votes to give the election to Bush over Gore in 2000. Even though that administration gave us wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the deaths of my friends, classmates, etc in those wars, the destruction of their futures when they came home with PTSD and missing limbs, lies about weapons of mass destruction, war crimes, Guantanamo bay AND the worst economic recession since the Great Depression- which was a fantastic time to try and enter the job market after college btw- I still think a 2nd Trump term would be worse. The only reason Trump’s first term was only a partial catastrophe was because it was incredibly incompetent and we were able to coast on a lot of momentum of the Obama years. I don’t think a 2nd term would flounder as much. I really really hope (beg)your readers reconsider their choice regarding Joe Biden. It’s not a perfect system and it’s not a perfect candidate-it never is. I appreciate their idealism- I was young once too- but not voting does not absolve them from the consequences of what may happen if this country elects Trump again. You will have complicity in negative things either way you vote, so please please vote in a way that does not make things worse. Ok, thank you for letting this geriatric millennial rant!

Oh I think that's a perfect example tbh. I'm a younger millennial so I was growing up as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars played out, and it was the first thing that ever really ignited a political rage in me. Horrible news for my very republican/George Bush voting family lol.

Unless they're very politically versed, I don't know if Gen Z or even the youngest tier of millennials really get how fucking awful the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan was. Just tons of civilians and American soldiers dead because of Bush's ego, and his ego is nothing compared to Trump's.

I think the only big difference is a lot of third party voters at that time didn't totally understand what Bush was capable of, whereas we know what a Trump presidency will be like..... we know if he promises to make gay marriage illegal and strip back more women's Healthcare rights and and more money to Netanyahu to destroy Gaza, he WILL try to do it. He's already had similar successes.

I have voted third party, I hate to discourage people from doing so because I think a third party candidate that we can rally behind is our only hope out of this 2 party shit show. We don't have anyone like that this election season, far left progressives hate Jill Stein, nobody else has the name recognition at this point to have any chance against with major candidate, and we know the end result will be either the trash can on fire that is our government right now or that trash can on fire with an added layer of dog shit on top, y'know? They're both bad sure but I just highly disagree that one isn't worse for vulnerable Americans and Gazans alike.

[tired-dragon22]

I've been seeing this going around, and I just wanna vent and see if it clears my thoughts. Since last October, and even before then, I've struggled with what's happening in Palestine and Gaza. Because it's bullshit that the US government is funding a genocide, is refusing to listen to what a great majority of the people want, which is a complete cease of aid to Isr@el . I want that so badly, I want to see good news I on my phone, I want to see those families have the room to grieve and to rage and to rebuild their beautiful homes. I want to see Palestinian children play in the sun without having to worry about being labeled as a threat. I've seen the protests and fundraisers, and shared/participated in anyway I'm able to. And I've also seen the shit show that's coming in the US depending on which presidential candidate goes into office. I'm a lesbian, Mexican American woman. Both my parents immigrated from Mexico when they were young. I've got younger siblings, two sisters and a brother. I know so many people like us. We struggled when Trump was in office before. We struggled before then, but it has been even more terrifying ever since then. We're fucked if he goes into office, especially with the layout for Project 2025. All of us are. Every single minority, every single person that doesn't fit into the cookie cutter image that Republicans want will be fucking crushed. Our rights are already being taken away because of who Trump put into the Supreme Court. My family struggles with a crap ton of health issues, my sisters both have knee and back problems. They've had a number of surgeries and still struggle with more issues every day. I thank whatever deity exists that we're able to cover most of their necessities with insurance. And I know damn well all of that is gone if Trump wins. I fucking hate what Biden did during his administration, refusing to see what was happening, refusing to fucking listen. I'm tentatively hopeful things will be easier to protest and try to fix if we were to be under Harris. But I'm also too pessimistic and skeptical to fully believe that. And that's my main problem. I don't want to vote for someone who would support a genocide. I would so much rather vote for a third party. But I know damn well it'll only push things in the wrong direction, considering how terrible this fucking country's election system goes. That's how Trump got elected in 2016 after all. People didn't vote and they assumed cause of the popularity win Clinton had she'd win. And I'd rather fucking rot somewhere than vote for Trump. So my only viable option, it seems, is to vote for Harris, whether I like her or not. And I hate it. I hate it so fucking much. I see people say they're gonna vote for a third party, I've even seen some people say they're gonna vote for Trump because they don't want to vote for Harris. And I'm just begging someone to explain to me how any of that would be better. We can try and fix things if we're under a politician that will at least not practically burn our rights at the stake. I want to have autonomy of my own body. I want that for my sisters, for my mom, for my brother and for my dad. I want that for all the trans kids who'll die if Trump goes into office. I want freedom for all the minorities that live in this godforsaken country, I want Palestine to have it's land back and for Isr@el to fuck right off. I just don't know what to do anymore. Btw, if anyone bothers to read everything I just wrote down, I'd really appreciate any advice.

