Thought For The Day - 16 January 2025

Well... even the proposed Treasury Secretary lies. So far as I've looked so far, not one interrogator has the stones to ask the vital question

Sir, when was, and the value of, the last payment from China (or any foreign government) or any Chinese company (ditto) received by Treasury to pay their tariff bill?

The answers, of course, are never and 0.

He just babbled the usual Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts mantra that all will get better for all if the rich get even richer. I wonder if the fact that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists are building an administration of Phat Cats is penetrating the heads of the MAGAnauts? Populist? Only an idiot would buy that.

No Fucking Way

The headline reads:

They voted for Trump. Now they might be hit by 'catastrophic' education cuts.

(The piece is labeled 'for subscribers', and I'm not so far as I know, but I still got in. YMMV)

Anyone who believes that headline is a Limp Wristed Lunatic Lefty. The whole point of Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists is to degrade the Blue States into Red States, but leave the Red States in their current state of corruption. Remember: The Gang of Six^© has ruled that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (and Sleepy Joe for that matter, who chose not to act) can do anything within the Administrative State that he feels like; this Unitary Executive bullshit. That will include not spending money as a means of paranoic punishing his assumed enemies. And they're mostly in Blue States. And it means that he can direct the lowest level GS worker what to do. Of course, Schedule F will put the administrative civil service into the political appointee box. Andy Jackson will be proud.

And the punishment will be meted out across the whole of the Damn Gummint. His mouthpieces have already said that they'll demand their pound, or ten, of flesh for aid to California.

A group of House Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump talked about tying wildfire aid to a debt ceiling increase Sunday night

And, I guarantee, that'll only be the beginning of the extortion. No more woke. No more welfare. No more vaccines. No more DEI. And so on. The Garden of Eden for the robber barons, shitholes for the rest.

MAHA

Regular reader well knows my view of Gina Kolata: the Tess Harding (look it up!) of the real world. In today's dead trees NYT, comes a scorched earth assessment of RFK and MAHA. Not that you or I would be shocked (Shocked!! I say!!!) at the conclusions of the piece.

Suffice it to say: Again?? As if the 19th century, and even the first half of the 20th were some Garden of Healthy Eden here in smoking, drinking, tubercular, STD wreaked USofA. As mentioned here a few times, if, in the 1800s, one were really ill, one took ship to Europe for real healthcare and hope you got there in time to make a difference. They not be much in the Colonies. And there wasn't. Give a guess when the medical license came to be ................... Well... it's complicated. It is claimed that the Constitution left regulation (if at all) of doctors to the States separately. The claim is based on the tenth amendment (which has been used for all sorts of reactionary purposes)

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

According to the wiki page, Illinois was the first to take steps 1877. Other sources mention North Carolina in the 1850s. Either way, it wasn't until 1910 with the Flexner Report that common sense regulation of healthcare (mostly, the physicians) began to take hold. Again???

So, back to Gina's report.

Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, asked: "Which particular era does R.F.K. want to take us back to?"

Yeah, good question.A

And, of course, the MAGAnauts make a lot of it up. There's a line from a L&O:CI episode: "He's got Irish Alzheimer's. He only remembers the bad parts." (More or less, from memory.) The MAGAnauts, of course, re-write history such that the Good Times have always been when they had the power and the Bad Times when Democrats did.

"There's a long history in America of nostalgia for a past that was better than the present," [Dr. Greene] said. "History is all about erasure — the things we don't choose to remember."

Again?? As mentioned in these essays a few times, extension of life expectancy at birth since, say 1900, hasn't been that geezers have been living decades longer since 1900 to now, but that most folks these days don't die off from disease or accident or such before reaching 65 or so. And most of that extension happened after WWII, thanks (wait for it...) vaccines. Fuck you, Bobby. If you made it to 65 back then, you (on average) lived about as long as you will today. Esp. if you avoid smoking and drinking and screwing anything that walks. Keep it in your pants, buddy!

[update 14 Jan. 2025] here

"I think there is common cause, as I mentioned, in this idea of making America healthy again, if that's really the goal," Ricks said.

The Ricks in question is the CEO of Lilly. And, clearly, a Trump dick sucker.

It's Mine, All Mine

Well... turns out that Garfield 2.0 lies about who built the Panama Canal. Bet you thought that wasn't possible. Everyone knows the USofA built it, right? Teddy Roosevelt and all that? Well... and the US Army intervention in the creation of "Panama" in the first instance.

So, we made it, kinda sorta back in 1914. And all was well with the world. Then the Peanut Farmer decided to go all Limp Wristed Lefty and give it back the Panamanians (who were really just Colombians). Pissed off soonToBePresident Huey Long 2024^©.

So now, Mad Dictator Don goes bizarro over Greenland and the Canal and the Gulf. A full blown crackup is on the docket.

Turns out, the current Canal (to all intensive porpoises) is not what was built ~1914, but what was built by 2016, without any USofA moolah. Look it up here. So, fuck you Drumpf.

Thought For The Day - 8 January 2025

So, what will Batshit J. Moron demand from CA for FEMA assistance with the wildfires? An end to Woke in all schools? An end to climate change legislation? An end to DEI by both the Damn Gummint and Bidnezz in the state? Elevation of The Musk Ox to Governor? And such.

Corruption, thy name is Drumpf.

D'oh!!

Some folks are beyond stupid. Here's an example (paywalled) but you can read the lede, which is all that matters.

After hitting a post-covid all-time high in real estate sales in 2020, total sales per year are still declining on Block Island, even as individual property values continue to increase.

In the first place, 2020 wasn't close to being "post-covid". Not within a country mile; 2020 launched the pandemic. What the hell; it's just a Chamber of Commerce small town organ. But, more to the point: sales nearly always decline when price goes up. It's the bedrock understanding of Econ 101. While more than is healthy, there is a limited number of billionaires (fighting for their rightful place in paradise) and there is also a limited amount of dirt on teeny Block Island (no match for the Vineyard and Nantucket). The landed gentry of Block Island continues to sell off holdings piecemeal to Big City rich folk.

If anything, two week in the summer 10,000 square foot "cottages" on the Island are so valuable one might expect sales to always be increasing. Well... unless the Island's landed gentry is running out of inventory to sell. Not to mention water.

Bring Out Your Dead!

ah well

Five members so far have skipped their turn to vote, putting the chamber into suspense about whether Mike Johnson can secure the votes for speaker on the first ballot.

Cannibalism is all the rage these days among Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts.