Trump’s Secretary of Commerce:
Mao Zedong has come to America
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has said that his department has been in contact with top universities to create "deals" that would give the government patents for their research and inventions.
www.msn.com/en-us/money/…— bennythesnitch.bsky.social (@bennythesnitch.bsky.social) August 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
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Endless indulgence of the lawlessness of Trump and his regime
Pretextual accusations of criminality against his opponents, which his administration will use to smear and ruin you— Brendan Nyhan (@brendannyhan.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 9:43 AM
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Finally read Antonia Hitchens's wonderful profile of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, which examines Trump's entire trade philosophy. "Aggressive real-estate techniques in an int'l context," but "what happens if you treat your counterparties as a one-and-done?" www.newyorker.com/magazine/202…
— Kevin Rothrock (@kevinrothrock.me) August 14, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Excellent report from Antonia Hitchens, at the New Yorker, on “Donald Trump’s Tariff Dealmaker-in-Chief”:
When Howard Lutnick moved to Washington, earlier this year, to become the Secretary of Commerce, he painted one wall in his new living room gold. It was the only significant modification he made to the house, a château-style mansion purchased for twenty-five million dollars from the Fox News anchor Bret Baier. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Lutnick was in the living room, flipping through a commemorative coffee-table book designed by his family which pairs photographs of him with some of his favorite sayings. “It’s between me and the mirror,” one read. He turned the page: “You are either in or you are out.” Lutnick’s dog, a Havanese-poodle mix named Cali—three of his four children went to college in California—kept nosing her way through a gate to come sit with us. Lutnick was about to fly to London for a round of trade negotiations with China, whose restrictions on the sale of rare-earth metals were threatening to render parts of the American economy nonfunctional. Several suitcases were packed and waiting in the entryway, next to a gold Pop-art sculpture by Robert Indiana that spelled the word “LOVE.” Later, Lutnick led me from room to room to point out a few more works from his personal collection: Rothko, Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, de Kooning…
Lutnick and President Donald Trump speak on the phone most nights, at around one in the morning, just after Lutnick gets in bed. They talk about “real stuff,” like Canadian steel tariffs, Lutnick told me, and also about “nothing,” which he summarized as “sporting events, people, who’d you have dinner with, what was this guy like, can you believe what this guy did, what’s the TV like, I saw this on TV, what’d you think of what this guy said on TV, what did you think about my press conference, how about this Truth?” Of course, Lutnick said, “Trump has other people he calls late at night.” But does he have other people he always calls?
In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump’s ghostwritten business-advice memoir from 1987, he observes, “Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.” One senses that Lutnick is animated by similar principles. The Department of Commerce, an agency with fifty thousand employees and thirteen bureaus, manages a vast and varied portfolio: the National Weather Service, the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office. It is, as one Lutnick adviser told me, “a junk drawer for everything under the sun, from red snapper to wind to ships to artificial intelligence—you name it.” But Lutnick sees himself primarily as the President’s dealmaker-in-chief. Lately, this has meant fielding pleas from companies and countries seeking relief from Trump’s tariffs, which the department sets and helps to enforce. In early April, the Administration put a baseline ten-per-cent tariff on nearly every country in the world, alongside so-called reciprocal tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has the biggest trade deficits. China, the bête noire of the President’s trade obsession, would pay thirty-four per cent. (This later skyrocketed up to a hundred and twenty-five per cent, then careened back down.) Lesotho, a country that, in Trump’s words, “nobody has ever heard of,” would pay the highest rate: fifty per cent. A number of America’s closest allies, such as the E.U. and South Korea, were also targeted, as was a group of uninhabited islands near Antarctica. Trump slapped additional tariffs on automobile parts, inciting cries of protest from American car companies. Brides-to-be posted panicked videos to TikTok, wondering whether the cost of their wedding dresses would spike. Preppers, anticipating apocalyptic supply-chain breakdowns, stockpiled hundreds of pairs of shoes…
During Trump’s Presidential transition, which Lutnick co-chaired, he lobbied vigorously to be appointed Treasury Secretary, a more powerful and prestigious position. He was crushed when Trump passed him up for Scott Bessent, a former hedge-fund manager. “There hasn’t been an important Secretary of Commerce since Herbert Hoover,” the founder of a major New York investment bank told me. “Call anybody and ask them to tell you the last five.” Lutnick is determined to elevate the role. “I’m a different Secretary of Commerce,” he said. “No one’s ever cared before.” And Commerce—with its tariff-enforcement authority—is at the center of the Administration’s efforts to frantically rework the flow of global trade. Although Lutnick spent decades as the chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial-services firm that does business around the world, his most valuable asset in this endeavor may be a natural intuition for what the President wants, and a penchant for radical oversimplification. Sitting across from me one afternoon, he pinched the fabric of his gray button-down shirt between his fingers. “If I buy this shirt and it’s made in Italy or in China, it doesn’t help us,” he said. “I consumed, but I didn’t employ anybody.” He grabbed hold of his pants. “Whereas if I buy jeans and they’re made in America, then that’s good.” Lutnick believes that he and the President possess a clarity of thought that is unique among Washington types. “I’m just experienced in business in the way none of these people are—except Donald Trump,” he said. “I know him so well that I know where the puck is going.”