[hero-israel]

re: the whole Biden administration offering info thing. so I know a bit about foreign policy stuff and there's a few things to keep in mind here. anything that is stated publicly was definitely already stated behind closed doors months ago, and it being made public is a separate strategic play (relatedly, "leaks" are authorized like half of the time tbh). the reason for offering the info in the first place is bc the USA is trying to convince Israel to do realignment operations which are more reliable than trying to eliminate terrorists via conventional warfare, as using the conventional means to take on an unconventional force tends to create more combatants than it kills. the USA has been making this offer to Bibi and co from the beginning bc the USA immediately clocked that hamas wanted to provoke a large reaction on October 7th and the USA has plenty of experience with why a large reaction is a really bad move. the reason the offer is being made more publicly now is so that the general public will be aware that this offer was on the table and if Bibi turns it down then he's responsible for whatever happens in Rafah, which is likely to go sideways bc yknow urban warfare is horrific. it's a semi last ditch effort to apply pressure to Bibi to reconsider the operation or risk further public backlash and civil unrest. realignment operations would also reduce civilian casualties significantly in comparison to the more traditional ground offensive that's been happening, especially so in an urban environment, and thus would reduce the number of new recruits to hamas. this is well known among the experts so at least one of the Israeli advisors must have pointed this out in addition to the USAmericans advice but for whatever reason Bibi has been reluctant to go for it. idk what Bibi's goal is here but I imagine it has something to do with clinging to power somehow. anyway that's the short version of that. basically think of foreign policy as an international poker game where everyone is cheating and remember that not knowing the details of what's going on behind the scenes is unfortunately what makes us the public.

I could see that as being true, but still don't see the internally-reasoned argument of "knowing where it is and not telling the IDF." If that's a "stick" against Israel, it's mostly falling on Palestinians.

What, in an achievable sense, are "realignment operations"? I've read one source after another say "of course Israel should destroy the tunnels and kill Hamas and rescue the hostages, but in a way that doesn't kill any civilians on the surface," and they don't describe what that way actually is (sort of like the person who said the way to stop Houthi attacks is to resolve the I/P conflict first, presto!).

[lenbryant]

(Times) This May Be Our Last Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans, and We Are Blowing It

The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza among U.S. dairy cows, first reported on March 25, has now spread to at least 33 herds in eight states. On Wednesday, genetic evidence of the virus turned up in commercially available milk. Federal authorities say the milk supply is safe, but this latest development raises troubling questions about how widespread the outbreak really is.

So far, there is only one confirmed human case. Rick Bright, an expert on the H5N1 virus who served on President Biden’s coronavirus advisory board, told me this is the crucial moment. “There’s a fine line between one person and 10 people with H5N1,” he said. “By the time we’ve detected 10, it’s probably too late” to contain.

That’s when I told him what I’d heard from Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner for agriculture. He said he strongly suspected that the outbreak dated back to at least February. The commissioner speculated that then as many as 40 percent of the herds in the Texas Panhandle might have been infected.

Dr. Bright fell silent, then asked a very reasonable question: “Doesn’t anyone keep tabs on this?”

The H5N1 outbreak, already a devastating crisis for cattle farmers and their herds, has the potential to turn into an enormous tragedy for the rest of us. But having spent the past two weeks trying to get answers from our nation’s public health authorities, I’m shocked by how little they seem to know about what’s going on and how little of what they do know is being shared in a timely manner.

How exactly is the infection transmitted between herds? The United States Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all say they are working to figure it out.

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According to many public health officials, the virus load in the infected cows’ milk is especially high, raising the possibility that the disease is being spread through milking machines or from aerosolized spray when the milking room floors are power washed. Another possible route is the cows’ feed, owing to the fairly revolting fact that the U.S. allows farmers to feed leftover poultry bedding material — feathers, excrement, spilled seeds — to dairy and beef cattle as a cheap source of additional protein.

Alarmingly, the U.S.D.A. told me that it has evidence that the virus has also spread from dairy farms back to poultry farms “through an unknown route.” Well, one thing that travels back and forth between cattle farms and chicken farms is human beings. They can also travel from cattle farms to pig farms, and pigs are the doomsday animals for human influenza pandemics. Because they are especially susceptible to both avian and human flu, they make for good petri dishes in which avian influenza can become an effective human virus. The damage could be vast.

The U.S.D.A. also told me it doesn’t know how many farmers have tested their cattle and doesn’t know how many of those tests came up positive; whatever testing is being done takes place at the state level or in private labs. Just Wednesday, the agency made it mandatory to report all positive results, a long overdue step that is still — without the negative results alongside them — insufficient to give us a full picture. Also on Wednesday, the U.S.D.A. made testing mandatory for dairy cattle that are being moved from one state to another. It says mandatory testing of other herds wouldn’t be “practical, feasible or necessarily informative” because of “several reasons, ranging from laboratory capacity to testing turnaround times.” The furthest the agency will go is to recommend voluntary testing for cattle that show symptoms of the illness — which not all that are infected do. Dr. Bright compares this to the Trump administration’s approach to Covid-19: If you don’t test, it doesn’t exist.

As for the F.D.A., it tells me it hasn’t completed specific tests to confirm that pasteurization would make milk from infected cows safe, though the agency considers it “very likely” based on extensive testing for other pathogens. (It is not yet clear whether the elements of the H5N1 virus that recently turned up in milk had been fully neutralized.) That testing should have been completed by now. In any case, unpasteurized milk remains legal in many states. Dr. Bright told me that “this is a major concern, especially given recent infections and deaths in cats that have consumed infected milk.”

Making matters worse, the U.S.D.A. failed to share the genomes from infected animals in a timely manner, and then when it shared the genomes did so in an unwieldy format and without any geographic information, causing scientists to tear their hair out in frustration.

All this makes catching potential human cases so urgent. Dr. Bright says that given a situation like this, and the fact that undocumented farmworkers may not have access to health care, the government should be using every sophisticated surveillance technique, including wastewater testing, and reporting the results publicly. That is not happening. The C.D.C. says it is monitoring data from emergency rooms for any signs of an outbreak. By the time enough people are sick enough to be noticed in emergency rooms, it is almost certainly too late to prevent one.

So far, the agency told me, it is aware of only 23 people who have been tested. That tiny number is deeply troubling. (Others may be getting tested through private providers, but if negative, the results do not have to be reported.)

