Looks like the Trump administration and the GOP is attempting a real-world test of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's prediction in his November 8, 1954 letter to his brother, Edwin.
— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Breaking everything to save no money, the Elon Musk story. ??
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 1:28 PM
More evident every day: Hire a notorious wrecker, get a big wreck. Per the NYTimes, “Struggling With Errors, DOGE Deletes Billions More From List of Savings” [gift link]:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has deleted hundreds more claims from its mistake-plagued “wall of receipts,” erasing $4 billion in additional savings that the group said it had made for U.S. taxpayers.
Late Sunday night, the group erased or altered more than 1,000 contracts it had claimed to cancel, representing more than 40 percent of all the contracts listed on its site last week. The deleted items included five of the seven largest savings that it had claimed credit for just last week. At the same time, the group added about 1,000 additional canceled contracts, worth smaller total savings.
It was the second time in a week that DOGE had deleted some of its greatest claims of success. Early last week, it erased all five of the largest savings it had claimed when the wall of receipts, which is what the group is calling its list of canceled contracts, was originally posted on Feb. 19.
Since that first posting, the total amount of savings that the initiative has claimed from cutting contracts has steadily declined, from $16 billion at first to less than $9 billion now.
The “wall” shows only some of the cuts Mr. Musk has imposed on government, making it difficult to assess the claim that his initiative has saved taxpayers more than $100 billion. But the site is the only place where the group has given a detailed public accounting of its work, providing a rare look at its basic competence and familiarity with government data.
Contracting and budget experts say that look has been worrisome…
(Side note: The NYTimes made one of its few smart decisions when it hired David Fahrenthold away from the Washington Post.)
I think DOGE is actually, in it's own way, going to prove the exact opposite thing it wants to.
Elon and co. are saving almost no money and breaking everything. If anything, this little experiment is proving how good a steward the government is of tax dollars.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Honestly this may be what ends up doing him in (I realize I've said that once or twice about different things, but mostly just thinking out loud as stuff happens). Rs are gonna get unhappy if they're taking a ton of heat for something that's just making shit worse and not actually saving any money
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 1:29 PM
okay you’re finding a bunch of fraud, who has the money. who is the thief.
can not one person do that on television.— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 1:27 PM
gotta be honest here man, i think you’re making shit up. i think you’re lying.
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 1:31 PM
american public sector employees are not actually dirty thieves, they’re just people doing a job
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Cats Apparently Not About To Be Outdone by Dogs
cain
Ultimately, we’re just going to be left with chaos. I suppose the GOP will point fingers at these institutions and say “See, we were right, govt can’t do anything right!”
TBone
Reposting from Strap In thread:
Speaking of strapping in, more Starlink versus Verizon bullshit.
https://bsky.app/profile/leecarpenter.bsky.social/post/3ljive63aok2y
Elno says “extremely dire.” His pants should be extremely on fire.
Professor Leonore says:
Baud
Fraud = right wingers don’t agree with the spending.
Just like
Censorship = right wingers don’t like your opinion.
TBone
@Baud: it’s like those Funhouse mirrors without the Funhouse. Pure distortion.
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
I’m tired. Been working in the yard all day, trying to get stuff planted, fertilized, etc, before forecast T-storms tomorrow afternoon.
What did I miss today?
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: stonks
JoyceH
Trump admin is “putting a hold” on military shipments to Ukraine. Aaaand the other shoe drops. This is why Trump and Vance picked that fight with Zelenskyy – Trump has already promised Putin he’d stop the arms going to Ukraine and they needed an excuse.
TBone
I am waiting for more ‘Sylvester Stallone body with a photoshop Schlocky head’ NFTs to invest in. This time with added Space Nazis!
H.E.Wolf
Justin Wolfers is using “data” as a plural. I love seeing that! Reminds me of some of my STEM teachers. :)
I called my US Rep and Senators this AM, and reiterated my request to evict Musk and his minions from the federal databases. (All those base(s) are belong to us!)
Baud
Party of the working class
Shalimar
@JoyceH: The administration has been proven right about the fentanyl problem though. It has to be pretty awful if you have the president and vice-president getting high before public meetings.
Shalimar
@Baud: Should have tapped Sean O’Brien. He isn’t doing anything useful.
Nukular Biskits
@cain: Cue the meme: Wait, It’s All Ohio? Always Has Been
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
I think I planted some of those.
