Hey, this has lyrics -- perfect for karaoke night!
Not gonna say what a week because they’re all what-a-weeks. There’s plenty enough to get pissed about. Maybe you’ll find it helpful to look at Marcy Wheeler’s recap of how the multiple outrages are being answered by elected Democrats and, especially, by pro-bono litigants who are not only winning significant victories against Trump and the DOGE clowns in court, but arguably giving DOJ lawyers, who are forced as Tubby’s mouthpieces to offer ever more strained defenses of his shenanigans, enough rope to hang themselves in front of increasingly annoyed federal judges. Worth a look!
Nonetheless I remain choleric. I’m particularly mad at Trump’s collective punishments and what they say about his whole miserable maladministration. And no, I don’t mean the torments he heaps on the suckers who went to work for him; they deserve everything they get.
Here's an example: You may have heard the Trump team cancelled Social Security contracts for Maine that permitted automatic enrollment of live births; later they said it was an accident, and said they were actually going through with the contracts. (I say "said" because I won’t accept that they’re doing what they said until I see it done. They lie about everything.)
The cancellation was clearly a retaliation for Maine Governor Janet Mills talking back to Tubby at the Governors’ Conference. The exchange exposed him (more than usual I mean) as a petty piece of shit. I’m sure he made some turbulent-priest yak at his votaries afterwards and they pulled the plug, then someone else panicked and put it back in.
This is how MAGA fascism works in the present stage, while the few institutional bulwarks against his intended dictatorship still stand. (What are the odds they’ll be there in a year’s time?) When Trump dumped billions of gallons of California’s water supply into the ground and pretended he was helping with the drought, that too was a nasty piece of collective punishment against a government that had expressed some defiance of him. I bet it was especially pleasing to the old bastard because, unlike Social Security money, the water couldn’t be put back by order of the courts. (I wonder whether that spooked Newsom, leading to his self-reinvention as an anti-trans dipshit this week.)
This reminds me of Trump’s extortionate behavior with ventilators and PPE in the early days of the COVID pandemic, keeping them from New York and other blue states to punish them for defying his will (which behavior didn’t change until he realized he was fucking up his own chances of reelection). And it’s absolutely on key with his whole slash-and-burn style of governance now – there’s no goal except to wreck things and punish people he’s got a bug up his ass about. Of course graft and grift figure into it – with him there’s always that angle. But in his dotage he lacks even the craft to make that work, and with sugar daddy Musk throwing money at him he also has less motivation to summon up any discipline even when it would benefit him financially – he just lets the crooks and psychos that came into his fold do their crimes, and expects his reputation for viciousness will make them fork over his cut. There are all kinds of theories about how this nightmare will implode, but I begin to expect it will come when Tubby realizes (or fantasizes) he’s not getting what he’s owed. God grant it soon!
Anyway, if you’ve come this far you might be interested in Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies. From behind the paywall comes this little scene featuring dangerous lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., using his authority as HHS Secretary to try some homebrew healing on an actual patient.