They built a better mouse-trap and we are in it. Impeach Trump and you get Vance, impeach them both and you get Mike Johnson. Along the way, there will be no relief from SCOTUS.
Voting them out en masse is a solution, but in the meantime we keep educating. Thank you Thom. What you are doing is not without risk. You are a true Patriot with knowledge of the past and a grasp of how it can affect the future.
This is history in the making and every American is participating---even the ones that choose to remain silent and those that do not vote.
No chance of that happening without decisive victories in 2026 elections and even then conviction in the Senate without substantial GOP votes is unlikely. At the rate the Project 2025 plan for a unitary executive dictatorship is proceeding it may be too far advanced to have anything like a free and fair 2026 election. Mass action (protests, general strikes, civil disobedience, or outright revolt) may be our only recourse.
Protests and strikes will have to be extensive and long lasting, otherwise they will peter out. How many of our citizens would be willing to be a part of a national strike and boycott of corporations that support the current administration. Not enough I fear. Too many people are more concerned about living day to day because of the $50 trillion that has been transferred to the morbidly rich. We might be trapped unless all of our representatives get some backbone and stop worrying about their jobs and instead do what is right for the country. Start flooding their phones and in-boxes with your concerns. Shame them.
Flip the House or get them to abstain? Then there is that pesky 60 threshold in the Senate to convict. Still glad you mentioned it, Daniel.
Proof is not in the pudding-it's in the hands of Putin. He just might make it public if Trump and his Cabinet do not do his bidding. The truth could set us free, but he won't do it unless it also sets us on fire.
Tje 60 vote threshold is not baked in, and it only pertains to bills, not appointments or trial.
In fact it really isn't 60 votes by the rules, it defaults to 60 because of the filibuster, if they can negotiate a bill not being filibustered it can pass with a 51 vote majority.
There are occasions, mostly jn the Democratic party, where the majority really want it to pass, but they don't want to go on record as voting for it.
They need to protect their ranking as conservative or liberal.
How do we impeach anyone when the Republicans control congress. Impeaching by itself is not a remedy, the impeached must then be tried and found guilty by the senate and that is a 53 Republican majority.
Even if we regain the House in 2026, we still don't control the Senate.
The major victims in flyoover country are people like the Republican senators who just lost their government crop subsidies on their farms.
The last time 7 Republican senators voted for impeachment. People like Ron Johnson, Cruz and Hawley should have been material witnesses and should not have voted.
We cannot assume any rules. Democrats want to shut government? They’ll say ok. We like this budget. We’re going for it.
Don’t play old school!!!
Where are our democratic billionaires? I was hoping to cancel my services and credit cards and maybe support a mark cuban or Bloomberg credit card or delivery service… but they don’t exist.
Don't be fooled by Mark Cuban, do some research on him, he isn't what you think. Same with Bloomberg.
As regards Credit card. I pay all balances when due, actually before due. I don't have a credit card. I use my wife's for online shopping, but I pay the bills and pay it off. I've never paid any interest on credit cards. They do make money off my purchases but they charge the vendor a percentage.
We all pay for credit card use,whether we use a card or not, because the vendors jack up the price of all products to account for the credit card charge, whether you charge or not. On occasion you will find a vendor that will give you a cash discount, but that is in person.
The only way to avoid the system is not to buy anything ever.
There are 756 Billionaires, AFIK the only billionaires that supported Kamala were Gates, Bloomberg and maybe Cuban.
None of them have shown any interest in acquiting media, like Bezo's has done, and the only way to stop the juggernaut is to control the media.
A lot have hopes on bluesky, but bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey who cofounded twitter but here is the skinny on Bluesky. I don't have a cell phone, nor do Ihave an account with any social media, save substack
Don't look to billionaires, they are in self protection, survival, accumulation mode. Notice how fast Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bezo's, Sacks et al lined up to kiss Trump's ass.
The more wealth people have, the more they can lose, and the easier they are to control through fear.
You must be naive to think that in the next congressional election the voters will have the ability to stop Trump's assault of our country's Democracy. The electoral process has been totally destroyed by the Republican party, Trump, our Congress, and the judicial system. This destruction has been facilitated by a biased national news media and the support of the brainwashed maga voters. The system was so rigged, neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris had a chance of winning the 2024 presidential election. The Democratic party would have lost even if they ran Jesus Christ as their candidate.
We are not going to save our Democracy at the ballot box. I believe the people of America have a better chance of restoring our nation's Constitution and Democracy, than the Russian people have a freeing themselves from Putin.
