Bela Lugosi in White Zombie, 1931.
“The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.”
―
+ Why lie, when you know the lie will be exposed as soon as you tell it? Because the lie is the point. The more blatant the lie, the more likely it will be repeated every time it is refuted. Repeat it enough times and the libel, no matter how vile, will stick with the audience you want to appease.
+ This explains the spectacle that unfolded in the White House this week, when Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a barrage of fake news stories and a manufactured video meant to advance the outrageous lie that black South African’s, with the connivance of the Republic of South Africa’s government, is engaged in a “white genocide” of Afrikaner farmers.
+ White genocide? There were 27,621 murders in South Africa in 2023, more than 80 percent of them young, black males, who were poor or unemployed. During that same year, there were a total of 49 people (both white and black) killed on farms. For context, Israeli forces have killed more than 50 Palestinians every DAY in Gaza for the last 19 months. The population of South Africa is 63.1 million. Population of Gaza (pre-October 2023): 2.1 million.
+ In his effort to humiliate South Africa’s president and portray himself as the champion of allegedly oppressed whites around the world, Trump went so far as to show photos of the burial site of black women who were raped and burned alive in the Congo and claimed it depicted the “burial site” of white farmers in South Africa.
+ Ramaphosa is not South Africa’s most dexterous politician, but he did keep his cool as he realized the Trump White House had set him up. He was affable, solicitous, deferential and professional, as he was treated with abuse by Trump. The message won’t be lost on other African leaders, who are already finding a more receptive audience with the government of China.
RAMAPHOSA: I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you
TRUMP: I wish you did. I’d take it. If your country offered the US Air Force a plane, I would take it.
RAMAPHOSA: Okay.
REPORTER: What will it take for you to be convinced there is no white genocide in South Africa?
RAMAPHOSA: I can take that. It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans.
TRUMP *scowling*: We have thousands of stories talking about it…
RAMAPHOSA: I would say if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen (including his white Secretary of Agriculture) would not be here..
TRUMP: We have thousands of stories talking about it. We have documentaries. We have news stories.
+ Imagine Trump ambushing Netanyahu with real videos of the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces, the way he did South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa today with manufactured videos of Afrikaners, in one of the most despicable treatments of a foreign leader at the White House since, well, the tag-teaming of Zelensky.
+ South Africa’s richest man, the billionaire Johann Peter Rupert, told Donald Trump to his face in the Oval Office that there is no white genocide taking place in South Africa. Rupert told Trump, as he slumped in his gilded chair, that the issue is about crime, poverty, and unemployment, not “white genocide.” Rupert said even though he’s one of South Africa’s most hated men, he sleeps on his own farm with his doors unlocked.
+ When the meeting inevitably blew up in Trump’s face, he tried to pin the entire White Genocide scam on Musk, who was standing at the back of the room: “Elon is from South Africa. I don’t want to get Elon involved. That’s all I have to do—get him into another thing. This is what Elon wanted.”
+ The firebrand Julius Malema, member of the South African parliament and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, had the most incisive response to Trump’s grotesque “white genocide” spectacle at the White House yesterday:
We’re not going to kill white people. Stop being sensitive. No one is going to kill you. You think we’re going to kill you just because you killed our people? The killing mentality is in your head. We don’t have a killing mentality. We have a mentality of justice and peace. The only thing we’re not prepared to do is to prioritize peace over justice. There must be justice first, before there is peace…We don’t owe white people an apology. Black people, stop apologizing to whites. They are the ones owing us an apology. You have done too much damage to black people. who are unemployed because of you, who are dying of diseases because of you, who are illiterate because of you, who are addicted to drugs because of you. You owe us a lot. You must show remorse and stop behaving like crybabies. South African democracy is going to be built by a robust debate, particularly when it comes to race relations. We must stop deceiving each other. The poor meant black. The rich meant white. For as long as that has not been resolved, there will be a permanent problem between the poor and the rich.
+ So why did Trump lay a trap for Ramaphosa? Yes, he was appeasing the white South African exiles (Mush and Thiel) who dumped millions into his campaign, but in the White House’s own words, the scorging of South Africa was also motivated by its brave stance against Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza:
In addition, South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.