Nukular Biskits
Just curious: Anyone watching the shitshow tonight? I ain’t.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
What’s tonight?
Jackie
@JoyceH: This includes a link. I’m just sick. I’ve had a feeling of dread since Friday.
bbleh
It’s all theater, and the cultists will believe as they are told to believe, despite their lying eyes.
Government is BAD because it gives OUR money to THOSE people, therefore cutting it is GOOD.
Anything that happens to Us is ok, because we have to Do Our Part to Cut Waste And Fraud.
You might as well try to convince them the sun doesn’t rise when and where Trump says.
(Oh, and don’t question them about it. They’ll get angry, and maybe even violent.)
hrprogressive
The only ‘silver lining’ I see here / hope for is that these Fascist Fuckwads break everything too quickly, and too wholly, such that they don’t get to slowly boil their cult frogs, but rather throw them right into a steaming hot pan and even most cultists will feel that pain once it hits them.
Enough to turn the tide?
Hopefully.
A Ghost to Most
“Move Fast and Break Shit” is the techbro way.
danielx
That’s been their standard claim for decades. GOP: the party that claimed government couldn’t do anything right and then set out to prove it by fucking up that very same government.
RevRick
@Baud: As has been stated here before some people (white guys) are willing to live under overpasses in cardboard boxes and eat sparrows roasted on curtain rods, as long as the people (black) in the next cardboard box have neither sparrows nor curtain rods.
There was a social psychology experiment done which demonstrated that half the people are willing to earn half as much as long as they earn more than their neighbors.
Jackie
@Nukular Biskits:
If you’re talking about the SOTU, that’s tomorrow night – which I won’t be watching.
If you’re talking about a different shitshow…?
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: heh
bbleh
@RevRick: I believe that’s attributed to Davis X Machina. And yup.
@A Ghost to Most: as long as it doesn’t hurt US much, only other people, and maybe the investors. Been there, seen it.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: I’m watching The Pride of the Yankees. Gary Cooper.
TBone
Mood music by ELP
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C_zo0FiNheI
‘elp!
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Another item in the “burn-it-all-down” column:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/trump-national-forest-executive-order
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: “Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends..”
Yes, it fits. And I still know all the words =-)
( you gotta see the show, itsa dynamo)
A Ghost to Most
@bbleh: I lived and worked alongside techbros for 35 years. The relentless selfishness did me in.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Who’s on first?
ETA: I’m a day ahead, I guess.
Sister Golden Bear
A bit of good news, Senate Dems held the line and voted unanimously against cloture for SB9, a bill that would’ve banned trans people from playing sports of their gender identity from chess to darts* and everything in between, and would’ve required genital inspections of any athlete accused of being trans.**
But, it’s dead, Jim.
This despite a bunch of overpaid consultants and talking heads telling them to throw us trans people under the bus. If you’re writing letters to your senators, please throw in a thank you for standing by trans people and our families.
*Yes, seriously, chess and darts have been targeted.
**Because Republicans just love obsessing about the genitalia of women and girls and would never take the opportunity to abuse the situation.
Baud
@RevRick:
I’m willing to accept a generous lump sum to live somewhere where I have no neighbors.
Sister Golden Bear
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
Trump take egg
Trump take maple syrup
Trump cut down forest
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
Good. All but two Dems in the House too.
Sadly, I expect the information won’t change any talking points.
cain
@bbleh: Did you see that they have new house legislation that makes Trump’s birthday a federal holiday? That seems about right, he doesn’t do any work so we shouldn’t either on any day honoring him.
This is sycophant/infantile bullshit.
Nukular Biskits
@Jackie:
Yeah. Was thinking SOTU was tonight.
But, yes, there is a different shitshow every single day this year.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Sister Golden Bear: There’s a part of me that wonders whether Felonious Thunk is chopping down the forest because Canadian timber is becoming unavailable, or whether he picked the fight with Canada so he could chop down the forest.
RevRick
@Baud: How’s the middle of the Atlantic sound?
Darkrose
@Sister Golden Bear: All of the bans are awful, but the chess ban is both baffling and horrifying. Why are there even separate leagues to begin with, unless you genuinely believe that men’s and women’s brains are fundamentally different?
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
You’re one letter off: The Very Best Of The Electric Light Orchestra 1990
Sister Golden Bear
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): ¿Por qué no los dos?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@RevRick: BERMUDA! What a lovely thought.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
How much will you pay me to not be your neighbor?