Our country's people have had a long history of valuing our freedom, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. Some people have taken these ideals for granted and won't know how important they are until they're gone. Once they start to feel the full impact of Trump's fascist takeover of our country, they will unite to restore our Great American Way. Abraham Lincoln was right; united we stand divided we fall.
I wonder at the appeal of Donald Trump the titular president and Elon Musk the acting president to the Republican Congress. The fact that Elon's position has not been questioned and there was a cabinet level office that is NOT part of the cabinet but wields much more power than the House, Senate and the presidents' cabinet and no one questions. The American public does but what is being done by the entire congress - they should be asking tough questions. There are Dems who are outraged but they are out numbered so my thoughts are exactly what is being promised to the sitting House and Senate Republicans that they are not outraged that THEIR power is being stripped. Our gov't has gone through many changes but this is beyond the pale. It is frankly an offense to every American as we are the ones who will get thrown under the bus.
This morning, Senate Democrats launched a new portal for federal employees to blow the whistle on illegal or illicit activities being done in the federal government under the purview of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or DOGE. [What took them so long?]
The portal, which asks a short set of questions, is the latest line of defense launched by Congressional Democrats to oppose the actions of Musk and DOGE.
Many complainants lose their cases because they fail to communicate their complaints to someone with authority.
It’s fascinating how a generation that grew up with rising economic democracy grows old with a brutal return to Gilded Age conditions. A lifelong lesson on the cycles of history and the flaws of humanity. We are not exceptional.
• November 1988: Estonia's Supreme Soviet passed a declaration of sovereignty.
• March 1991: Independence vote
• August 1991: The Estonian parliament declared independence.
and
• June 1991: Russian declaration of sovereignty.
• December 25, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his post as president of the USSR.
Although the path for a new configuration for the U.S. is different, there are lessons from a small country (0.05% of the USSR's population) being able to spark a revolution that has freed hundreds of millions from oppression.
In the 1860s only one CSA state, South Carolina, rescinded its ratification of the U.S. Constitution, so that avenue is untested. The extensive work that went into that effort was captured in a report to Congress (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_m042961.asp).
Today, more of the Article VII ratifying states voted for Harris than would be needed to revoke ratification and allow the states freedom to re-associate into different national configurations. The revocation would also allow states to collect revenues independently and move forward. A transition period would be needed.
All of this will take time, but clearly, the current model is broken and needs to be replaced with many things learned about democracy in the past 250 years.
@ Dr. Doug. The Virginia and Kentucky "nullification" resolutions were accepted by only one state -- Virginia and after the Civil War, states' rights BS has been completely discredited.
AI: "One nation, one constitution" is a phrase that refers to the United States as a unified country governed by a single constitution. The Constitution establishes the structure of the U.S. government and the rights of its citizens.
Explanation
The Constitution begins with the Preamble, which explains why the Constitution was written.
The AI first three sections of the Constitution establish the U.S. government, which is made up of three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
The Constitution divides power between the federal government and the states, and between the branches of the federal government. This is called "checks and balances".
The Constitution also protects individual rights and requires widespread agreement to change it.
The Fourteenth Amendment states that all people born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.
The Constitution's goal is to establish justice, promote general welfare, and secure liberty for the United States and its citizens.
The Constitution has 2 supremacy clauses. Anything the ferderal government has touched precludes state action.
BTW the only reason there was a civil war was because cadets of the Citadel,egged on by Gov Pickens, fired on Ft Sumter.
Also The states that rescinded their ratification vote were primarily Southern states which declared their secession from the Union during the Civil War. However, their attempt to rescind their ratification of the U.S. Constitution was later deemed invalid by the Supreme Court.
I saw a poll on MSNBC this AM that has Trump with a 53% approval rating. This shows how absolutely sick this country is. The citizenry is applauding the destruction of its own government! The rot in this country is unsurvivable, I fear.
IMHO Trump's overreach has jeopardized many groups within his base. Where I live the key issue is that he has offended the local ethnics that supported him as caudillo. Three Republican House members here are under tremendous pressure. One of them, born in Cuba was an elected Democratic mayor until 2020. He supported HRC in 2016.
Hakeem Jeffreies says there are 20 Repunican House members in Demoicratic majority districts.
Constitution? Very poorly written. Why? Only the Exec. has enforcement powers, all across the board. The hierarchy of kingship is terminally addictive. It does not take much intelligence, only cunning and supreme lust to fall into the daze of narcissistic perfection. The cases in history clearly show the allure of power and its handmaiden, violence, to be mesmerizing to most every psychopath, sociopath and sadist.