+++
+ The shooter who killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in DC this week claimed to be acting in the name of Palestinians, but the blowback from this senseless act of slaughter will do inestimable harm to the anti-genocide movement, at a moment when the political tide seemed to be turning decisively against Israel. Inevitably, the murders will be used as justifications for even more repressive crackdowns against Palestinians and their allies, even though they bear no culpability for the crimes.
+ But it must be noted that the Israeli government has never paid any kind of price for its military killing American citizens, including sailors (USS Liberty), students (Rachel Corrie and Aysenur Eygi), journalists (Shireen Abu-Akleh), octogenarians (Omar Asad) or children (Omar Rabea). Indeed the shooting of the Israeli embassy workers by a lone, unaffiliated gunman, who allegedly shouted “Free Palestine!” garnered far more attention than Israeli forces firing at diplomats from two dozen countries on the very same day, including representatives from China, Brazil, India, Russia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, France, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Jordan, the UK, and Egypt–an act of political intimidation the Israeli government later wrote off as a mere “inconvenience.”
+ According to the latest Data for Progress poll, 76% of US voters now support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
+ Yair Golan, head of the Israeli Democrats and former Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF: “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country. And a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
+ Predictably, Netanyahu responded by accusing Golan of “echoing anti-semitic blood libels.”
+ Speaking of blood libels…Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin: “Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We are at war with the Gaza entity. The Gazan terror entity, which we ourselves established in Gaza at Oslo and in the disengagement, the disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu voted in favor of. That is the enemy now. Every such child to whom you are now giving milk in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children. We need to conquer Gaza and settle it. And not a single Gaza child should remain there.”
+ Netanyahu said this week that he will “end the war only if…Trump’s plan to relocate the territory’s population outside Gaza is implemented.”
+ Arkansas has passed the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” prohibiting state agencies from using the term “West Bank” in official government documents and communications. Instead, the law mandates the use of the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the territory in eastern Palestine that Israel illegally occupies in violation of international law.
+ Michelle Goldberg: “In the twisted logic of Project Esther — which is also the logic of Donald Trump’s war on academia — ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews about antisemitism even as they lay waste to the liberal culture that has allowed American Jews to thrive.”
+ The BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire to Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon: “You’ve KILLED tens of thousands of civilians. You’ve killed paramedics, you’ve killed journalists. You’ve even killed your own hostages, but not, apparently, all of the Hamas.” There’s a definite shift in the air.
+ Israeli “Security” Minister Itamar Ben Gvir: “Resuming humanitarian aid to Gaza is a grave mistake. We can’t give our enemies oxygen.”
+ There should be an entry in the DSM for the kind of diseased mind that can rationalize this: The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC this morning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.
+ Former French Prime Minister Dominique Villepin to CNN on how the EU needs to respond to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza: “There are three things that need to be done. First, immediately suspend the EU-Israel [trade] agreement. The majority of Israel’s trade is with Europe, suspend it. Second, immediately impose an arms embargo from all European countries. Third, bring the entire Israeli government and senior military officials before the International Criminal Court.”
+ Pope Leo from the Southside during his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square: “I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entrance of dignified humanitarian aid to Gaza and to put an end to the hostilities whose heartbreaking price is being paid by children, the elderly, and sick people.”
+ Brian Eno is demanding that Microsoft end its partnership with Israel and has pledged to donate the original fee for his Windows ’95 chime to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
+ Eno’s message doesn’t seem to be getting through. A few days after anti-genocide activists disrupted its Build developer conference, Microsoft banned the words “Palestine” and “Gaza” from internal emails.
+ Liam O’Hanna, a member of the Irish hip-hop band Knee, has been charged with a “terror offense” for displaying a flag supporting Hezbollah.”
+++
+ Six members of Congress have died in office in the last year. All were Democrats–Payne (65), Jackson Lee (74), Pascrell (87), Grijalva (77), Turner (70). Three Democrats in the House have died since Trump took office. The latest, Gerry Connolly, was named ranking member of the Oversight committee to thwart the ascent of AOC, even after disclosing he had terminal cancer. The House passed Trump’s reconciliation bill, 215-214. It would have failed if the six dead Democrats had been alive to vote no.
+ David Hogg on the death of Rep. Gerry Connolly: “One more point on the real danger posed by the system of seniority politics…It’s really sad that this happened, but the feelings of any particular member don’t take precedence over the millions of Americans who are going to be impacted by these bills.”
+ Rep. Jim McGovern on the latest version of Trump’s tax break for the rich/spending for Pentagon and police/slash medicare, medicaid, social welfare bill:
If I am understanding the numbers correctly, the latest version of their text scam, the top 0.1% stand to gain $255,000 on average in 2027 alone. That is $700 a day every day. The people who make over $1 million a year will also get their pockets lined. On average, these millionaires will have an additional $81,500 per year, but pennies for everybody else. For those earning less than $50,000 a year, the average benefit is $265, less than one dollar per day…This is not a governing philosophy. It is a scam. I wasn’t sent here to vote for trash like this. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you are doing this. Why the hell did you choose a career in public service just to do this? Just to rip away the health care and food assistance and security of working and middle class Americans.
+ Impacts of Trump’s tax bill on the federal debt…
Extend 2017 Trump tax cuts: +2.2 trillion
Increase standard deduction: + 1.3 trillion
Increase Pentagon spending: +$149 billion
Increase border wall and immigration police: +147 billionSpectrum auction: -$88 billion
Cuts to anti-poverty & food aid: -$295 billion
Student loan changes: -$295 billion
Claw back climate spending: -$678 billion
Cuts to Medicaid: $792 billion
+ Impacts on poor children
– 19% of children rely on SNAP
– 42% of children rely on Medicaid
– 38% of children rely on free or reduced-price school meals
+ David J. Bier: “The House reconciliation bill would fund an immigration police state unlike anything America has ever seen. Papers-please agents would be everywhere. The GOP provides more funds for going after peaceful immigrants than it does for all federal law enforcement combined.”
+ Rep. Angie Craig from Minnesota: “I have no idea why we think it’s a good idea to repeal a tax on silencers when we are going to feed fewer children in our country as a result of this. It’s a moral damn failure is what it is.”
+++
+ The people running our government couldn’t pass a 6th-grade civics test…
SEN HASSAN: What is habeas corpus?
Secretary NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country…
+ Of the 240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned to Salvador’s notorious prison two months ago, the Cato Institute identified 50 who entered the US legally and never violated any immigration law. Even so, they are now imprisoned in a foreign concentration camp at the request of the US government and at the US taxpayers’ expense: “These legal immigrants are being treated worse than murderers are in the US. They had no right to legal representation, no trials before imprisonment, were disappeared, and are now imprisoned indefinitely in conditions that SCOTUS has said would violate the 8th Amendment. This is clearly a crime, and DHS Sec. Noem and others should be impeached for it.”
+ Marco Rubio being questioned in the House on the arrest, detention and attempted deportation of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk: Someone comes up here to stir up problems on our campus, we’re going to revoke their visa.
Rep. Jayapal: She didn’t do any of that. She wrote an op-ed. You revoked her visa.
Rubio: Yes, proudly.
+ This week, ICE rejected a request by Mahmoud Khalil to have a “contact visit” with his newborn so he can hold his baby for the first time. There’s no reason for this petty denial, except cruelty and retaliation for exposing the political nature of his arrest and detention. Khalil has committed no crime. He’s done something worse. He’s condemned the genocide against Palestinians, a moral stance for which he will never be forgiven by those who are complicit.
+ ICE officers wrestled an Alabama construction worker to the ground as he shouted, “I am a U.S. citizen.” They didn’t believe him and dragged him off to an ICE detention center, where he was held for hours, until they finally accepted proof of his citizenship from his family. How has the burden of proof been allowed to shift from the Feds to prove you’re a noncitizen to US citizens to prove they are?
+ According to two immigration lawyers, ICE deported at least a dozen Burmese and Vietnamese migrants to South Sudan–a country in the midst of a famine and civil war–in violation of a court order.