On the ground, people are doing the best they can. Adeline Hambley, a public health officer in Ottawa, Mich., told me of a farm whose herd had tested positive. The farm owner voluntarily handed over the workers’ cellphone numbers, and the workers got texts asking them to report all potential symptoms. Lynn Sutfin, a public information officer in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, told me that response rates to those texts and other forms of outreach can be as high as 90 percent. That’s heartening, but it’s too much to expect that a poor farmworker — afraid of stigma, legal troubles and economic loss — will always report even mild symptoms and stay home from work as instructed.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll get lucky with H5N1 and it will never manage to spread among humans. Spillovers from animals to humans are common, yet pandemics are rare because they require a chain of unlucky events to happen one after the other. But pandemics are a numbers game, and a widespread animal outbreak like this raises the risks. When dangerous novel pathogens emerge among humans, there is only a small window of time in which to stop them before they spiral out of control. Neither our animal farming practices nor our public health tools seem up to the task.

There is some good news: David Boucher, at the federal government’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, told me that this virus strain is a close match for some vaccines that have already been formulated and that America has the capacity to manufacture and potentially distribute many millions of doses, and fairly quickly, if it takes off in humans. That ability is a little like fire insurance — I’m glad it exists, but by the time it comes into play your house has already burned down.

I’m sure the employees of these agencies are working hard, but the message they are sending is, “Trust us — we are on this.” One troubling legacy of the coronavirus pandemic is that there was too much attention on telling the public how to feel — to panic or not panic — rather than sharing facts and inspiring confidence through transparency and competence. And four years later we have an added layer of polarization and distrust to work around.

In April 2020, the Trump administration ousted Dr. Bright from his position as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency responsible for fighting emerging pandemics. In a whistle-blower complaint, he alleged this happened after his early warnings against the coronavirus pandemic were ignored and as retaliation for his caution against unproven treatments favored by Donald Trump.

Dr. Bright told me that he would have expected things to be much different during the current administration, but “this is a live fire test,” he said, “and right now we are failing it.”

Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest” and a New York Times Opinion columnist. @zeynep • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2024, Section SR, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: The U.S. Is Blowing Its Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[cruciferous-spatula]

slowly crawling out of my hidey hole

hello! long time eh? i promise i haven't been at exams for all of two months. sometimes real life happens and you have to go spend time with your family across the country and feel some feels. ya feel?

long ramble under cut

at some point i developed this mental allergy to the IDEA of my test of time hood and tried to set up a contemporary game to play in. that took forever and i grew tired of that too before i'd even played it. also dabbled in sims 3 a bit. the island paradise ep is a bit of a whale isn't it? also why is that game so janky? why does it break every time you add a mod? why is the native story progression barely even there? why do ALL townies age up into that horrible alien outfit and space boots i can't get rid of because it came with the seasons ep i believe? why is it enabled for all outfit types? who is responsible for the game being not optimised at all? also where does time go when i play?

also there's this game called A Highland Song that's actually good and has taken over my brain slightly. You should play it, it's beautiful. You may remember the creators from Heaven's Vault which is also beautiful and you should also play that. My gamer partner doesn't understand my longstanding sims 2 monogamy (more like mono game-y, ayooo) and has convinced me to try a new thing every now and then and yeah, not the worst idea it turns out.

I can't promise daily updates this time, mainly because i signed up for too many classes again and have to get through the entire european literary canon in the next few months. just letting y'all know that i'm fine, i'm home, i'm returning to my little civilization and whatever will have to pass for normalcy now.

also. genocide is bad, actually. is this a tone crime? this is barely even an entertainment blog but i personally believe there are cases where silence is complicity, and this is the one platform i have. so,

please consider donating to relief efforts for the Palestinian people. Here's the one Biden's administration recently cut off funding from based on dubious Israeli allegations: https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page/en_EN

palestine children's relief fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

wfp: https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/palestine-emergency

if you're in the uk, write to you're mp and demand a ceasefire: https://www.map.org.uk/campaigns/it-is-becoming-impossible-to-sustain-human-life-in-gaza-demand-a-ceasefirenow

please use your voice in whatever way you can to oppose ongoing crimes against humanity.

be safe.

[ruminativerabbi]

The Two-State Solution

You would think that by now no amount of hypocrisy on the part of the great world out there could surprise, let alone startle, me at this point. Even I think that! And yet I find myself consistently amazed to find myself amazed at the duplicity of our so-called friends, not to mention the out-and-out phoniness of self-proclaimed allies who insist that they only want the best for the Jewish people or for the State of Israel.

If I had nothing to do for the rest of my life I could begin a list. But since my time is limited, I’ll settle for writing about our “friends” who have suddenly discovered, or rather re-discovered, the “two-state solution” as the cure for all that ails Israel and its neighbors. And they are legion: I’ve lost track of how many different newspaper articles I read this last week alone in which the author breathlessly announces that the reason the entire Arab-Israeli sikhsukh wasn’t resolved long ago has to do with the intransigence of Israelis with respect to the famous “two-state” solution, the compromise invariably touted by such authors as the obvious panacea to all that ails the Middle Eastern world. Here, for example, is a story from Taiwan explaining to readers of the Taipei Times how things would calm down instantly if only Bibi would heed President Biden’s call for a “two-state solution.”

The notion itself of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli problem, of course, is as old as the state itself and, in fact, there actually are two states, one Arab and one Jewish on the territory of the old British Mandate of Palestine. Or, rather, there would be had the British not unilaterally sawn the entire kingdom of Jordan, then called Transjordan, off of the mandated territory and offered it to the Hashemites as their own country. So the U.N. was dealing with the part that was left and that, indeed, they voted on November 22, 1947, voted to split down into two nations, a Jewish one and an Arab one.