Weak persons, almost always males, are like flies to the honey of brute power. The historic 'gang mentality' of so-called leaders is everywhere, and has been here since the beginning of immigration in 1604 and 1620, respectively by the Spanish and the English. Bullies always attract wannabe sycophants, craving beings who hate themselves enough to disable their own megalomania, but are addicts to the most sadistic among them. In the old days, the top gangster usually had to create that violent aura himself, via violence, usually but not always via ambush or betrayal.
But in this day and age, the allure of money, wealth, fame, protection, perverse sexual gratification and opportunity, and the approval from on high to do damage to others, has rendered the cabal of thugs permission to commit helter skelter.
The Judiciary and the Congress are, allegedly, dignified, professional positions requiring at least some semblance of functional capability. Ridiculously, the CFR was Never Amended via Congress to bolster its own and the Judiciary's enforcement and self-protection status. Yes, it could require overturning a veto, but many presidents would have seen the wisdom in that if they actually believed in checks and balances. Now if I, a regular person who despises politics can see these obvious and gaping weaknesses, it makes you wonder what this govt. was actually all about.
The D Brand knew it was an uphill battle to win in 2024, but note that they did basically Nothing to protect the institutions and philosophy of said govt. from what they Damn Well Knew was coming down the rabbit hole. And there could have been literally thousands of actions taken, publically and in private, to make it incredibly difficult for TFG et. al. to do what they now are doing, With NO observational and recording oversight.
This leads me to suspect that it is well past time that this govt. is shaken up, shaken down and shaken out, especially by artifacts as clumsy, careless, overtly childish and crudely toxic/violent as the MAGA cult and its nihilistic insiders. Herr Adolfo had to murder many of its loyalists, and still there were several attempts on its life in a few short years.
Cruelty creates fear, yes, but more so fosters revenge and treachery. The jealousy within the ranks is already in full swing, and the more pressure and criticism and defiance and refusal and sabotage the public commits, the wider the cracks and the leakages become. The bone-headed, infantile policies spoken by the TFG cult are, like cancers, already mutating and colonizing the host organism.
We have no big sticks right now, but we have a couple hundred million little knives, razor blades, pins, needles, specks of poison, small flames, slippery fluids and all the treachery we need. Pay attention, stay frosty, stay calm, protect as much as you can, collaborate with known actors, be patient, let the careless arrogance of power lead to its perversions, its seven deadly sins, and take swift and silent actions as they emerge.
What about the damage already done Carl. Humpty dumpty can not be put back together again. Trump has effectively destroyed USAID, even if reversed the damage is done, communication lines broken, institutional knowledge and memory lost.
The decades old perversion of democracy the american way brought us where we are. Big money corrupts big. And this is the country that wanted to impose “democracy” on so many other countries. What a shame! The world will soon tell us go home, except the other dictatorial minions. Lol
Another excellent & scary article as to how democracy as outlined by our founding father is being trampled on and with dire consequences.
"......However, as a result of a 44-year-long effort by morbidly rich American oligarchs to corrupt our government to their own gain (the so-called Reagan Revolution, Bush, Trump, 1500 radio stations, three television networks, multiple newspapers and other publications, over 200 television stations, hundreds of billions spent to purchase and then elect politicians), all of this American democracy and government— after 240 years — is finally on the verge of collapsing and being replaced by something very much like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The GOP-controlled Congress has, in both houses, become a pathetic rubber-stamp for whatever billionaires, Trump, Musk, and industries like fossil fuels, crypto/tech, and banks want.
The president is nakedly breaking laws and daring both Congress and the courts to do anything about it.
And now JD Vance claims Trump can do whatever he wants and ignore the courts. (Only federal marshals can enforce federal court orders, but they work for Pam Bondi and Donald Trump.)
Thanks Thom for listing the sprawling Musk investigations that are going to be thwarted by DOGE. I have read about several but to see them in one place is gobsmacking. This firehouse of nonsense is blinding us to the industrial grade corruption of this regime.
Perhaps someone should tell Mr. Vance that it is a Constitutional duty of the Executive to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II.3). Consequently, there can be no “presumptive immunity” to injunctions against violating any part of that duty, because enjoining faithfulness to Law poses absolutely “no dangers of intrusion on the [legitimate] authority and functions of the Executive Branch” (Trump v. U.S. 603 ___ (2024) at 14, quoting Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 713 (1982) at 754).