+ The latest ICE ruse is for people who showed up for their asylum court hearings only to be told that ICE prosecutors had dismissed their cases — and then be arrested moments later by ICE officers and taken to detention centers for unknown reasons.
+ Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a 19-year-old from Dalton, Georgia, who was “mistakenly” arrested for making a turn without signaling and turned over to ICE by Georgia cops, has now been released from custody and will go through her immigration court proceeding outside of detention. Ximena was granted a minimum $1,500 bond by the immigration judge and the government waived appeal. Ximena has lived in the US since the age of four.
+ Tim Walz: “ICE agents are modern-day Gestapo.” It would have been nice if Walz had made this same analogy under Obama or Biden…
+ LaMonica McIver responding to being charged with “assaulting federal agents” outside the Newark ICE detention center: “I think this is political intimidation from the Trump administration. I mean, me being charged is absurd… especially when I’m there just to do my job.”
+ Trump on the DOJ’s charges against Rep. McIver: “Oh, give me a break. Did you see her? She was out of control…The days of woke are over…She was shoving federal agents. She was out of control. The days of that crap are over in this country. We are going to have law and order.”
+ People and places that have been charged, investigated or legally threatened by Trump and his administration in the last week…
Letitia James
Andrew Cuomo
Rep. LaMonica McIver
Kamala Harris
Bruce Springsteen
Beyonce
Bono
Oprah Winfrey
James Comey
Unnamed “treasonous” Biden aides
City of Chicago
Kennedy Center
Media Matters
NBC News
+ James Comey’s a shit and he should probably just shut the hell up about everything and anything, but for Tulsi Gabbard to call for him to be arrested is more outrageous than almost anything Comey’s done. To be “86’d” is to be tossed out of a bar…not a window.
+ On Thursday, the Trump administration issued an order halting Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, which is great news for Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, Tsinghua University, Karolinska Institute, Edinburgh University, University of Barcelona, Imperial College, Nanyang Technological University, Utretch University, University of Bologna and the National University of Singapore…
+ Kristi Noem: “Today, I sent them a letter that said they will no longer be allowed to participate in this student exchange visitor program, and that’s up to 27% of their enrolled students.”
+ Noem has a BA from South Dakota State, the 266th-ranked university in the country. Revenge of the land grant college grads!
+ Trump on Harvard University: “The students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have is not American…So we’ll pull back the grant.”
+ Marshall Burke: What happens to science under autocracy? The rise of the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany provides an (admittedly extreme) example. Prior to 1933, scientists at German institutions won a third of Nobels. Ten years later, that number was 5%, and has never recovered.”
+++
+ The Buddha on the transience of our current political moment: “This too shall pass … like a kidney stone.” Right, George?
+ Frank Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive Trump tapped as the new head of the Social Security Administration, was recorded telling a meeting with Social Security managers that he knew nothing about the job and had to use Google to find out what it entailed: “So, I get a phone call and it’s about Social Security. And I’m really, I’m really not, I swear I’m not looking for a job. And I’m like, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ So, I’m Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast.”I’m like, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ So, I’m Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast … I’m like, ‘What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?’ Put that as the headline for the Post: ‘Great Googler in Chief. Chief in Googler’ or whatever.”
+ Donald Trump, oncologist:
I think it’s very sad, actually. I’m surprised that it wasn’t—you know—the public wasn’t notified a long time ago, because to get to stage 9, that’s a long time. I just had my physical. You saw that. You saw the results of that particular test. I think that test is standard to pretty much anybody getting a physical—a good physical. We had the doctors at the White House and over at Walter Reed, which is a fantastic hospital, do it. I did a very complete physical, including a cognitive test. I’m proud to announce I aced it. I got them all right. You proud of me? Your husband would be proud of me for getting them all right. It’s a little risk. If I didn’t get them all right, these people would be after me. It would be not a good situation.
But I think, frankly, anybody running for president should take a cognitive test. They say it’s unconstitutional, but I would say in that particular case, having a cognitive test wouldn’t be so bad.
But when you take tests—medical, as a male—that test is very standard. I don’t know if it’s given to everybody, but it’s given just about. And it takes a long time to get to that situation… to get to a stage 9. I think that if you take a look, it’s the same doctor that said that Joe was cognitively fine, there was nothing wrong with him. If it’s the same doctor, he said there was nothing wrong there. That’s been proven to be a sad situation.