It’s not just tariffs. Lutnick has all sorts of ideas about how to transform the government. “If I was in the Biden Administration, they’d be staring at me like I’m from some other planet,” he told me. “But this President, he wants to make change. So I pitch these ideas, and he says, ‘Let’s do it.’ ” Why not replace the I.R.S. with an External Revenue Service, which will collect tariffs and other levies from foreign sources instead of taxing citizens? And how about we get rid of most of the government enumerators, who gather data for the Census Bureau? (They “literally call to Lincoln, Nebraska, and ask what the price of cargo pants is, as if they don’t have a computer.”) Lutnick’s most prized idea is to sell U.S. citizenship for five million dollars per person. He calls it the Trump Card, and it looks like a gold American Express with the President’s face on it. “If I give two hundred thousand of them for five million dollars each, we make a trillion dollars,” he said. “A trillion! You would say, ‘This doesn’t sound like government, because it sounds kind of smart.’ But you just want outcomes, right? It’s obvious—common sense.”…
*****
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Lutnick was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten at Horace Mann, an élite private school in the Bronx. Cantor’s offices were on the top floors of One World Trade Center. Everyone on those floors died, including Lutnick’s brother, Gary. “Whatever cord had attached me to my life had been severed,” Lutnick later wrote. He set up a crisis center for Cantor families at the Pierre, a swank hotel on the Upper East Side. The firm had lost more than two-thirds of its staff; Lutnick sobbed during TV interviews while desperately trying to keep the business from going under. Four days after the attacks, Cantor stopped paying the salaries of the missing employees, many of whom were not yet confirmed dead. Lutnick received a deluge of hate mail, including a letter that quoted Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”: “Let me ask you one question / is your money that good / will it buy you forgiveness?”By the spring, Lutnick and the surviving Cantor partners had distributed sixty-three million dollars to the families of the deceased. (They would eventually pay three times that amount.) Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who oversaw the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, told me that Lutnick “vigorously represented his people.” Still, the narrative persisted that he had abandoned them. A chorus of critics accused Lutnick of crying crocodile tears. The first time I met Lutnick, he brought up 9/11 immediately, with the defensiveness of someone accustomed to being maligned. “The media was picking on me for not paying the salaries of people who died, which was crazy,” he said. “All the people who made money were killed.”
Lutnick did save Cantor; the company was trading again just two days after the Twin Towers fell. “Despite that, or perhaps because of his perceived self-enrichment,” Lutnick was never granted access to the most rarefied Manhattan circles, one New York financier told me. “Sound familiar?” Someone close to Lutnick said, “It’s the same as it is with Trump. The middle of the country is, like, Wow, he is so rich, he has a gold car, he’s so successful. And then at a cocktail party in New York people are, like, Psh, who the fuck is this guy?”…
*****
During the fall, Lutnick travelled on Trump’s campaign plane, and Trump started talking to him about tariffs, trade deficits, and his general sense that the U.S. was constantly being “ripped off” by other countries. Lutnick “sort of became a student,” one person close to him told me. The teacher, though, seemed more important than the lesson. Lutnick has “always loved celebrities,” his friend went on. “I think in his mind he’s hanging out with Matt Damon or Brad Pitt.” Lutnick and Trump both idealize the American economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an era of dramatic industrial growth supported by muscular state protectionism. Lutnick has characterized the period as a “golden age,” a time when “our economy was rockin’. . . . We had no income tax, and all we had was tariffs. And we had so much money that we had the greatest businessmen of America get together to try to figure out how to spend it.”…The next week, Lutnick flew to Brownsville, Texas, where Musk was testing a SpaceX rocket booster. After the test, Musk went to celebrate with the engineers, and his staff parked Lutnick in a SpaceX canteen, which Lutnick has described as “the equivalent of a Margaritaville.” He ate a quesadilla and drank a supersized Diet Coke. Hours passed. It turned out that Musk was taking a nap, Lutnick said. When Musk woke up, he summoned Lutnick to the living quarters that he keeps on the property. The men sat across from each other on plastic chairs, in a bare-bones room, and Lutnick told Musk that they should balance the budget together. Musk agreed that it would be easy to save a trillion dollars—by cutting eighty per cent of the federal government. He’d done the same thing with Twitter’s workforce after buying the company, in 2022. “Elon’s gonna cut, Howard’s gonna raise,” Lutnick said. This became his mantra. He texted Trump to say that Musk was on board, and that the venture would be called the Department of Government Efficiency. Lutnick and Musk posed for a photograph outside: arms crossed, grabbing their biceps. Lutnick posted it on X and wrote, “Welcome to DOGE.”…
Lutnick’s muddled riffing, and what one person close to his team called his “naïve optimism that he can sell anything,” was seen in some quarters as a liability. “Generally speaking, he needs to be kept off TV,” a veteran Trump adviser said. Another MAGA operative described Lutnick as a “carnival barker.” Steve Bannon called his appearances “an unmitigated disaster.” When I recently asked top-ranking White House officials about Lutnick, they presented a united front. Vice-President J. D. Vance told me, “Howard is a natural salesman.” Hassett said, “Howard has an enormously high level of energy.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, added, “No one fights harder than Howard.” Nevertheless, one person close to the Administration told me that many in the White House view Lutnick as “disreputable, so when you need to have a bad guy, people blame him. He’s not seen as a real actor. He’s an errand boy.”…
Much, much more at the link. (Well worth reading!)
Finally a use for… wait, still not it
— nilay patel (@reckless.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 4:41 PM
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Regular reminder that Lutnick turned his investment bank into a clearing house for money laundering and crypto scams.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 5:04 PM
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Everyone knows that government ownership of the means of production is what anti-Communism is all about.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) August 20, 2025 at 2:16 AM
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QUINTANILLA: When do you think markets can get its hand on written documentation on the deals with Japan, UK, Vietnam, Korea?
LUTNICK: You're not gonna find a big long 250 page trading agreement— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 19, 2025 at 12:19 PM
(And, of course, there’s an Epstein link, because all those guys were running buddies back in the day.)
catclub
so.. Starlink is still handicapping Ukraine’s use of it by refusing access to Ukrainian receivers over Russia – think cruise missiles.
The Republic of Stupidity
Lutnick on Lisa Cook refusing to resign: “The crook always says, ‘I’m not going anywhere.”
You gotta give Lutnick credit on this one… Trump isn’t going anywhere…
And it’s impressive, the degree to which the GOP has weaponized shamelessness and hypocrisry at this point…
Jackie
OT, yet related:
Seriously, could FFOTUS stop national elections because of a housing shortage?
Melancholy Jaques
@Jackie:
Until the supreme court or the congress wants to stop him, no one will stop him.
Baud
@Jackie:
This sounds like it’s more about fooling gullible people.
The Audacity of Krope
@Jackie: The ironic thing is that the lack of sufficient or affordable housing for untold thousands people should be treated like an emergency. I’d wager whatever steps Trump takes up on declaring any emergency will do somewhere between very little and negative to help the situation.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
At least half of it will be blaming immigrants again.
Another Scott
On the patents thing – patents have an inventor. Lots of US government employees have patents, based on the work they have done for the US government. It’s usually assigned to the office of the relevant cabinet secretary. The US is more than happy to license those patents. The government employee inventor can get a payment based on that license. Naturally, it gets complicated depending on the specific details.
Under the Bayh-Dole Act the US has patent rights for funded external research.
What Lutnick seems to be wanting to do is to force owners of lucrative patents funded by the US government to give 47’s administration a cut. That would, of course, be a disaster. ETTD.
Dean Baker at CEPR.net:
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Shalimar
If Lutnick thinks his old ass is a hockey player, I would like to point him to the slightly younger Dean Cain trying to run an ICE training course.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Blaming immigrants is the initial basis for any response (I don’t dare say solution) offered by the Trump administration.
Geminid
@The Republic of Stupidity: It doesn’t sound like Curtis Sliwa is going anywhere either. A couple days ago, the New York Post had a story about a rat infestation at Tarr-Coyne Tots Playground on West 67th Street, Manhattan. So the Republican mayoral candidate showed up at the playground the next day to present his rat-control plan:
A commenter suggested the cats be outfitted with small red berets.
Last week, Tulchin Research released a poll on New York’s mayoral race. This is the first time the San Francisco-based outfit has polled the race, which makes me wonder. They made headlines though, with a finding that Independent Cuomo led Democrat Zohran Mamdani in a one-on-one matchup.
But it looks like this hypothetical two-way race will remain hypothetical. Mayor Eric Adams insists he remains in it to win it, and Curtis Sliwa is having too much fun to quit.
Princess
When Trump is dead and Vance takes over, I wonder if he’ll be as hung ho on the tariff thing as Trump was. I kinda think tariffs were Trump’s One Weird Trick and that even in the WH they don’t fully buy it. The press needs to begin constantly asking Vance which cabinet members he’ll keep and which he’ll toss when he becomes president. Constantly.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jackie: How is it that a leader plans for an emergency. That is, not plan for how to deal with an emergency, but rather, plan to CREATE/DECLARE an emergency as part a larger plan to usurp Congress and the judiciary?
How is this not all over the news all of the time?
The Audacity of Krope
@Princess: Man, it hasn’t been this ghoulish here since June of last year…
jonas
That’s really been the extraordinary turn in American politics over the past 10 years. Nobody gives a shit if anything is real, realistic, valid, or true. It’s just whatever you can get away with. And the problem is that the guilty party and the victims are both the American electorate. There would be no MAGA without a large chunk of voters deciding to go “Fuck it, I don’t care what anyone does anymore, whether what they say is true, or what their justifications are. Just take down the American flag and run up a big banner with the word “Wev” and a middle finger.” In a normal world, voters would never tolerate the kind of shamelessness and hypocrisy that now passes for routine politics in the GOP. There was a time when a president resigned because he knew his own party would hold him to account if he didn’t. Good times.
I’m not sure how we got to this point (although I have some hunches that rhyme with Smox Smooze and Smocial Smedia), and am less sure how to fix it. Sometimes it feels that our politics and civil society are simply broken beyond repair.
Suzanne
@jonas:
I think it was Schmonald Schmeagan, personally.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope: @Baud: FFOTUS said during the campaign that his plan was to kick immigrants out in order to give their homes to Americans.
We could employ those immigrants to build more houses, highways, bridges, etc! That strikes me as sensible!
prostratedragon
Campaign advice from this day forward: purge the word “deal” from your vocabulary.👿
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: I participate semi-actively in a comment forum run by a very small local weekly newspaper here, and the housing crisis being the fault of the immigrants has been a MAGA article of faith for some years now.
The Audacity of Krope
The particular immigrants Trump is worried about, didn’t we already kick them out of their homes a couple hundred years ago.
Far as I’m concerned, they didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them.
Another Scott
One for Geminid – Phys.org:
There’s always more to learn about this round rock we call home.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne:
We already do.