They built a better mouse-trap and we are in it. Impeach Trump and you get Vance, impeach them both and you get Mike Johnson. Along the way, there will be no relief from SCOTUS.
Voting them out en masse is a solution, but in the meantime we keep educating. Thank you Thom. What you are doing is not without risk. You are a true Patriot with knowledge of the past and a grasp of how it can affect the future.
This is history in the making and every American is participating---even the ones that choose to remain silent and those that do not vote.
If we do this right, impeach both Trump and Vance and get Hakeem Jeffries!
No chance of that happening without decisive victories in 2026 elections and even then conviction in the Senate without substantial GOP votes is unlikely. At the rate the Project 2025 plan for a unitary executive dictatorship is proceeding it may be too far advanced to have anything like a free and fair 2026 election. Mass action (protests, general strikes, civil disobedience, or outright revolt) may be our only recourse.
Protests and strikes will have to be extensive and long lasting, otherwise they will peter out. How many of our citizens would be willing to be a part of a national strike and boycott of corporations that support the current administration. Not enough I fear. Too many people are more concerned about living day to day because of the $50 trillion that has been transferred to the morbidly rich. We might be trapped unless all of our representatives get some backbone and stop worrying about their jobs and instead do what is right for the country. Start flooding their phones and in-boxes with your concerns. Shame them.
Don't forget-TFG will send the military against civilians (and likely send them w/their automatic rifles set on lock & load..)
Totally agree!
Let’s not let him be a Benedict Arnold but a Major John Andres! By his own words!
Flip the House or get them to abstain? Then there is that pesky 60 threshold in the Senate to convict. Still glad you mentioned it, Daniel.
Proof is not in the pudding-it's in the hands of Putin. He just might make it public if Trump and his Cabinet do not do his bidding. The truth could set us free, but he won't do it unless it also sets us on fire.
In the last 2 impeachments, material witnesses should not have been permitted to vote in cases where they were personally involved.
I couldn't believe the House managers didn't call witnesses.
Tje 60 vote threshold is not baked in, and it only pertains to bills, not appointments or trial.
In fact it really isn't 60 votes by the rules, it defaults to 60 because of the filibuster, if they can negotiate a bill not being filibustered it can pass with a 51 vote majority.
There are occasions, mostly jn the Democratic party, where the majority really want it to pass, but they don't want to go on record as voting for it.
They need to protect their ranking as conservative or liberal.
HE said, "We won't have to vote anymore".
How do we impeach anyone when the Republicans control congress. Impeaching by itself is not a remedy, the impeached must then be tried and found guilty by the senate and that is a 53 Republican majority.
Even if we regain the House in 2026, we still don't control the Senate.
The major victims in flyoover country are people like the Republican senators who just lost their government crop subsidies on their farms.
The last time 7 Republican senators voted for impeachment. People like Ron Johnson, Cruz and Hawley should have been material witnesses and should not have voted.
Let's not forget that by abolishing the USAID, the farmers who grew the crops will NOT get paid, lose their land and the crops will rot...
I know that Daniel, the Senators know that, but the people are easily manipulated by invoking Jesus and the culture war.
We cannot assume any rules. Democrats want to shut government? They’ll say ok. We like this budget. We’re going for it.
Don’t play old school!!!
Where are our democratic billionaires? I was hoping to cancel my services and credit cards and maybe support a mark cuban or Bloomberg credit card or delivery service… but they don’t exist.
Don't be fooled by Mark Cuban, do some research on him, he isn't what you think. Same with Bloomberg.
As regards Credit card. I pay all balances when due, actually before due. I don't have a credit card. I use my wife's for online shopping, but I pay the bills and pay it off. I've never paid any interest on credit cards. They do make money off my purchases but they charge the vendor a percentage.
We all pay for credit card use,whether we use a card or not, because the vendors jack up the price of all products to account for the credit card charge, whether you charge or not. On occasion you will find a vendor that will give you a cash discount, but that is in person.
The only way to avoid the system is not to buy anything ever.
There are 756 Billionaires, AFIK the only billionaires that supported Kamala were Gates, Bloomberg and maybe Cuban.
None of them have shown any interest in acquiting media, like Bezo's has done, and the only way to stop the juggernaut is to control the media.
A lot have hopes on bluesky, but bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey who cofounded twitter but here is the skinny on Bluesky. I don't have a cell phone, nor do Ihave an account with any social media, save substack
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/03/what-is-bluesky-everything-to-know-about-the-x-competitor/#:~:text=But%20that%20was%20before%20Elon,led%20by%20CEO%20Jay%20Graber.