A Ghost to Most
@RevRick: My siblings would happily live in a van down by the river, if non-whites and non-christians had to live in the river. Including me.
ewrunning
@Nukular Biskits: Good statement from Senator Patty Murray on why she will not be attending:
Senator Murray On Trump’s Joint Congressional Address
Senator Murray: “The state of the union is that the President is spitting in the face of the law and he is letting an unelected billionaire fire cancer researchers and wreck federal agencies like the Social Security Administration at will.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) issued the following statement on her decision to not attend President Donald J. Trump’s joint Congressional address:
“I will not be attending President Trump’s address to Congress. The state of the union is that the President is spitting in the face of the law and he is letting an unelected billionaire fire cancer researchers and wreck federal agencies like the Social Security Administration at will.
“The state of the union might be great for corrupt billionaires like Elon Musk as Trump guts our foremost consumer protection agency, and even for dictators like Putin, who are cheering on the dismantling of USAID and the betrayal of our allies—but the rest of the country is in a state of emergency as Elon fires the experts responding to bird flu or managing our nuclear weapons stockpile, all while Republicans sprint to tear apart Medicaid and kick families off their health care to pass massive tax giveaways for billionaires.
“Instead, I’m meeting with constituents who have been harmed by this administration’s reckless firings and its illegal and ongoing funding freeze across government. There are farms and small businesses across Washington state and America who are on the verge of collapse because Trump and Elon are illegally blocking federal dollars they are owed. There are thousands of fired federal workers, many of them veterans, who have been carelessly laid off by Trump and Musk with no consideration for the services they provide and how that might harm millions of Americans, whether that’s VA patient safety or the timely disbursement of Social Security checks. I’ll be focused on sharing those stories from Washington state.”
Nukular Biskits
@ewrunning: I posted this on my Shitter account (when I thought SOTU was tonight … but it’s a prediction, so I’m still good):
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Nothing. I’ll just keep playing the Mr Rogers theme song over a loudspeaker until you move.
Miki
Twice divorced, dumpee and dumper, 12 years practicing fucking family law and random appellate practice and seriously – I quit practicing when I started hating opposing counsel, opposing clients, my clients, and judges but still loved the law. Not anymore.
Roberts and Co. have made it putrid.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
Nope, they’re big mad about it, and already doubling down on the rhetoric.
But hey, a poll of FTFNYT commenters assures me that stripping trans people of their rights is “inconsequential” because there’s so few of us.
For the record, the last official estimate, from a few years ago and which excluded people under 18, found there’s 1.6 million of us — the same population as Philly. But more recent survey data indicates we’re about 1.3% of the population — larger than the city of LA’s population.
Baud
Trumper accidentally speaks truth
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
I see your Mr. Rogers theme song and raise you this:
Tom’s Diner [Long Version] DNA feat. Suzanne Vega (1990)
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: All right!
YY_Sima Qian
How to avoid a recession? Redefine GDP!
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/Osinttechnical/status/1896711774864388169#m
https://nitter.poast.org/wartranslated/status/1896653932002177176#m
pluky
@Sister Golden Bear: Don’t recall which of the Polgar sisters (both chess grandmasters) said, in response to a question why more men than women excelled at chess: “because they have wives”.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
Wouldn’t stripping government spending shrink the GDP?
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Get out of here with that crazy talk.
Jay
@Baud:
That’s why they are moving to remove Government spending from the GDP numbers.
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/03/03/bookkeeping-today/
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@YY_Sima Qian: Times 14.12.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
Nelle
So, today’s news from reddening Iowa legislature is a proposal to criminalize gene based vaccinations.
(First they came for the women and their reproductive organs, then they came for the vaccinations.)
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/state-government-news/2025-03-03/senate-bill-would-criminally-punish-people-who-administer-gene-based-vaccines
Darkrose
@ewrunning: Awesome. I wish either–or both–of my CA senators would do the same.
Steve LaBonne
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): Yes.
Baud
@Jay:
I’m confused. If they strip the spending, then the number is zero. How does that keep their lies?
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: That’s a one time adjustment, renders historical comparisons meaningless. They’d call it MAGA-GDP.