The Audacity of Krope
@prostratedragon: No deal is any good unless it’s made under duress and solely benefits one side.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope: Couldn’t agree more. Having lived within the Gadsden Purchase for a few years, I was inclined very strongly to consider myself the newcomer. Some of my American friends of Mexican descent have had family members in the U.S. longer than some of mine.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: We’ve got ICE raiding construction sites and Home Depot parking lots right now. Basically driving out and/or much of the construction workforce.
I think we need a National Construction Corps at this point. Spend four years designing, engineering, and constructing housing, libraries, schools, and other public goods….. free college.
RandomMonster
I read about people like Lutnick and suddenly the thought of choking the life out of another living being suddenly seems a little appealing.
trollhattan
Took three days to do a fucking 2-hour fix on my car. According to YouTube.
But it works, I don’t have to tow it to my repair dude, and I have the merit badge. Yes, dollars saved but I’m working for about thee bucks an hour. [narrator: a fair wage in this case.]
I will never do this particular task again unless somebody turns my engine bay into a tardis. I suspect they build the car around the drivetrain and not the usual sequence.
Tehanu
No, it sounds kind of crooked and corrupt.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Pretty confident the oldest buildings I’ve seen/been in, in the States are in Santa Fe.
zhena gogolia
@RandomMonster: I wish I didn’t feel this way, but . . .
Rusty
@trollhattan: I replaced the clutch on my Fiat last year, using only YouTube videos. It was a massive savings (a few hundred versus a few thousand which I didn’t have the car wasn’t worth), but I wouldn’t do it again. Someone is selling an “Official YouTube Mechanic” sticker that I am tempted to get (the brother of my best friend is a professional mechanic, even he admits YouTube is often the best place for how to fix a car he isn’t familiar with).
p.a
Is the national housing emergency gubmint response going to go after the private equity firms snarfing up residential housing? Magic ouija ball says “are you nucking futs?”
scav
@Suzanne: Yeah, however much the trad media pushes that hot take, the melting orange menace and many of his highest flying monkeys are not culturally those shaped by social media (however much they take to shit-posting on it, having already blown through a.m. radio and how many forms of trad media by now?) The MBA- bull-shitification of all-merkan politics, culture and religion has deeper roots.
mrmoshpotato
My phone hasn’t exploded with glee. I assume the orange shitstain hasn’t been dragged to Hell yet.
The Audacity of Krope
You can trace it back to the Confederacy and, I’d wager, beyond. The details change with the time but the core animating principles remain the same.
catclub
My car has a tiny engine in a tiny engine bay. My understanding is that to change belts it is over $500 because ( I suspect) they have to pull the radiator. Possibly also the front grille.
I was thinking someone like gollum, with extremely small, strong, and wiry hands, would be ideal to work on it.
Jackie
@Chief Oshkosh:
That’s what I want to know. The media should be ALL OVER THIS.
Baud
Via reddit, cool poster.
trollhattan
@catclub:
A gollum, moving into an engine bay residency could be ideal! I’d give the little bastard a full set of metric tools and all the fishesssss he could eatses.
An infamous ‘Murkan car of the dark times had to have the engine partly hoisted to change the plugs. Dealers must have loved the heck out of that income stream, but they probably had to have a repair department bouncer.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Thanks. Geologic hydrogen is an interest of mine. People are looking for hydrogen all over the world now. The HyTerra company has found good results from exploration wells drilled in Kansas.
I think the potential of geologic hydrogen could be proved or disproved in the Lorraine region of France. Geologists have verified the existence of large deposits there, and the French government is finalizing regulations regarding its exploitation.
The EU has prioritized the use of hydrogen in transportation and industry so if the hydrogen in Lorraine can be extracted, the demand will be there.
scav
@The Audacity of Krope: Elements sure, but while vastly worse on the definition of just who is to be considered free and equal (although some are striving mightily to regain those standards), earlier ‘mercans still had enough public spirit to contribute to building public libraries, schools, & eventually social security. Hell, some (even in the coal industry) proudly joined unions. This fainting away at the mere thought of contributing one skinny dime in taxation if it doesn’t immediately benefit the citizen in question (“creeping socialism!”) seems to be a more modern perversion.