Don't look to billionaires, they are in self protection, survival, accumulation mode. Notice how fast Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bezo's, Sacks et al lined up to kiss Trump's ass.
The more wealth people have, the more they can lose, and the easier they are to control through fear.
You must be naive to think that in the next congressional election the voters will have the ability to stop Trump's assault of our country's Democracy. The electoral process has been totally destroyed by the Republican party, Trump, our Congress, and the judicial system. This destruction has been facilitated by a biased national news media and the support of the brainwashed maga voters. The system was so rigged, neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris had a chance of winning the 2024 presidential election. The Democratic party would have lost even if they ran Jesus Christ as their candidate.
We are not going to save our Democracy at the ballot box. I believe the people of America have a better chance of restoring our nation's Constitution and Democracy, than the Russian people have a freeing themselves from Putin.
Our country's people have had a long history of valuing our freedom, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. Some people have taken these ideals for granted and won't know how important they are until they're gone. Once they start to feel the full impact of Trump's fascist takeover of our country, they will unite to restore our Great American Way. Abraham Lincoln was right; united we stand divided we fall.
I wonder at the appeal of Donald Trump the titular president and Elon Musk the acting president to the Republican Congress. The fact that Elon's position has not been questioned and there was a cabinet level office that is NOT part of the cabinet but wields much more power than the House, Senate and the presidents' cabinet and no one questions. The American public does but what is being done by the entire congress - they should be asking tough questions. There are Dems who are outraged but they are out numbered so my thoughts are exactly what is being promised to the sitting House and Senate Republicans that they are not outraged that THEIR power is being stripped. Our gov't has gone through many changes but this is beyond the pale. It is frankly an offense to every American as we are the ones who will get thrown under the bus.
All addfessed below:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.276598/gov.uscourts.dcd.276598.1.0.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.276600/gov.uscourts.dcd.276600.1.0.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.276601/gov.uscourts.dcd.276601.1.0.pdf
Lawyer stuff Daniel, TL:DR and if read, strains the eye and the mind. So in layman easy to understand language. What do those links say please.
3 TROs against DOGE. In all 40 open suits. My favorite is the FBI suit.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-democracy-index?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
This morning, Senate Democrats launched a new portal for federal employees to blow the whistle on illegal or illicit activities being done in the federal government under the purview of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or DOGE. [What took them so long?]
The portal, which asks a short set of questions, is the latest line of defense launched by Congressional Democrats to oppose the actions of Musk and DOGE.
Many complainants lose their cases because they fail to communicate their complaints to someone with authority.
Have the TRO's been upheld by SCOTUS, do you think that they will?
It’s fascinating how a generation that grew up with rising economic democracy grows old with a brutal return to Gilded Age conditions. A lifelong lesson on the cycles of history and the flaws of humanity. We are not exceptional.
Think post-USSR rather than James Madison.
Let's start with Estonia--the catalyst:
• November 1988: Estonia's Supreme Soviet passed a declaration of sovereignty.
• March 1991: Independence vote
• August 1991: The Estonian parliament declared independence.
and
• June 1991: Russian declaration of sovereignty.
• December 25, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his post as president of the USSR.
Although the path for a new configuration for the U.S. is different, there are lessons from a small country (0.05% of the USSR's population) being able to spark a revolution that has freed hundreds of millions from oppression.
In the 1860s only one CSA state, South Carolina, rescinded its ratification of the U.S. Constitution, so that avenue is untested. The extensive work that went into that effort was captured in a report to Congress (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_m042961.asp).
Today, more of the Article VII ratifying states voted for Harris than would be needed to revoke ratification and allow the states freedom to re-associate into different national configurations. The revocation would also allow states to collect revenues independently and move forward. A transition period would be needed.
The UN's Vienna Convention of 1978 has a process for managing the transition so that it is not 1861 anymore. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Succession_of_States_in_Respect_of_Treaties). The new associations of states or "countries" would need to join the treaty.
All of this will take time, but clearly, the current model is broken and needs to be replaced with many things learned about democracy in the past 250 years.
This is an interesting idea for a peaceful solution, but how would it look geographically?
@ Dr. Doug. The Virginia and Kentucky "nullification" resolutions were accepted by only one state -- Virginia and after the Civil War, states' rights BS has been completely discredited.
AI: "One nation, one constitution" is a phrase that refers to the United States as a unified country governed by a single constitution. The Constitution establishes the structure of the U.S. government and the rights of its citizens.
Explanation
The Constitution begins with the Preamble, which explains why the Constitution was written.