The next part, everybody knows. The Jews of the yishuv accepted the plan and declared independence on May 14, 1948. (Our apartment in Jerusalem is actually just half a mile or so from November 22nd Street, a pretty place named specifically in honor of the U.N. decision.) The Arabs of British Palestine, however, did not follow suit and declare their own state. Instead, they went to war and lost, which failure laid the groundwork for the subsequent seventy-five years of hostility towards the Jewish state.

Whatever the problem really is, it certainly doesn’t have to do with not enough ink having been spilt—or time wasted—trying to work things out. The Madrid Conference of 1991, the Oslo Accords of 1991 and 1993, the Wye Plantation Memorandum of 1998, the Camp David Summit of 2000, the Annapolis Conference of 2007, the John Kerry shuttle diplomacy of 2013, the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan of 2020—all of these were “about” the two-state solution, each in its own way an effort to finesse the details while ignoring the fact that only one party to the dispute seemed even remotely interested in recognizing the other’s right to nationhood.  Nor does the concept lack international sponsors: a quick google of “international leaders in favor of a two-state solution” yields a very impressive list, a list that includes President Biden, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz, British P.M. Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian P.M. Justin Trudeau, Australian P.M. Anthony Albanese, New Zealand P.M. Christopher Luxon, and, saving the best for last, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. They are all on board!

Most impressive of all is that a full 138 nations have alreadyrecognized the State of Palestine, the fact that none of the above efforts to create a viable two-state solution has succeeded waved away as a mere detail hardly worth mentioning.

So, all that being the case, what actually is the problem? Just this week, we were exposed to the current administration’s pique with Israeli P.M. Netanyahu for not being fully enough behind the two-state solution. The L.A. Times had a particularly interesting op-ed piece on the topic (click here). CNN’s piece (click here) was also quite good. And, of course, nothing could ever deter the New York Times from trying to pry some space out between the Biden and Netanyahu administrations, of which only the latest examples appeared in the last few days: Peter Baker’s “Netanyahu Rebuffs U.S. Calls to Start Working Towards Palestinian Statehood,” Thomas Friedman’s “Netanyahu Is Turning Away from Biden,�� or Aaron Boxerman’s “Biden Presses Netanyahu On Working Towards Palestinian State.”

So, okay, I get it. The only solution is the two-state one. But why is everybody so irritated with Israel? The Palestinians could solve the problem overnight by declaring their independence, agreeing quickly to exchange ambassadors with the 130+ nations that already recognize their state, and getting down to the gritty business of negotiating safe and secure border with Israel. Bibi would probably not be pleased. But what could he do? The entire world would be on the Palestinians’ side and all it would take was a single unilateral announcement on the part of the Palestinians to get the ball rolling. The presence of Jewish so-called “settler” types in Judah and Samaria would not be a problem unless the State of Palestine intended itself to be totally judenrein—otherwise, why couldn’t those people live on their own land in an independent Palestine if they wanted to? (Most, I think, would not want to. But some surely would.) Nor would the status of Jerusalem itself be an issue: while the Palestinians are in unilateral-proclamation-mode, they could simply declare East Jerusalem to be their capital, then get down to work organizing a workable plan with Israel for policing the city, controlling traffic, and figuring out who picks up whose trash on which days.

Yes, I’m making light of intense issues. But, at the end of the day, why precisely couldn’t this happen? Everybody is happy to be irritated with Bibi, but Israel has demonstrated over and over—including in the context of all the above-listed conferences—that it is ready to negotiate for peace. And declaring independence would assist in Gaza as well: terror organizations like Hamas flourish in the atmosphere of hopelessness and desperation, but that would quickly move into the past if the Palestinians were occupied with nation-building and self-determination instead of endlessly complaining that the world hasn’t given them enough aid. If the Jordanians were big-enough hearted to create a kind of economic union with New Palestine, then there really would be no stopping the peace train. Even the United Nations would be unable to stop the momentum.

But, of course, none of the above has happened or, I fear, ever will happen. It’s much easier for the Biden administration to waste its time trying to bully Bibi into making concessions in the context of theoretical negotiations in which the other side has not given the slightly indication it wishes to participate. Yes, it’s more dramatic to build terror tunnels, murder babies, rape women, and take innocent civilian hostages. But that cannot—and will not—ever lead to statehood for Palestine. What will lead in that direction is the clear indication that the Palestinian leadership is prepared to create a viable Palestinian state and then to live within its borders peacefully and productively.

If the United States wants to defang Iran and lessen the likelihood that the Iranians will lead the world into World War III, it could take no more profound and potentially meaningful step forward than convincing the Palestinians to stop complaining, to take the independence the entire world wishes to offer them seriously, and to get down to the actual business of nation-building. The mullahs will be outraged. But they’ll get over it. And the world will be a safer and better place.