And the autopen is becoming a very big deal. You know, the autopen is becoming a big deal because it seems that maybe it was the president—whoever operated the autopen. But when they say that was not good, they also—you have to look and you have to say that the test was not so good either. In other words, there are things going on that the public wasn’t informed [about], and I think somebody is going to have to speak to his doctor—if it’s the same or even if it’s two separate doctors.
Why wasn’t the cognitive ability—why wasn’t that discussed? And I think the doctor said he’s just fine, and it’s turned out that’s not so. It’s very dangerous… this is dangerous for our country. Look at the mess we are in.
You talk about all these questions on Ukraine and Russia. That would’ve never happened, as an example, if I were president. It would’ve never happened. The other thing—you have to say: Why did it take so long? I mean, this takes a long time. It can take years to get to this level of danger. It’s a very, very sad situation. I feel very badly about it. And I think people should try and find out what happened.
Because I’ll tell you, I don’t know if it had anything to do with the hospital. Walter Reed is really good. They’re some of the best doctors I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know if they were involved. But a doctor was involved in each case. Maybe it was the same doctor. And somebody is not telling the facts. That’s a big problem.
+ According to a report on CNBC, UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers.
+ Apparently, many lawyers who are too embarrassed to admit they work for Big Pharma companies tell people their practice represents “the life sciences.”
+ Trump: “The drug companies are very worried that they’re going to fight, and that’s ok. If they fight, we’ll just say, that’s ok, we’re not going to let you sell anymore cars into the US…or wine, liquor, alcohol, or something that’s much more important to them than the drugs.” What’s the cognitive decay detector reading on this one, Siri?
+ JD Vance on Trumpcare in 2017: ” What is it that’s going to drive Trump’s voters away from him? Well, losing their health care may actually be the answer to that question.”
+ BERNIE SANDERS: Is healthcare a human right?
RFK Jr: It’s not a right of a kind that we otherwise enshrine in the Constitution … the objective is to get Americans the level of healthcare they want
SANDERS: They don’t want the choice to be uninsured or die
+ Karoline Leavitt on Trump’s private meeting with people who bought his Trumpcoin: “The American public believes it’s absurd to insinuate that this President is profiting off of the presidency. Not only has he lost wealth, but he almost lost his life. He sacrificed a lot to be here and to suggest otherwise is absurd.”
+ Share of Americans who think Trump is using the office of the presidency for personal gain…
Yes: 52%
No: 35%
Not sure: 13%
-yougov
+ Sen. Chris Murphy: “40% of Trump’s entire net worth is due to these two crypto coins that he just launched months ago. All of this money is going straight into his pocket. He is trading U.S. policy to get paid.”
+ The Trump White House has purged the official transcripts of Trump’s remarks from the government website. In its place, they’ve put up a few selected videos of Trump’s public appearances. The only transcript remaining is Trump’s inaugural address. I remember when the Republicans erupted in theatrical fury over the Biden White House adding an apostrophe to Biden’s verbal blunder, “the only garbage is his supporters,” to make it “supporter’s,” over the objections of the official stenographer.
+ A survey by Allianz, the insurance giant, of 4,000 companies worldwide on the impact of Trump’s trade war…
Will have to raise prices: 54%
Can absorb the cost of tariffs: 22%
+ Moody’s: “We anticipate the US’s federal debt burden will rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% in 2024.”
+ Countries with a Moody’s credit rating higher than the US…
– Germany
– Canada
– Australia
– Denmark
– Luxembourg
– Netherlands
– Switzerland
– Norway
– Sweden
– Singapore
+ According to the Atlanta Branch of the Federal Reserve, in order to qualify to afford the median-priced home, a household would have to make $121,171 annually to keep monthly payments at 30% of income. This income level is 52.7% higher than the actual median income in the US.
+ Serious credit card delinquencies have risen to the highest level since 2011, at 12.31%. Meanwhile, more than 6.5% of borrowers are at least 60 days late on their car payments, the highest level ever recorded, according to the credit ratings company, Fitch.
+ At least 30% of metro Atlanta’s single-family rental homes are now owned by private equity.
+ How a beer executive explained to the FT falling alcohol sales: “Alcohol used to occupy a much bigger share of people’s entertainment and joy. In the past 10 years, the number of entertaining things has grown, including gaming, so I believe alcohol’s share of fun, enjoyment, and happiness has decreased.”
+ IBM: Only 25% of AI initiatives have delivered expected return on investment over the past three years.
+ Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, admitted that as much as 30% of Microsoft’s code is now written by AI.
+ Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of the buy-now-pay-later platform Klarna, claims that AI helped shrink the company’s workforce by 40%. But the company still saw its losses double in the first quarter of 2025, after $136 million in customer debts went unpaid.
+ The consulting firm Gartner predicts that one in four job applicants will be fake by 2028. Probably 25 percent of the jobs will also be bogus.
+ Northwestern Mutual: Only 9% of Americans have 10 times their annual income saved for retirement. 10 times yearly income saved? How about 10 times their annual income in debt?
+ What Americans most worry about when retiring…
High inflation: 53%
Social Security inadequate to live on: 43%
High taxes: 43%
Social Security no longer exists: 39%
Health crisis: 38%
Economic volatility: 38%
Not enough savings: 38%
Potential recession: 36%
Income is too low: 36%
Too much debt: 35%Source: Allianz.
+ One in 10 people in Britain have no cash savings, according to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, while an additional 21% of the population has less than £1,000 in savings.
+ In an attempt to squirm out of an antitrust suit, Ticketmaster just put Trump’s intimate Richard Grenell on its board of directors.
+++
+ The Reconciliation Bill contains $25 billion as start-up funding for Golden Dome, the latest iteration of the missile defense money pit first marketed as Star Wars under Reagan. Trump says the scam will eventually cost US taxpayers $175 billion, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates that deploying and operating the Golden Dome space-based missile defense system will cost $542 billion over the next 20 years, much of it going into the accounts of Elon Musk.
+ Ron Paul: “There’s a much cheaper Iron Dome. Stop irritating other countries.”
+ Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s top officer, said U.S. forces carried out “the largest air strike in the history of the world” during recent operations against the Houthis near Somalia. And the Houthis didn’t fold. Trump did.
+ Trump told the leaders of EU nations that Putin agreed to start direct negotiations on a ceasefire immediately, causing a few seconds of puzzled silence. Zelensky then pointed out that Putin had previously agreed to negotiate and that talks took place last week.
+ German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Trump’s bungled attempt to negotiate with Putin: “I don’t think he deliberately betrayed Europe. I believe he simply misjudged the negotiation situation with Vladimir Putin — and his own influence as the us president.”
+ Trump famously vowed to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of re-taking office. Now he is privately telling his inner circle he doesn’t think Putin wants to end the war, which has been evident for some time, with Russia continuing to steadily acquire more and more Ukrainian territory. With no deal in the works, Trump apparently just wants to walk away from the whole conflict. But that’s unlikely, given the ongoing sanctions he’s imposed on Russia, the supply chain of weapons he’s continued to greenlight for Ukraine and the minerals he wants to extract from the war-battered country.
+ China (Derangement) Syndrome: Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse testifies that U.S. intelligence has increased intel collection on China by at least 30% and increased analytic production by “double digits.”
+ Mohammed bin Salman to Fox News: “If China falls, everyone on the planet falls, even America.” MBS’s assessment is surely correct, but it seems increasingly likely that the US will fall and not take everyone with it.
+ $55 billion: the amount Apple started investing in China per year by 2015. “People think there’s great vocational training in China; the vocational school in China is Apple,” Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China.
+ Best evidence yet that today’s youth aren’t being taught by “Cultural Marxists:” The younger the American, the more likely they are to believe the Vietnam War was “the right thing to do”…
+ The US has the largest gender gap in the world when it comes to the perception of freedom…
Are you satisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life…
USA
Women 66
Men 77
Gap 11Lithuania
Women 73
Men 83
Gap 10Pakistan
Women 48
Men 57
Gap 9Guinea
Women 73
Men 82
Gap 9Italy
Women 72
Men 80
Gap 8Russia
Women 72
Men 80
Gap 8Canada
Women 78
Men 86
Gap 8N. Macedonia
Women 65
Men 72
Gap 7Bolivia
Women 75
Men 81
Gap 6
+ Biden may have lost most of his cognitive function. Chuck Schumer entered the Senate this way: “Putin is watching. Hamas is watching … If Congress fails to defend democracy … because of border policies inspired by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, the judgment of history will be harsh indeed.”
+ Brazilian President Lula da Silva: “The democracy we learned to live with after WWII, the functioning of multilateralism as an important role in relations between states, the respect for diversity, and the sovereignty of each country are now fading. What comes next, we don’t know. We thought we were creating a more civilized, more solidarity-based, more humane society. The result is worse. It’s as if there is a lamp, and when you open the lid, the evil people come out.”
+++
+ On Monday, the city of Shabankareh in Iran hit 52.1°C, the earliest any town has ever topped 125°F…We’re making large swaths of the planet unlivable for humans and other forms of life, in our own lifetimes. What a thing to witness.
+ Over his first 100 days in office, Trump has approved more than 145 measures to roll back or eliminate pollution rules and promote fossil fuels, more than the entire number of rollbacks during his first term.
+ In the first quarter of 2025, China added 60GW of solar power, more than half of it as rooftop installations. This is more than the total installed solar capacity in Spain and France combined–all in only three months. In 2010, the US and Europe were the largest solar and wind power manufacturers. By 2024, China had installed six times more wind and solar power than all of Europe and eight times more than the US.
+ By gutting the incentives for renewable energy, the Trump tax bill passed by the House will likely:
+Cost more than 830,000 jobs
+ hike energy bills
+ increase carbon emissions by an additional 230 million tons by 2035, roughly the annual emissions of Spain
+ A new report on sea level rise published in Nature: Communications warns that millions globally will be forced from their homes by advancing waters and extreme tides even if warming remains below 1.5 °C. “We’re starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out almost in front of us. At current warming of 1.2 °C, sea level rise is accelerating at rates that, if they continue, would become almost unmanageable before the end of this century.” But the world is on track for 2.5C-2.9C of global heating, which results in the collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets–a scenario that would lead to a catastrophic 12 metres of sea level rise.
+ Rep. Yassamin Ansari: “I sit on the Natural Resources Committee, where we witnessed the most anti-environment legislation go through. It includes massive giveaways to the oil and gas industry. I also discovered that the chairman, for the first time in his career, had purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of oil and gas stocks. So we’re seeing incredible amounts of corruption.”
+ Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo: “Should we really have wind and solar subsidies in this bill? What if it’s not windy? What if it’s not sunny?”
+ At least 6.7 million hectares of primary forest were lost last year, more than half of it to fire.
+ This is not a serious country. Map of US counties with subways…
+++
+ Elon Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have taken massive blows to their reputations. In 2021, Tesla ranked 8th among the nation’s 100 most visible companies in the Harris brand reputation poll. Now it has fallen to 95th.
+ The damage is eating into Musk’s bottom line. Last month, cars made by Chinese EV maker BYD outsold Teslas for the first time in Europe…
BYD 7,231
Tesla: 7,165
+ In Qatar this week, a sheepish Musk announced he was pulling the plug on any new political spending, in an attempt to avert any more damage to his ventures:
“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.”
“Why is that?”
“I think I’ve done enough.”
“Is it because of blowback?”
“Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. But I don’t currently see a reason.”
+ Greg Casar, who’s been leading the Dems’ anti-Musk campaigning, says this is a sign that naming and going after oligarchs works.
“It shows that accountability can work. I think it’s a template for creating an anti-billionaire, pro-worker Democratic Party. The Republican Party in Washington thinks that infinite money is an infinite benefit, and I think we can actually turn that money against them.”