The AI first three sections of the Constitution establish the U.S. government, which is made up of three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
The Constitution divides power between the federal government and the states, and between the branches of the federal government. This is called "checks and balances".
The Constitution also protects individual rights and requires widespread agreement to change it.
The Fourteenth Amendment states that all people born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.
The Constitution's goal is to establish justice, promote general welfare, and secure liberty for the United States and its citizens.
The Constitution has 2 supremacy clauses. Anything the ferderal government has touched precludes state action.
Thank you Dr Doug. Thinking outside the box.
BTW the only reason there was a civil war was because cadets of the Citadel,egged on by Gov Pickens, fired on Ft Sumter.
Also The states that rescinded their ratification vote were primarily Southern states which declared their secession from the Union during the Civil War. However, their attempt to rescind their ratification of the U.S. Constitution was later deemed invalid by the Supreme Court.
I saw a poll on MSNBC this AM that has Trump with a 53% approval rating. This shows how absolutely sick this country is. The citizenry is applauding the destruction of its own government! The rot in this country is unsurvivable, I fear.
Time for unrelenting “good trouble”.
IMHO Trump's overreach has jeopardized many groups within his base. Where I live the key issue is that he has offended the local ethnics that supported him as caudillo. Three Republican House members here are under tremendous pressure. One of them, born in Cuba was an elected Democratic mayor until 2020. He supported HRC in 2016.
Hakeem Jeffreies says there are 20 Repunican House members in Demoicratic majority districts.
Trump is losing battles in many courts and is probably thirsting for complete control as a "unitary executive." https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
If the TROs become permanent injunctions, DOGE will need Congressional approval. I don't think he can. get it.
Why have we not “stepped on the gas” to do something about this? I’m baffled.
Constitution? Very poorly written. Why? Only the Exec. has enforcement powers, all across the board. The hierarchy of kingship is terminally addictive. It does not take much intelligence, only cunning and supreme lust to fall into the daze of narcissistic perfection. The cases in history clearly show the allure of power and its handmaiden, violence, to be mesmerizing to most every psychopath, sociopath and sadist.
Weak persons, almost always males, are like flies to the honey of brute power. The historic 'gang mentality' of so-called leaders is everywhere, and has been here since the beginning of immigration in 1604 and 1620, respectively by the Spanish and the English. Bullies always attract wannabe sycophants, craving beings who hate themselves enough to disable their own megalomania, but are addicts to the most sadistic among them. In the old days, the top gangster usually had to create that violent aura himself, via violence, usually but not always via ambush or betrayal.
But in this day and age, the allure of money, wealth, fame, protection, perverse sexual gratification and opportunity, and the approval from on high to do damage to others, has rendered the cabal of thugs permission to commit helter skelter.
The Judiciary and the Congress are, allegedly, dignified, professional positions requiring at least some semblance of functional capability. Ridiculously, the CFR was Never Amended via Congress to bolster its own and the Judiciary's enforcement and self-protection status. Yes, it could require overturning a veto, but many presidents would have seen the wisdom in that if they actually believed in checks and balances. Now if I, a regular person who despises politics can see these obvious and gaping weaknesses, it makes you wonder what this govt. was actually all about.
The D Brand knew it was an uphill battle to win in 2024, but note that they did basically Nothing to protect the institutions and philosophy of said govt. from what they Damn Well Knew was coming down the rabbit hole. And there could have been literally thousands of actions taken, publically and in private, to make it incredibly difficult for TFG et. al. to do what they now are doing, With NO observational and recording oversight.
This leads me to suspect that it is well past time that this govt. is shaken up, shaken down and shaken out, especially by artifacts as clumsy, careless, overtly childish and crudely toxic/violent as the MAGA cult and its nihilistic insiders. Herr Adolfo had to murder many of its loyalists, and still there were several attempts on its life in a few short years.
Cruelty creates fear, yes, but more so fosters revenge and treachery. The jealousy within the ranks is already in full swing, and the more pressure and criticism and defiance and refusal and sabotage the public commits, the wider the cracks and the leakages become. The bone-headed, infantile policies spoken by the TFG cult are, like cancers, already mutating and colonizing the host organism.
We have no big sticks right now, but we have a couple hundred million little knives, razor blades, pins, needles, specks of poison, small flames, slippery fluids and all the treachery we need. Pay attention, stay frosty, stay calm, protect as much as you can, collaborate with known actors, be patient, let the careless arrogance of power lead to its perversions, its seven deadly sins, and take swift and silent actions as they emerge.