Betty
@RandomMonster: He really is scum. Completely amoral.
Baud
Jay
According to CNN, Dolt47 is going to award Rudy Tutti Fruity Deludy Ghoulianni the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
suzanne
@Jay: OH FOR FUCKING FUCKS SAKE.
ETA: I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had an outburst. BUT WHAT THE FUCK.
Deputinize America
Sadly, Lutnick didn’t make it to work early on 9/11.
Gvg
And why haven’t there been any significant commerce Secretaries since Herbert Hoover? Does it occur to this dipshit to remember why Herbert Hoover and the economy are significant? That maybe being a significant Commerce Secretary is a bad thing not a good goal? What an idiot.
Scout211
@Jay: OMFG!
i wonder how much money that piece of metal is worth. Maybe he can pawn it and pay what he owes (never mind, they settled in January)
trollhattan
@Baud:
My wish is it’s JD, part by part. They have people for that, you know.
Baud
I refuse to be surprised that Trump is soiling the Medal of Freedom.
Librettist
Freelancing sycophants.
“Buy the ticket, take the ride…..”
Deputinize America
@Jackie:
Guessing it’ll waive all local permitting and safety regs.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Got you beat.
I couldn’t unlock the steering column of my old 18+ year old VW for about a month. The key (one of the folding rectangular jobbies with the wide serpentine groove on both sides) would go in, but the cylinder wouldn’t turn. Trying a different (hardly used) key didn’t help.
Everything I found on the web talked about taking off the steering wheel and replacing the lock cylinder because some piece broke inside. But it would be impossible to take the steering wheel off because it wasn’t lined up correctly to do so. And it was locked.
:-(
I had visions of spending $1k+ at the VW dealership to get it fixed (and them maybe having to destroy the column to get the cylinder out).
Grr…
I messed around and messed around for a few days over a month. Eventually I got the idea to spray the lock with a silicone spray and kept trying the key. And eventually something moved! Ah, progress! It still wouldn’t unlock though.
I got a flexible thin piece of brass wire, made a tiny hook at the end, and started digging around in the key slot and a bunch of wet pocket lint came out. Aargh…! There was so much in there that it kept the key from working properly. I dug out what I could and sprayed some more silicone spray and, like magic, it was good as new.
I’m very appreciative of the RFID key on my Kia Niro!
Hang in there.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Marc
@Another Scott: This is one of my pet peeves. Under Bayh-Dole the US government has royalty free access to federally funded research, the actual patent is owned by the research institution. What people conveniently wish to forget is that prior to 1980, all federally funded research was essentially in the public domain, with limited rights to the discoverer(s) under certain circumstances. Bayh-Dole has done a fabulous job of fucking up the university system in this country, turning them into hedge funds with a school attached. And now, the race to the bottom from the beginning of this year.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: V-8 Chevy Monza?
(I should let trivia like that go…)
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@RandomMonster: I know what you mean.
BlueGuitarist
Betty Cracker (iirc) referred to him as
Nutlick
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Almost all 4th-generation Coloradans are of Mexican descent and all of them have been here longer than most of the racially tone deaf, white colonizer/gentrifiers that have moved here in the last decade and have relatively shallow roots in North America as these things go.
Hell, most of them who go back even further, and while they can’t always formally document it, have family ties in what is now ‘Murka longer than me, and I’ve got one line that goes back to Maryland arriving in 1650 and probably 1-2 others that predate that by 20-30 years.
There’s a great story they tell at one of the pueblos outside of Albuquerque, itself predating any of the English settlements in VA by almost 100 years, where they talk about how the first Spanish priests came, proselytized the native population and were then promptly tossed to their deaths over a cliff. Godless secular humanist that I am heartily approved and would, back then, probably have been first in line with the tossing.
cain
@Marc: well shit, I can’t even blame that on Reagan can I?
cain
@Scout211: like all fascists, they’ll use all of that stuff to give to their people. Right now, he’s trying hard to get the nobel peace prize.