+ Elon didn’t need too much help in that regard. He just shifted his ego into self-drive mode, hit the accelerator and drove right into a wall…
+ Pelle Dragsted and William Banks pinpoint what’s missing from the “Abundance” theory of Democratic revival, redistribution of excessive wealth: “While numerous factors contribute to the high marks Nordic countries receive on measures of public trust, good governance and happiness, every scholar agrees the redistributive policies of universalist social welfare programs play the decisive role.”
+ Cory Booker was the lone Democrat in the Senate to vote in favor of Charles Kushner’s nomination to become Trump’s ambassador to France. Booker should denounce himself on the floor of the Senate for the next 26 hours by reading the federal indictment against Kushner, over and over again…
+ How can the Democrats be this bad at the politics thing…?
Net Approval
Republicans: +4%
Democrats: -16%
+ Biden agreed to a $4 million salary demanded by top adviser Mike Donilon to work on the campaign in early 2024. The next top-paid aide, his campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, made $300,000. So much for gender equity…
+ According to the new report by Catalyst on the demographics of the 2024 elections, women and People of Color made up the majority (57%) of the Trump coalition….
+ Turnout for Democrats versus the previous presidential election…
Battleground States
2020 +7
2024 -7Non-Battleground States
2020 +2
2024 -14
+++
+ Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline: “What got me involved [in politics] was, I was out on a prayer run. I was praying for my students, for our church and about that time I heard the sound of a baby crying. I took up my headphones. I looked around. I was in the desert. We lived in California at the time. Now we’re back, in God’s country in Texas. I looked around and couldn’t find anything. So I kept jogging. About a mile later, I heard the same baby crying. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, “That’s the sound of the unborn that are going to die if you don’t run for office and protect the unborn.”
+ Self-proclaimed Biblical Prophet Johnny Enlow declares that “in the eyes of the Lord, [Trump] is not just President of the United States, he’s King of the World.”
+ Medhi Hassan: “If somebody got onto the metro, sat next to you and started ranting about Bruce Springsteen’s skin, or about being Lord of the world…you would get up and move to a different seat. In this country, we gave that person nuclear codes.”
+ Joe Rigney, the associate pastor of the new right-wing Christ Kirk, in DC, says they are planting the Church in the capital to “calibrate Christians” to the new Trump era: “We’re gonna come for feminism. We’re going to go after sodomy. Those are the sins in that town. Those are sins that are acceptable among both parties in that town. And we want to plant that flag and say the Bible has something to say about this.”
+ Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) on why she supports Trump’s proposal to impose a 100% tariff on films not made in the U.S.: “Hollywood is dying at their own hands because they’ve gotten so far off of the mark from where the American people You look at movies that are culturally more conservative, they tend to do better. They [Hollywood] are changing the narrative in a lot of ways that are not healthy for the next generation in a lot of ways. We don’t want other countries bringing their propaganda here.”
+ Wes Anderson at Cannes on Trump’s movie tariffs: “The tariff is interesting because the 100% tariff, I’ve never heard of a 100% tariff before. I’m not an expert in that area of economics, but I feel that means he’s saying he’s going to take all the money, and then what do we get? So it’s complicated to me. Can you hold up the movie in customs? It doesn’t ship that way.”
+ After less than two years, Bill Maher’s “Uncancellable” podcast studio has been cancelled. (In 2000, Maher cancelled me from his show, Politically Incorrect. If he hadn’t, I would have cancelled myself.)
+ From the NYRB: “Soon after publication, sales of The Great Gatsby dried up. Four months before Fitzgerald died of alcoholism and heart disease in December 1940, the last royalty statement he saw reported seven copies sold in the previous year.”
Sooner or Later Gonna Have to Take a Stand
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop
J. Hoberman
(Verso)
The Courage of Birds: The Often Surprising Ways They Survive Winter
Peter Dunne
Illustrated by David Allen Sibley
(Chelsea Green)
Travels in America: Notes and Impressions of a New World
Albert Camus
Edited by Alice Kaplan
Translated by Ryan Bloom
(Chicago)
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
Truth Is
Carolyn Wonderland
(Alligator)
Flowers for the Living
Mourning [a] BLK Star
(Don Giovanni)
Radio Armageddon
Chuck D
(Def Jam)
Exploiting Public Sentiment for Private Purposes
“In a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”
– Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics
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