We will recovery following a known course of action. We will grow in numbers by gathering the reformers in their party. We will grow numbers, diversity, and socioeconomic stratas. https://open.substack.com/pub/hotbuttons/p/krewe-kleptos-parade-route-psycho?r=3m1bs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
What about the damage already done Carl. Humpty dumpty can not be put back together again. Trump has effectively destroyed USAID, even if reversed the damage is done, communication lines broken, institutional knowledge and memory lost.
The decades old perversion of democracy the american way brought us where we are. Big money corrupts big. And this is the country that wanted to impose “democracy” on so many other countries. What a shame! The world will soon tell us go home, except the other dictatorial minions. Lol
Another excellent & scary article as to how democracy as outlined by our founding father is being trampled on and with dire consequences.
"......However, as a result of a 44-year-long effort by morbidly rich American oligarchs to corrupt our government to their own gain (the so-called Reagan Revolution, Bush, Trump, 1500 radio stations, three television networks, multiple newspapers and other publications, over 200 television stations, hundreds of billions spent to purchase and then elect politicians), all of this American democracy and government— after 240 years — is finally on the verge of collapsing and being replaced by something very much like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The GOP-controlled Congress has, in both houses, become a pathetic rubber-stamp for whatever billionaires, Trump, Musk, and industries like fossil fuels, crypto/tech, and banks want.
The president is nakedly breaking laws and daring both Congress and the courts to do anything about it.
And now JD Vance claims Trump can do whatever he wants and ignore the courts. (Only federal marshals can enforce federal court orders, but they work for Pam Bondi and Donald Trump.)
From the teenage-mutant-incels who sucked at the teat of
"Move fast and break things"
They may even destroy American before the Fascists finish their coffee.
The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified.
This week, we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals
—all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built,
modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure
that Musk’s inexperienced employees at his newly created
Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to access.
In our conversations, each expert was unequivocal:
They are terrified and struggling to articulate the scale of the crisis.
America running. Federal IT systems facilitate operations
as varied as sending payments from the Treasury Department
and making sure that airplanes stay in the air, the sources told us.
“You can’t un-ring this bell.
Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems,
they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”
What exactly they want is unclear.
And much remains unknown about what, exactly, is happening here.
The contractor emphasized that nobody yet knows
which information DOGE has access to, or what it plans to do with it.
The four experts laid out the implications
of giving untrained individuals access
to the technological infrastructure
that controls the country.
Their message is unambiguous:
These are not systems you tamper with lightly.
Musk and his crew could act deliberately to extract sensitive data,
alter fundamental aspects of how these systems operate,
or provide further access to unvetted actors.
As one administrator for a federal agency
with deep knowledge about the government’s IT operations told us,
“I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger.”
Each of our four sources, three of whom requested anonymity
out of fear of reprisal, made three points very clear:
These systems are immense, they are complex,
and they are critical.
A single program run by the FAA to help air-traffic controllers,
En Route Automation Modernization,
contains nearly 2 million lines of code; an average iPhone app,
for comparison, has about 50,000.
The Treasury Department disburses trillions of dollars in payments per year.
The possibilities here are staggering.
One could alter the data these systems process,
or they could change the way the software operates
—without any of the testing that would normally accompany changes to a critical system.
On Tuesday, the Treasury said that DOGE
had been given “read only” access to the department’s federal payment system,
though Wired then reported that one member of DOGE
was able to write code on the system.
Any focus on access tiers, for that matter,
may actually simplify the problem at hand.
These systems aren’t just complex at the code level
—they are multifaceted in their architecture.
Systems can have subsystems;
each of these can have its own permission structures.
It’s hard to talk about any agency’s tech infrastructure as monolithic.
It’s less a database than it is a Russian nesting doll of databases, the experts said.
“That these guys, who may not even have clearances,
are just pulling up and plugging in their own servers is madness,”
one source told us, referring to an allegation that DOGE
had connected its own server at OPM.
“It’s really hard to find good analogies for how big of a deal this is.
” The simple fact that Musk loyalists are in the building
with their own computers is the heart of the problemn
—and helps explain why activities ostensibly authorized by the president
are widely viewed as a catastrophic data breach.
The four systems professionals we spoke with
do not know what damage might already have been done.
‘Upgrading’ a system
of which you know nothing about is a good way to break it,
and breaking air travel is a worst-case scenario with consequences
that will ripple out into all aspects of civilian life.
It could easily get to a place where
you can’t guarantee the safety of flights taking off and landing.”