They are conforming to every stereotype of “banana republics”, more so than the countries that Americans used to call “banana republics”.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/jimsciutto/status/1896537407618531671#m
Sister Golden Bear
@Darkrose:
Because there’s such a disparity (7x more men play chess), the women’s tournaments are intended to help develop girls and women who play. “These segregated tournaments allow those playing to get media attention, benefit financially, and make friends with people with whom they share some similar characteristics.” However, unlike other sports, chess also has “open” tournaments that anyone can enter.
It’s worth nothing that in a number of sports, women’s divisions were created after women start beating men in mixed gender competitions. IIRC this included figure skating, equestrian events and sailing.
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: Every Dem voted against the trans ban!
Sister Golden Bear
@YY_Sima Qian: In other words, cooking the books — just like the crime Trump was convicted of in NYC.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Sister Golden Bear: Only cooking the federal books means there’s no court to hold you accountable.
prostratedragon
@TBone: One of the movies I’d use to show someone thst b&w can be beautiful.
Jackie
@ewrunning:
YAY for MY Senator!!!
Sister Golden Bear
@Dan B: I realize it might not have been clear because I was a little too into the weeds. By voting down cloture, Dems prevented the bill from reaching the floor — thus killing the anti-trans sports bill.
YY_Sima Qian
The national suicide continues apace:
prostratedragon
@YY_Sima Qian: They’d also have to supress separate reporting og government spending. I suppose that announcement will come soon.
Jeffro
Schnorkles has a point (about the GOP catching heat for breaking shit and not actually saving any money)…
…PROVIDED…
…that the Dems can get their shit together, get loud, and point out that it was, in fact, trumpov and Musk that broke everything while the rest of the GOP sat on its collective hands.
Otherwise?
trumpov, Musk, and the MAGA noise machine are just going to spin it all as the Democrats’ fault (somehow), and 46% of the country will believe them, and then we’re still stuck. WHILE they loot us and burn our house down.
gene108
Republicans treat “waste, fraud, and abuse” as just one of those nebulous terms, like “woke” and “coastal elites”*, where conservative listeners draw up a picture in their heads of the Republican means. Waste, fraud, and abuse have specific meanings based on the agreements that exist to make payments and receive goods and/or services.
*Nobody pushing back on Republicans about their coastal elite BS annoys me. The eastern and western borders of the continental US are oceans. A large part of the southern border is the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska’s a peninsula. Every other US state and territory are islands. The U.S. is beset with coastlines.
mrmoshpotato
@cain:
Story of the past how many decades?
These assholes love underfunding government programs and then screaming about poor performance.
YY_Sima Qian
One hopes that the Taiwanese government got some private reassurances on security guarantees, for its role in facilitating this deal. TSMC has never been all that enthusiastic about investing in chip fabrication in the U.S. (gift link to WSJ article):
Who are we kidding? No public assurance of security guarantee by the Trump gang means anything, let alone anything professed in private. In any case, the more the US diversifies its supply of advanced semiconductors from Taiwan, the more hollowed out is Taiwan’s main economic leverage, & the less motivated it is for the US (especially the purely transactional Trump gang) to actually defend Taiwan.
Given how quickly Turmpian misrule is escalating, it is an open question how much of these announced investment will actually materialize, anyway.
mrmoshpotato
@ewrunning: A round of applause for Senator Murray.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
These consultants need to understand that it would not stop there if Trans people were thrown under the bus. The GOP then would move on to the next vulnerable group and then the next to demonize
gene108
@Shalimar:
I’ve had fentanyl for surgery. It made me calm and relaxed, which is why it’s used for surgery.
Rubio was definitely on it. He was so quiet and withdrawn.
Don’t know what drugs Trump and Vance were in. Probably cocaine, given how energetic they were.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Sucks that Canada cut back on International Students.
That would have been a big win.
YY_Sima Qian
@prostratedragon: I think they will wear the report of suppressed government spending as a badge, the “achievement” of DOGE to be celebrated, & the MAGA cult won’t draw the connection to lived experience. They will convince the MAGA cult to believe MAGA-GDP, & ignore the actual GDP calculated by economists, at least for a while.
Mai Naem mobil
Why didn’t Garland release all of the Mueller(not the Barr edited stuff)and Jack Smith investigation material? The stuff should have been released. Wtf was Garland so scared of?
different-church-lady
Oops.
Mai Naem mobil
Orange Fartball has yet to do something Putin wouldn’t have done.
JoyceH
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear:
It’s OK to pick on the smallest minorities I guess.