[the-firebird69]

Judge orders Trump administration to reinstate foreign aid funding for now https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/judge-orders-trump-administration-reinstate-foreign-aid-funding-now-rcna192168

Judges now ordering him to reverse executive orders regardless of their effect and to remove them and it's going on on all of the executive orders and they're not telling people it's true and this guy bja is a w**** can a****** he's pushed Trump so hard and it doesn't matter and he's so dumb is intelligence is that of a primate hey sits next door laughing and chortling and he says he's going to be out there bothering us it says you're going to be cut in half and you don't care because you're a moron we're going to get you and yours out of the general populace and then we're going to watch you wipe each other out because you really got something you going to try and convince us that you have something and yeah he sent an order and she did on you and you're going to get hit you're a f****** moron all of your stupid and mac daddy is going to try and put our son in the hospital when he figures out that he retained the Holocaust buildings to stick your ass in there for doing it in the first place that's why you want to rescue him from there cuz you're trying to do something now it's going to be awfully painful what you idiots are doing it's going to be painful to yourself you're going to find that out the hard way and we're going after Trump already but thank you we certainly know about it because of you dumb a****** Jesus Christ DJ why don't you shut up and yeah the empire has a plan to have you screw around with our son on your way out using Grandma's house you're okay with that biden you're a dumb f***** too when should be mad if Brian Gerard you probably found a secret formula you smiling saying that's probably true cuz you can't remember who I am Mom couldn't remember either and look what happened some stupid f****** retard stepped in because of your dumb ass f****** comments you can't say anything to these idiots Joe without them reacting inappropriately they're looking at all that's permission to do what they want now she's held by a stupid race this race is usually very dumb what you're hearing coming out of the Rock is trim thrim and he's not stupid I don't appreciate it though I know you're a weekly you're weak and small you can see me riding and I know that you don't appreciate the stupid Holocaust buildings and just like Stan you start being on me beating on me and I turn around I can flatten your f****** ass and you always can't handle what I'm doing it's better for you to go like the North Pole and just sit there hang out with this guy he can be the mayor of Alaska or whatever there's nobody out there still.

Zues Hera

We're up top

Thor Freya

I don't understand what you're saying they're talking for me I'm small and push me around it's just another huge pain in the ass thing it is not the bother him I was taking everything over cuz everyone's incompetent twit and has to tell me about it every which way but Sunday I follow that too these people are hardly here at all his people are controlling them practically and I see the results and nobody's doing their job and specially the Mac proper and a little angry and this is so what your realm is a piece of s*** being a human here doesn't mean anything except you could be food and these people eat a lot of people and it wasn't enough to stop them think about it. He's right now we'll probably never get it correct it will start off stupid and these people start off really dumb and it's horrible it is the worst side we have and we stuck it out there in the whole world sees it you know this is the dumbest plan I've ever seen and he says they took over by force and we're starting to see that there's too many means these Mac proper come up and they're overwhelmed and they don't do anything they can't function. And it did divide us but they don't even attack the empire at all and the empire is having the one down wiped out and the whole thing is a failure and I'm going to go to the mental hospital too Mac and Stan why don't you stop doing it and he does it looks like he's in these movies doing something different it's about damn time you get your brain back in one flew of the cuckoo's nest not the other way around that's amazing and these idiots are doing it he says cheeseman can't get any information when he's questioning him and it's true the brain the frontal lobe is PGA and it's a mess that's another wow but not surprising piece of s***

Biden

This is a tough life but bja you made it so hard nobody can do a damn thing about the Mac proper and they just sit there and laugh at us saying why do we have to do anything now they're not saying that the clans are this guy here took over Saturday and they're taking their ships like the little babies. No the cleans are angry and don't want you doing this to him and say they can't help that as soon as you better cuz that's why you're losing now they're smiling and saying probably stupid but we plan to stop them but your grandma's house with the idiot at a fight with you and you both come down from space it says just because I had a fight and fell down a stairway doesn't have dick s*** to do with space at all that's because of space cadets that this dumb s*** happens to me like Billy Hicks so Billy Hicks can explain it to bja and it's going on now

Kamala

So I had it done I guess I was not the one doing it but I was there watching the reaction and I Heard a voice say it felt like me doing it yeah that was expensive as hell stupid jackass sure you know what that does little boy I swear to get this I was threatening her for real no threatening both and I was the stupid idiot who put us in the hospital he was why don't you get us out of here then if you put us in here and it didn't look like me no I was doing stuff but he was right we're trapped there I said this f***** didn't to get his son out of office because he's stupid and was used so they ran around and they told me who it was and didn't smack proper Hoover doing it but we did as well and the pseudo empire now we're going to go back there and get stuck in these hospitals because this guy is angry and people who are in world war II are angry and people we put in there and survived or angry because with these Nazis and we're stupid and who's angry he's angry and told his people to do it and to stick Us in there and to get rid of us with it and they're going to head with it and I guess I'm to blame

Billy hicks

That's not what we're saying and we had the buildings preserved it's true

HHS

Wow that's awful and admission he says it sounds true he doesn't know how they would have gotten that done but usually we preserve stuff like that for history not for me to be put in there and he says that and it's true we all had a part in it and it's coming out in these movies and he says the movies already happened you saw the buildings yeah we figured that out a little you can see them in the movies when we're making the movies the buildings were there no you're over there in westborough so yeah it doesn't make sense and we had bldg there and no

What is simply saying is I have a gun I need you out of my face you can go anywhere else on Earth but not here I don't want your f**** ass next to me he says so I guess I'm going to stay here so we're going to be dead are you going to die in Oracle forever you're going to curse everyone to get rid of your clothes you stupid f***.. no I sort of get that

Billy Hicks

What a f****** f**** and queer is picking on me and I'm I'm just a boy in fifth grade can you imagine that this Nazi guy sitting there berating me picking on me harassing me I don't have any defenses and I'm alone I stood up for myself but really you'll be able to take the cake you're out asking to get f***** up this is a simple job and you f***** it all up and the foreigners are amazed that you're alive can you imagine being them and seeing the stupid s*** happen every day I'm not one of you keeping that in mind I grew up with you but I did not grow up the same way and you're far out of line and you're going to actually pay for it again and the the mac proper empire you're so God damn stupid and slow. How many fleets are going to give up for this f****** retard to sit here dumb s**** f****** losers. Everybody on Earth hates you cuz this piece of dirt in office I didn't think that you'd sit there and fall for it wholeheartedly like a bunch of little girls you want this a****** in front of the whole world this f****** huge ass tell me people that F off all the time and your name I mean Jesus Christ he's a piece of living s*** all my life I'm trying to get one f****** loser away from me he's stuck to me like glue so I'm wiping you the f*** out

Zues Hera

I suddenly hear something that guy is extremely upsetting and we know he is he's talking to him and he's a child and he has a lot of power and we're all going down cuz of Billy Hicks I won't have it that's some loser s*** and we look like losers because of it

Randy Savage

Really you have to leave a little bit Savage to understand this this Billy Hicks guy is harassing him at every corner every day recently he's busier he says it's starting to work he's got people firing his people he's got judges going after him and he's got less and less time on him but he has to be dying everyday in order for it to work did you see it starting to work and his opinion is that he's bothered less and he's in and out of town is absolutely true and the guy is President and he doesn't spend any time doing stuff he's the weirdest person I've ever seen and her friend says he belongs in a park bench and that's where he goes it's true this guy is a f****** bum it's on his own thing and his wife saying s*** they're mumbling mental patients and that's where they're going to I'm going to make sure this blows

HHS

Olympus we've actually heard enough y'all in on this stupid s*** and a lot of the Mac proper have had it by the way with you returns and that's what they're doing getting rid of you it really should we have to get rid of you too but it's useful and we're using you to block them on your way out go back to the Holocaust Billy Hicks since you put her son there that's what's going to happen to you and he wants it to happen to you I said ask bja does that help your plan you idiots going back there because you try to break him out as heroes and you put him in there and it says no I said good that's right after

[bllsbailey]

Byron Donalds Floats Theory About the Biden Death Row Commutations, and He Might Be Right on the Money

Biden's announcement came some two weeks after he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39, which was done just a few days after he issued a sweeping pardon of his son, convicted felon Hunter Biden, in what many political observers view as Democrat privilege run wildly amok.

Though the death row commutations were particularly infuriating, some have suggested that maybe it wasn't Biden himself who was the driving force behind the move. Among them is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who during a Fox News interview Thursday noted that he believed Biden didn't even know what he was signing:

Look, I think what’s happening with Joe Biden, nobody thinks he even knows about these clemencies or these pardons. This is the radical left staff that has been running this administration for the last four years. And so I agree with President Trump in what he said about these 37 individuals who have been granted clemency.

Donalds then expanded on his point, stating that this was something the radical left wanted to do all along but now had the chance to do because, in his view, Biden - for all intents and purposes - is not in charge anymore (if he ever was at all) in the final weeks of his presidency:

This is outrageous. They should not have a Merry Christmas, to be perfectly blunt with you. But this is because we have the radical left doing all the things they’ve been wanting to do for a very long time on their way out the door while Joe Biden is at the beach or taking a nap or whatever it is he’s doing. This is a travesty. We are a country that doesn't have a president right now.

Honestly, I think at this point that a convincing case could be made that Donalds is not that far off in suggesting Biden didn't have a clue what he was signing off on with the death row commutations. Quite frankly, since the election, the few times he's been seen or given speeches he's looked and sounded even worse than he did in the months leading up to Election Day.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that he knew exactly what he was doing considering, to Donalds' point, Biden's guiding force for the entire four years of his presidency has been the activist left, who have used Biden as a vessel to try and foist the worst of their ideas (and there are many) on the American people by way of executive decisions/actions/orders.

Whatever the case may be, the commutations for the federal death row inmates stink, and will be yet another negative mark on Biden's long and troublesome political legacy.

FLASHBACK:Byron Donalds Brings the Fire After Hillary Clinton Insults Trump Supporters

[dallasareaopinion]

If there ever was a time to fly the American flag upside down, the time is now

The Democrat machine has failed this country.

The Republican machine had already capitulated to their own dangerous power grab lead by someone who has no idea what is the Constitution, much less able to defend it against all enemies from within or abroad. I could say quite a bit about that person, however today is not the day for name calling and mudslinging.

Today is sad, depressing, scary, and even worse we are in desperate times. We must rely on the Democrat machine to find a reasonable candidate who can actually be President and not come up with horrendous public policy and deal with serious foreign adversaries. Trump caters to our enemies and yet the monsters behind Project 2025 do not care. Heck I think their program even caters to our enemies.

The only other option standing right now is Robert Kennedy Jr. and no. I read his Fauci book and no. Granted he did make a couple of good points, but overall he is so far from mainstream thinking and with no proof for his wild conspiracies he is no better than the rank and file populace on social media drawing Trump in superman clothes and spewing some of the wildest fiction known to man.

Yes I have been saying for years we need new parties. And I know if I say anything right now it appears that I am gloating. Unfortunately for 2024 the ability to produce another major party or strong enough independent candidate may be too late. I hope not, but the 4th of July is next week. This seems to be a weird time line to cross without a decent candidate.

Things are so desperate that I was thinking in my bed last night and it was late so maybe I was tired that the military should step in to protect us from the madness on the right and support an independent candidate. I had to write that down so the realization I am desperate would stick in my brain.

And yet maybe a few of Trump’s old Cabinet that is not supporting him might look good right now. Obviously Liz Cheney would garner some interest, but MAGA world would tear her up in such a horrid way it would be an injustice to put a human through that stupid madness.

There are a few names in the Democrat world that if they were to try and nominate them they guarantee Trump’s victory. Think 2016 for one example. I say just don’t. You have already lied to us enough with the Joe Biden debacle. Do not make things worse! And you know she is sitting on the sidelines just all up in herself to go.