Nevertheless, on Wednesday Musk posted
that “the DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades
to the air traffic control system.”
‘Upgrading’ a system of which you know nothing about
is a good way to break it, and breaking air travel
is a worst-case scenario with consequences
that will ripple out into all aspects of civilian life.
They might use a combination of software
written in different programming languages:
a little COBOL in the 1970s,
a bit of Java in the 1990s.
Knowledge about one system doesn’t give anyone
—including Musk’s DOGE workers,
some of whom were not even alive for Y2K
—the ability to make intricate changes to another.
The internet economy, characterized by youth and disruption,
favors inventing new systems and disposing of old ones.
And the nation’s computer systems,
like its roads and bridges, could certainly benefit from upgrades.
But old computers don’t necessarily make for bad infrastructure,
and government infrastructure isn’t always old anyway.
The former Treasury official told us that mainframes
—and COBOL, the ancient programming language they often run
—are really good for what they do,
such as batch processing for financial transactions.
Like the FAA employee, the payment-systems expert
also fears that the most likely result of DOGE activity on federal systems
will be breaking them, especially because of incompetence and lack of proper care.
DOGE, he observed, may be prepared to view or hoover up data,
but it doesn’t appear to be prepared to carry out savvy
and effective alterations to how the system operates.
This should perhaps be reassuring.
“If you were going to organize a heist of the U.S. Treasury,” he said,
“why in the world would you bring a handful of college students?”
They would be useless.
Your crew would need, at a minimum, a couple of guys
with a decade or two of experience with COBOL, he said.
Unless, of course, you had the confidence
that you could figure anything out, including a lumbering government system
you don’t respect in the first place.
That interpretation of DOGE’s theory of self
seems both likely and even more scary, at the Treasury, the FAA, and beyond.
Would they even know what to do after logging in to such a machine? we asked.
“No, they’d have no idea,” the payment expert said.
“The sanguine thing to think about is that the code in these systems
and the process and functions they manage are unbelievably complicated,”
Scott Cory said.
“You’d have to be extremely knowledgeable
if you were going into these systems and wanting to make changes
with an impact on functionality.”
But DOGE workers could try anyway.
Mainframe computers have a keyboard and display,
unlike the cloud-computing servers in data centers.
According to the former Treasury IT expert,
someone who could get into the room and had credentials for the system
could access it and, via the same machine or a networked one,
probably also deploy software changes to it.
It’s far more likely that they would break, rather than improve,
a Treasury disbursement system in so doing, one source told us. “
The volume of information they deal with [at the Treasury]
is absolutely enormous, well beyond what anyone would deal with at SpaceX,”
the source said.
DOGE is many things—a dismantling of the federal government,
a political project to flex power and punish perceived enemies
—but it is also the logical end point of a strain of thought
that’s become popular in Silicon Valley
during the boom times of Big Tech and easy money:
that building software and writing code aren’t just dominant skills
for the 21st century, but proof of competence in any realm.
In a post on X this week, John Shedletsky,
a developer and an early employee at the popular gaming platform
Roblox, summed up the philosophy nicely:
“Silicon Valley built the modern world.
Why shouldn’t we run it?”
This attitude disgusted one of the officials we spoke with.
“There’s this bizarre belief that being able to do things with computers
means you have to be super smart about everything else.”
Silicon Valley may have built the computational part of the modern world,
but the rest of that world—the money, the airplanes, the roads, and the waterways
—still exists. Knowing something, even a lot,
about computers guarantees no knowledge about the world beyond them.
“I’d like to think that this is all so massive and complex
that they won’t succeed in whatever it is they’re trying to do,”
one of the experts told us.
“But I wouldn’t want to wager that outcome against their egos.”
SOURCE:
theatlantic.com/newsletters/galaxy-brain/
As someone else pointed out
If you want to create government efficiency
You need accounts not teenage computer nerds
Thanks Thom for listing the sprawling Musk investigations that are going to be thwarted by DOGE. I have read about several but to see them in one place is gobsmacking. This firehouse of nonsense is blinding us to the industrial grade corruption of this regime.
Perhaps someone should tell Mr. Vance that it is a Constitutional duty of the Executive to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II.3). Consequently, there can be no “presumptive immunity” to injunctions against violating any part of that duty, because enjoining faithfulness to Law poses absolutely “no dangers of intrusion on the [legitimate] authority and functions of the Executive Branch” (Trump v. U.S. 603 ___ (2024) at 14, quoting Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 713 (1982) at 754).
Moscow On the Potomac — Can the defenestrations be far behind?
Duh.