David Collier-Brown
@JoyceH: The US may wish to see Ukraine conquered, but not everyone in the EU does.
In one of the run-ups to WWII, the Spanish Civil War, …
They were fighting against formed units from Nazi Germany.
Ukraine already has units of foreign volunteers. They might want to invite formed units from other EU countries. I’m sure certain EU countries might offer their troops extended leave to get themselves some experience in a modern war. That’s always been a tradition among British army officers, so why not open it up to NCOs and privates as well?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@TBone: There is a whole lot of tortious interference with contract going on
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Sister Golden Bear: Your rights are tied right into mine. Either we are all created equal, or nobody is.
SiubhanDuinne
@cain:
Isn’t his birthday June 14 — Flag Day? It’s already an official holiday, albeit not one with days off and sales at all the big box stores.
Steve LaBonne
@HopefullyNotcassandra: It makes no difference to me how many or few trans people there are. As a UU I subscribe to our value of Equity: “We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.”
JWR
@Jay:
Goddamn! Say it with me now! Who lost (gave away) Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and Hell, the rest of Europe, for that matter?
[Testing, testing… Finally revived my newish Windows 10 machine, (it’s been giving me loads of trouble since Jan 20. Go figure), so testing, testing, testing…]
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin: It’s also about social change. It’s not seen as socially acceptable to demonize gay, lesbian, or bisexual people anymore, so the bigoted shitstains are demonizing the trans community.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/wartranslated/status/1896653932002177176#m
https://nitter.poast.org/wartranslated/status/1896591876381458514#m
different-church-lady
@TBone: Guaranteed to blow my head apart…
danielx
@SiubhanDuinne:
Now I know when to drink curses upon him, his forebears, and all his descendants.
Edit: actually any day at all works for that.
Seeker
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the idea may be to slow roll the construction of the plant and have it’s non-completed status incentivize the protection of Taiwan. TSMC can hope that the US will not allow Taiwan to fall until it has surrendered its tech to the USA. The process buys time.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: I searched for ELP and…
Wang chung tonight!
Darkrose
Ah, okay. That part makes sense; even by their logic, the trans ban is just pure bigotry.
Baseball as well. There was a young woman who pitched for her college team, back when there was such a thing. She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, after which MLB banned women from the league. Aside from the AAGPBL during World War II, women have been excluded from professional baseball in the US. There aren’t even college leagues anymore; women have to play softball.
Jay
@Seeker:
They will just Foxconn it.
Another Scott
Is it too much to hope that various courts will slap these clearly unconstitutional acts down??
We have separation of powers. Anyone who has read the Constitution should understand that. Any officer under the United States should understand that.
ConstitutionCenter.org:
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
One of the Many Jens
@Mai Naem mobil:
They had planned to do so. Cannon ruled they couldn’t, if I remember correctly.
Peale
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, you see, thankfully the private sector is always growing rapidly and never has a contraction. And won’t ever have one again as long as we get rid of those pesky economic stabilizers.
I mean, seriously, they act as if the government pays for things using some kind of token money that isn’t fungible and has no multiplier effects, unlike that private sector money that is real and circulates.
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Just like with same-sex marriage, I see this as a liberty issue for ME personally, whether or not I’m ever going to use that liberty. I married a woman but I’m not interested in being forced to only marry a woman. I’m a cis man but I want to be the one who makes that call, not the state. I don’t care for the government ratifying my harmless personal choices by force.
Mai Naem mobil
@Sister Golden Bear: its a just a shiny new object distraction. I believe it was the Utah GOP governor who said there was one single trans athlete in the whole state. There was some other study that said the total number of transgender surgeries on minors during some recent year was in the single digits and of those several were surgeries for ‘man boobs’ on mails for cosmetic reasons not for actual trans surgeries. I also vaguely remember that of the 1.6 million transgendered population, it seemed like a good number did not have surgery and were not doing anything about it. It makes me mad that Magats and their brehtren are so stupid they can’t see that it’s just a distraction issue used by garbage politicians.
Mai Naem mobil
@One of the Many Jens: what was Cannon going to do if they released it? Send them to jail? Besides, they could have leaked it. The GOP does it all the time but god forbid the Dems should do it.
Gvg
@RevRick: Did the experiment test whether they were willing to starve with no work while their neighbor did too? How about a surprise where they starve and some of their neighbors do, some don’t when they thought they were picking only the neighbors made less?