Whoever let Joe Biden get this far should be arrested, not via the MAGA nonsense, but the actual fact they put our country in a precarious position on the international stage. We have too many people that want to see this country fail. You have got to think they are chomping at the bit to push us to the extreme. Some might.

I heard someone mention the 25th Amendment last night. We are probably close to that being a reality, but before they do that they better get a new Vice President. I have nothing against Harris as a person nor as a qualified administrator, but as a politician in DC fighting against the MAGA world, the Freedom Caucus and the middle school class of Green and Getz et all our government would become a dystopian nightmare and then we are heading into whatever Trump and Project 2025 would bring us.

If there ever is a time to fly the flag upside down, now is the time to do it.

[talkingpointsusa]

Dave Rubin has absolutely no idea what he's talking about exhibit #1246

For the sake of my own sanity I haven't watched a "Rubin Report" for a while. Unfortunately for that aforementioned sanity, Dave Rubin's response to the Trump Trial was so absolutely asinine that I felt like I had no choice but to immortalize it here on the blog. Lets get into it.

02:07, Dave Rubin: "As always I'm going to try to do this in the most honest way possible but my sort of bumper sticker on all of this would be that it does not matter whether you like Donald Trump, whether you hate Donald Trump, whether you begrudgingly were gonna vote for Donald Trump or you just were sort of on the fence or whatever -- wherever you fall on that chart it just simply does not matter at that moment."

Dave Rubin and "doing this in the most honest way possible" do not belong in the same sentence. Leaving that aside, I'm sad to report that America is over. If you live in America, it's time to pack it up and leave.

03:03, Dave Rubin: "I think for those of you that watch this show often you know that I don't do like, the constant alarmist stuff, I actually try to do the reverse of that. But we could be heading there and for all of the other things that are wrong in the country right now whether it's immigration or the economy or all of the woke crap and everything else like, if we allow what seems to be happening right now to happen and Donald Trump ends up in jail or is not the nominee it's kind of over."

Dave Rubin, one of the all time greats in the field of spewing alarmist claptrap, claims that he's above alarmism and then promptly declares that America as we know it has ended because a politician that he likes was convicted of a crime by a jury of his peers. Dave reads a bit from a Daily Wire article about the conviction and then rants a bit more.

06:06, Dave Rubin: "So we're gonna get to some video in just a second of Donald Trump's press conference from this morning. We'll show you that, two and a half minutes unedited."

I've said it once and I'll say it again, Dave Rubin's show is basically a clip show where Dave occasionally mumbles something resembling a position between clips. A reactionary reaction channel if you will. That would be fine if Dave Rubin actually did research every once and a while but, as you'll see later on, Dave Rubin and research go together like oil and water.

07:58, Dave Rubin: "If we do this here in New York, OK so in New York they will take out the Republicans cause New York is largely a Democrat state, well in Florida they'll start taking out the Democrats."

So, you admit that your side is going to clog up the justice system with pointless cases because your side wants revenge. The primary driving force behind the thing that Dave is talking about is the Republican Party trying to get "revenge" on the Democrats even though the Biden administration had nothing to do with the prosecution. If you don't believe me, just ask Matt Walsh who was advocating for that very thing on his Friday show.

Dave lives up to his promise and plays some of Donald Trump's press conference. The press conference was filled to the brim with false claims and if you want to read more about them take a look at this article here. In the meantime, we're here to fact-check Dave Rubin who's just so....utterly daft.

12:25, Dave Rubin: "He could be playing with his grandkids and spending the rest of his days on a golf course but he's doing what I think is right and for whatever his flaws are and all of that stuff it's actually all irrelevant at this point."

Trump's "flaws" should be really really relevant to Dave Rubin since they concern his marriage and his children. Dave Rubin is a gay man who has children through surrogacy, which is great and I'm happy for him and his family. What's not so great is that Dave is advocating for a party that wants to take his right to have kids and be married away from him and every other gay man in America.

Project 2025 has outlined that the government should only recognize marriages between a male and a female and has called for the end of surrogacy. Key figures who were involved in the writing of Project 2025 have close ties to Donald Trump and the RNC. If Dave wasn't so intent on selling out his fellow LGBTQ people for cash and clicks to the point where he's willfully blinded himself to reality, he should probably be extremely concerned about Trump's rhetoric around his own rights.

13:15, Dave Rubin: "So Donald Trump is going to be in jail. I don't know how quickly you end up in jail, is it the next day? I'm not sure the mechanisms on that but again the RNC, the convention, is like a week and a half later."

The offence that Trump was found guilty of doesn't require Trump to go to jail immediately after he's found guilty. Call me back when sentencing is done.

14:24, Dave Rubin: "Like, most people realize that the country is in trouble right now. The seven to ten million illegals, the sanctuary cities, the crime, the drugs, all of that. Does putting Donald Trump in jail or going through this clown circus that we are going through -- does this solve anything, does this make anyone's life better?"

It makes Dave Rubin's life better because he can use it to try and sucker conservatives on YouTube into watching his show using clickbait. In all seriousness, I don't know what Dave Rubin's point is. Is the court systems purpose to solve the often nonexistent or exaggerated problems posed by conservative media? Believe it or not New York does not have jurisdiction over the border nor can it single handedly fix America's drug problems.

Here comes one of the dumbest things you will hear this month, brace yourself.

17:34, Dave Rubin: "By the way, the Supreme Court of New York that they're gonna appeal - they're gonna file the appeal to go to the supreme court of New York because it's a New York trial. We showed you video about a month ago, its five black women because of diversity. Now, oddly the diversity that they care about is always about skin color, somehow the lefts diversity ends up with five black women being in charge of the Supreme Court of New York."

This is one of those statements that's so obscenely stupid that anyone who wants to talk about the news and repeats it to others should be absolutely ashamed.