NutmegAgain
@David Collier-Brown: See also: Guernica. Painted in response to the 1937 coordinated bombing campaign on Basque village by Nazi Germany & Fascist Italy.
Martin
@Baud: Not if you strip it retroactively. The topline GDP number isn’t material politically, only the relative change in GDP. So if you strip government spending from last years and this years GDP, the loss of government spending on the economy simply vanishes.
And of course that’s what their thinking is.
Retired data scientist knows this trick.
Martin
@Mai Naem mobil: Like with vaccines, it has nothing to do with the actual impact of trans athletes and everything about culturally, who gets to set the rules – California or Alabama.
Gvg
@mrmoshpotato: that won’t hold if we start giving away sacrificial offerings. Take someone else cowards whimper. I don’t think the religious right really has quit hating gay people and the last few years it’s been proven the Jewish hate is still there. They hid it for all my life but crawled out from under the rocks lately. I hate seeing how bad some people are. I knew the racism was still there. That was not that hidden. There is also a good deal of displayed hate for women whereas before it was just patronizing and dismissive sometimes. So really I don’t want to start a leak in the damn.
YY_Sima Qian
Low key resistance from the staff of US Embassy I Beijing:
YY_Sima Qian
Folks, read up on the histories of the Great Leap Forward & the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, because that seems to be the direction MAGA wants to go:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Sure, but people are going to notice declining profits and rising unemployment in their own businesses and communities. They can’t hide that. Reality will intrude on the fantasy
cain
@YY_Sima Qian:
They are determined to kill everyone.
Sister Golden Bear
@mrmoshpotato: A decade ago, leaked internal documents from the folks pushing the “bathroom bills” explicitly talked about how they were targeting trans people because they “lost” on same sex marriage equality. But…. It was merely a tactical retreat. They’d go after us trans people first, but once it was acceptable to discriminate against us, they’d widen their war to include LBGQ+ people again.
Shalimar
@gene108: Check their teeth for meth usage.
Gin & Tonic
@YY_Sima Qian: I believe over the last couple of decades I have started reading at least three books on the Great Leap Forward. I remember one by Dikotter, not sure about the others. Never finished a single one, as they were just too relentlessly depressing.
cain
@Martin:
I’m not sure this trick will work on the rubes. We had great numbers but emotionally didn’t feel it. You can talk all you want about numbers but if eggs are 13 a dozen, and suddenly you can’t get produce you want.
Someone is going to create a new set of numbers that includes that spending because nobody is going to manipulated numbers if your business is counting on it.
Sister Golden Bear
@Mai Naem mobil: It’s more than just a distraction issue by garbage politicians — although there’s definitely that element as well — there’s definitely some of them who want us eradicated and then will move on to eradicating LGBQ+ people.
I’ve hesitated to use the word “eradicate” — and I don’t use it lightly — because it risks sounding hysterical. But their aims a clearly eliminationist, so if the jackboot fits…. Plus, we’ve seen this play before. Remember that famous photos of Nazis burning books? They were burning the library of Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which advocated for LGBTQ+ rights and provided some of the first gender-affirming healthcare.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
Exactly
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Has Kay still been commenting around these parts?
YY_Sima Qian
@Gin & Tonic: Dikotter’s is probably the best history of the GLF. Both topics are relentlessly depressing (& horrifying), which is part of the reason (alongside CPC regime censorship) that most of the Chinese population prefer not to dwell on them.
Unlike Stalin, Mao didn’t set out to engineer a famine that would kill tens of millions. (Not that he necessarily cared, either.) He thought China could complete industrialization & modernization, catch the US & surpass the UK, all in one bound. He created the incentives for the entire bureaucracy to fabricate rosy production numbers, & then bullied the bureaucracy to formulate & execute macroeconomic policy based those fabricated numbers. When the failures became too great to be swept under the rug, the CPC nomenklatura balked & sidelined Mao in the early 60s to semi-disgrace. Mao then launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution against the CPC nomenklatura, a revolution against the establishment, at least partly out of revenge.
See the rhymes?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
You’re spot on. I’d also call it a genocide. That’s what disgusts me with people who advocate dumping Trans people. Beyond the inherent inhumanity of that, as you say, we’ve seen this movie before; trans folks were one of the first groups targeted by the Nazis
Citizen Alan
@YY_Sima Qian: We’re going to end up with Holodomor 2.0, aren’t we?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@NutmegAgain: famous apocryphal story: Picasso being cross-examined by Franco’s goons re Guernica: “did you do this?” ‘No, you did this. I only painted it.”
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): After spending something like 24 hours saying she was leaving, I guess she left.
Gin & Tonic
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, I do.
Thing is, I made it through Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow but couldn’t make it through Dikotter.
Gin & Tonic
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: I’ve actually seen Guernica twice: at MoMA in NY when it was there, and then again at the Reina Sofia after it had returned to Spain.
YY_Sima Qian
@Citizen Alan: Well, the US is far better endowed in agricultural resources than the PRC (then or now), 5x the arable land & 1/4 the population, w/ geography & crops amenable for mechanized farming.
It would take colossal misrule to f*ck that up (even more than Mao’s GLF), but I guess MAGA will give it a try
The vulnerability is that the vast majority of the US population is not self-subsistent on food supply.
Kayla Rudbek
@Gin & Tonic:
@YY_Sima Qian: Tom Standage wrote a book about the history of food, which I listened to as an audiobook. He had a chapter on the Communists in Russia and China trying to claim improved food yields despite the evidence otherwise.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kayla Rudbek: For the Chinese context, that was a reference to Mao’s GLF. It was not just reporting “improved yield”, but order of magnitude improvement that should not have passed the smell test, but somehow Mao was convinced.
Among the painful lessons from the GLF is the PRC government’s long standing obsession w/ food security, & emphasis in development of agricultural technology that actually improve yields. Another lesson has been the healthy skepticism held the central authorities toward the rosy numbers reported by local authorities, even though the system of governance incentivizes the local authorities to report rosy numbers.
cain
@Gin & Tonic:
I hope she come back. She was really a great voice that really was a counter against other. A true liberal. I really enjoyed the way she engaged with us all of us in a way that was firm and assertive and bringing in facts.
We are in so much flux right now.
Gloria DryGarden
@Nukular Biskits: there’s always Phillip glass…
Gloria DryGarden
duplicate. 2 am blog time, when it posts multiple times. I forgot!
TS
As with the 20 year old scam at the great British post office – no-one has the non existent missing money – but this does not stop the prosecutors being the accuser, judge and jury – and no-one believing the defendant
It is therefore perfectly likely that the Post Office took money which rightfully belonged to its Subpostmasters and used it to bolster its bottom line.
As Musk screams all the savings – so the UK Post Office created a great profit – and neither exist in reality.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: always one sandwich short of a picnic!
TBone
@prostratedragon: yes! And The Third Man and The Magnificent Ambersons for darker examples that are also strikingly beautiful. Also The Lady from Shanghai and now I’m on a roll…
The Orson movie that struck me most is Touch of Evil. That one is particularly unforgettable.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: up late? Early? Another rough night? I dared to post a haiku on tonight’s Ukraine page. In the 50s.
And YY created an astonishing poem via DEEP SEEK, in Chinese and English, very auspicious, deep, rooted in history. You will admire it. It’s around comment #9
eclare
@TBone:
Touch of Evil is very good, especially the opening scene where the bomb takes forever to explode. Also Night of the Hunter leaves an impression (Robert Mitchum stars).
TBone
@eclare: YES! Mitchum is so great in all iterations, especially noir.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: I just wrote to you! I am up early after managing a pretty good sleep. I feel more rested, for now… but we’ll see what fresh hell today brings…
TBone
CHECK ENGINE light flashing red on my dashboard! Heather Cox Richardson:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-3-2025
Money laundering writ LARGE.
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: thank you for that, I needed it right NOW!
TBone
I partied pretty dang hard all afternoon yesterday doing the Noah Victory Dance. The neighbors enjoyed some seriously good music with me. Mimosas flowed freely, real champagne and fresh squeezed OJ with lots of pulp. Vitamins, minerals, AND fiber! I feel like a million bucks today. Of course, there was also good, homemade food involved in my non-hangover (beef barley soup from Christmas beest and, later, a fresh pasta sauce over small penne and grownup green beans casserole).
prostratedragon
@TBone:
Check. Have really enjoyed the beauty of the Ambersons a couple of times lately when they’ve shown it. And of course Kane, though seems people need the lay of the land first on that one. Ditto Hud and The Letter. But The Miracle Worker and Sweet Smell of Success seem accessible to people I’ve watched them with. Over the years I’ve almost concluded I prefer b&w most of the time.
gene108
@RevRick:
There were quite a few experiments done studying this. A common theme in the experiments is to give people a choice between a win-win situation or a win-lose situation that could become a lose-lose situation.