First of all, they're not going to appeal this in the Supreme Court. In New York, the Supreme Court is the trial court whereas the Appeals Court is the highest court in the state. This is an extremely basic fact about the New York judicial system and it's completely unacceptable for somebody posing as a reputable source of news to get that fact wrong.

Honestly, Dave does not have his facts straight about any of the things that he is saying in this video and what he's doing is totally unacceptable conduct for a journalist or even a political commentator if Dave wants to call himself that. The New York Appellate Court is comprised of 21 individuals, many of whom aren't black females, the ones who are earned that position due to their legal experience. What Dave is basing his lie on is the fact that February 14th 2024 was the first time that 5 black female judges comprised a five person panel. This was something that only happened during one case for one day - not a permanent thing.

Dave Rubin seems to think that "the left" just appoints justices and focuses on appointing minorities because of DEI/ whatever thing that Dave's using to piss his audience off this week. What Dave seems to be missing here is that in the state of New York Supreme Court Justices are actually elected by the voters of the judicial district that they serve.

In short, Dave Rubin is a complete moron who is just pulling stuff out of his ass and that's readily apparent just by how absolutely wrong that entire statement was.

17:58, Dave Rubin: "I don't know all of their judicial beliefs, these five women, but do you think that they probably think similar things and they probably don't like Donald Trump and that's probably how they got the job in the first place. Like, do you think? Is that a crazy conspiracy theory?"

Not a crazy one, just an extremely stupid one being spun by an extremely lazy man who doesn't know the basic facts about what he's talking about and seems to hold the prejudiced belief that all females of color are a net entity that think in the exact same manner.

In the world according to Dave Rubin, Supreme Court justices in New York go through a job interview where the only question is "Do you hate Trump?" and are selected on a purely racial basis.

18:29, Dave Rubin: "The entire system, COVID, kept crashing down on him and he fought to the best of his ability, his imperfect ability and now things are worse."

When I was younger we called what Dave is talking about "being a terrible president". Anyway, Dave has a challenge for his audience.

19:31, Dave Rubin: "Find me a decent Democrat with a following who is a Joe Biden supporter who believes this is good, I will do a live debate with any of them, any of them. And that is a promise."

Dave Rubin, who has notoriously avoided debates with serious people, has issued the challenge. I'm going to keep this promise in mind the next time he turns a notable leftist down for a debate.

Dave proceeds to read an entire tweet from his hero Ron Desantis. Honestly, this is a pretty good encapsulation of what watching Dave Rubin is like. He reads paragraph long tweets for two minutes, follows it up by simply saying "oh that's exactly right" and then moving on. Like I've said before, Dave Rubin is the laziest man in conservative media. Yes, all of them are pretty damn lazy but Dave Rubin regularly takes that laziness to comedic extremes. It would be funny if people didn't take him seriously.

21:57, Dave Rubin: "What else has Alvin Bragg done in New York? Well you guys know what he's done in New York, he's allowed criminals to run the city."

Crime in New York City has been trending downward this year so this statement is just another statement based entirely on Dave's feelings an narratives and not based on the actual facts and data. Seriously, Dave Rubin's been operating out of another universe these days. Dave proceeds to read another paragraph long tweet from RFK Jr because we've got to pad this video out somehow.

24:42, Dave Rubin: "You may not agree with RFK on all of that and that's just fine but he represents what the Democrats used to be and what they are no longer."

RFK is pretty right-leaning and that's pretty obvious to anybody who looks at his statements and policy objectively. Also, "used to be and are no longer" is an extremely redundant sentence.

25:07, Dave Rubin: "Look at what this evil progressive authoritarian machine has done, it has destroyed so much of our institutional value in this country by destroying our universities and brainwashing a bunch of kids to think that America is fundamentally evil and that their genitals don't match their gender and all of that and now it's on the verge of impeaching Donald Trump who is the leading candidate in virtually every poll."

I've said this a million times but these guys have absolutely zero idea of what people actually do when they go to university. Engineering students aren't reading the communist manifesto and not a single professor in the country is trying to convince their poor sweet innocent cisgender students that they're actually transgender. While right-wing transphobia is always extremely infuriating, I find it twice as infuriating coming from the mouth of someone who is a member of the LGBTQ community whether he likes it or not. The thing that Dave seems to forget is that in the days before the far-rights narrative was "they're turning the kids trans" it was "they're turning the kids gay".

So, a majority of this episode of "The Rubin Report" is devoted to an AMA and we will be looking at none of it. I really could care less about Dave responding to questions.

Conclusion:

Well, that was a look into how Dave Rubin is taking the Trump trial. Mostly just him getting racist about the New York Supreme Court, an institution which he has absolutely zero understanding of, and making ridiculous and quite frankly bizarre statements with no basis in fact whatsoever.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

Original Video:

The Rubin Report. “Trump Found Guilty, This Is What Happens Next.” YouTube, 31 May 2024.

Sources:

Dale, Daniel. “Fact Check: Trump’s Post-Conviction Monologue Was Filled with False Claims | CNN Politics.” CNN, 31 May 2024.

“How a Second Trump Presidency Could Impact the LGBTQ+ Community.” PBS NewsHour, 27 Mar. 2024, www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-second-trump-presidency-could-impact-the-lgbtq-community.

“The Appeals Process: New York State Courts.” Kravet & Vogel, LLP, 11 Jan. 2022, kvnylaw.com/the-appeals-process-new-york-state-courts/.

McKay, Morgan. “NYC Officials Announce City Crime “Continues to Trend Downward.”” FOX 5 NY, 3 Apr. 2024, www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-march-2024-crime-statistics.