Either scenario had test subject being given a choice that, for example, could split say a $1000 50/50 with another test subject (win-win) or gamble that they could keep the $1000, if the other test subject made a certain decision. This also included the risk both groups walk away with nothing.
A surprisingly large number of people went for the win-lose scenario, even though it could turn into a lose-lose scenario.
gene108
@Jay:
Right-wing propaganda will make sure 45% of voters will never blame Republicans for their problems. They’ll pin the blame on some other group.
This really is my biggest fear regarding things falling apart under Trump. Trump and the right-wing propaganda machine will turn people’s anger against other Americans that results in acts of violence.
I mean there’s always groups of white supremacists looking to harm non-white people. It’s why there were a few murders of Sikh men, after 9/11, because they were brown and had beards like the Taliban. It’s why assaults on East Asians increased when Trump & Co. called COVID the “China Flu”.
It doesn’t take much to set these people off. They’re primed for violence against non-whites.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: not pleasing.
TBone
@prostratedragon: and The Last Picture Show. I am a yuge fan of Hud and I knew a guy who (jokingly, mostly) emulated him, even the cowboy hat, in DelCo.
I just watched The Letter again yesterday or the day before! Big Bette fan.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: you know it!
Geminid
@cain: I also miss Kay. She and I clashed a lot, but I always respected her.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Kay is commenting and posting some on Mistermix’s new blog.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: The US fucked it up pretty badly by encouraging bad farming practices to boost production for World War I, resulting ultimately in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, concurrent with the Great Depression. It didn’t get to the point of widespread famine, but there was definitely widespread malnutrition and poverty.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TBone: How do you stockpile something that isn’t real?
MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It is a bit of a head scratcher, isn’t it?
Geminid
Ragip Soylu this morning:
Ragip Soylu also posted sn excerpt from a speech by Turkish President Soylu yesterday:
Erdogan has harshly criticized Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, but while that war has been a humanitarian catastrophe, it has not implicated Turkiye’s vital national interests.
This Israeli government’s clumsy efforts to destabilize Syria have implicated those interests, and that is why Erdogan is warning them off. Fortunately, neither country wants a war with the other.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I don’t understand what Bibi is trying to achieve in Syria. Build a buffer w/ Druze proxies? Didn’t work out well in the end in Lebanon.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: This Israeli government’s policies are compromised by Netanyahu’s desparation to cling to power. Israel gained a major strategic victory when Iran was thrown out of Syria and Hezbollah was cut down to size. Now Israel’s government could squander those gains because Netanyahu will try anything to avoid elections.
The maps Erdogan talks about started showing up in January, in the wake of the collapse of the Assad regime. Keyboard Metternichs posted maps dividing Syria into an Alawite enclave on the coast, a rump Sunni state in the center, and a corridor linking a Druze statelet adjacent to the Golan Heights with a much larger Kurdish-ruled state in Northeast Syria. This was to be an Israeli protectorate.
Some Israeli government officials voiced approval for this arrangement. It’s a hare-brained scheme though. For one thing, the proposed Isrseli protectorate would still be majority Syrian Arab. For another, it would put Israeli proxy forces right on Turkiye’s most sensitive border.
The ensuing social debate was fierce. I saw a lot people typing from safe places who wanted other people to fight wars for them. That was very discreditable, I thought.
There were some humorous posters though, like the Turk who pointedly told an Israeli:
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Unfortunately, it seems a lot Israelis have internalized the self-conception of Israel as a hegemonic/imperialistic, militaristic, authoritarian religio-/ethno-nationalist state, drawing lines on other peoples’ lands that would have Sykes & Picot nod in approval.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: I was only vaguely aware that being the cause of the Dust Bowl.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, and general ignorance combined with “rain follows the plow” dreams. Overproduction contributed to the economic crash in the first place, and then the unsustainable mechanized agricultural practices used to create that production killed the soil and it blew away.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Wow. History does rhyme.
evodevo
@gene108:
Maybe MuskMelon gifted Rubio some of his ketamine lol
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: James Michener has a lot of material in Centennial on the early 20th century boom in Colorado dryland farming. A tragic story.