ETA you can bet he’ll go to war to get it ;) or at least put some heavy tariffs.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I saw Sliwa’s comment on feral cat colonies and it reminds me of discussions we had in the Pentagon back in the early-to-mid 90s.
The Pentagon then was a dump. Everybody forgets that it was built in record time during WWII, as cheaply and as hastily as could be done. 50 years later, most of us who worked there could tell you about the plumbing literally exploding in bathrooms or the mysterious white dust that covered your desk every morning.
And it was rat infested, inside and out. I was doing shift work in the Alert Center so coming in to start a shift at 10pm from North Parking. I walked past a garbage can that suddenly started having a seizure. Scared the shit out of me. Then I looked closely, it was crawling with rats.
We always said we needed to have cats in every space to deal with the problem. Somebody also suggested snakes and this was before they started releasing pythons into the Everglades.
Sliwa’s a dumb ass on a good day. Feral cat colonies (we’re intimately familiar with them and their management) in a city like NYC would have it’s own set of problems but then people like Sliwa don’t think real deeply about anything.
Eyeroller
@Baud: It was irreparably soiled when it was awarded to Rush Limbaugh. Also by Trump, of course, in his first term. But it is meaningless now, just something given at the whim of the Executor/King.
Another Scott
@Marc: Interesting. I don’t have any great insight on what the better system would be – the link to the IP law firm in my comment says that patents the government held were just sitting around collecting dust, hence the B-D “reforms”. I’m only kinda familiar with the current system.
I guess one lesson would be that we can never assume that “reforms” should be one-and-done. Tweaks, and revisions, and even starting over, always need to be on the table and part of the process.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Didn’t Dump already give one to Rush Still-Dead Limbaugh
ETA – I see Eyeroller answered my question.
Limbaugh is still dead though.
Suzanne
For anyone who needs a bit of an emotional pick-me-up when thinking of Rush Limbaugh.
different-church-lady
THAT’S WHAT I’M DOING NOW, MOTHERFUCKER!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … KrebsOnSecurity.com:
Something something You Are the Weakest Link!!
It seems that just about anything to do with the web and business (and customer (and non-customer) data) is at the mercy of the security practices of one single little company somewhere. All that changes every week or few is the name of that little, or not so little company.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: Nice.
Jackie
@Baud:
He already soiled the Medal of Honor, by insinuating one had to be injured or killed in battle to receive it. FFOTUS said the Medal of Freedom was the highest of the two. He also hinted strongly he deserved the Purple Cross for never getting VD (although I have doubts about that.)
Rusty
@Marc: I spent six years in the tech transfer department of a large research university. Getting a tech transfer department, that markets those patents, to generate income, is very, very hard. MIT manages it because of an alumni base that is willing to.license, but most everyone else struggles. We were revenue positive, because we got lucky with a couple of patents, but it is much harder than you think. Most of the technology is very early, universities in most cases can’t license for a fixed fee, and you are often dependent on the researcher continuing to develope the technology and to be cooperative (that cooperation is a big barrier with some of them).
frosty
@trollhattan: OMG, really! I couldn’t change a light bulb on a Mazda. It was feasible to take the old one out, but I couldn’t figure out how to contort my hand to get the new one in. And if I dropped it!!!!
I paid my mechanic a half hour’s time to do it. I paid to change a light bulb!!!
chemiclord
@Geminid: If it came down to a 2-person race between Mamdani and Cuomo, then yeah, Cuomo would likely win. He’d get every single GOP voter and bleed off just enough centrist Dems.
frosty
@trollhattan: Maybe St. Augustine Florida, too, The oldest city in the USA. Those buildings aren’t Anglo either.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Istanbul’s street cats are much respected. They’ve inhabited the city on the Bosphorus for two millenia now, and are credited with curbing rat-bourne diseases.
There’s a documentary about them titled Kedi that I hear is worth watching. The director, Ceyda Torun, grew up in Istanbul. Torun ended up in the US and earned a degree in Anthropology from Boston University. Torun moved to Europe afterwards to study filmmaking, and then she directed Kedi.
I learned about the respect Turks have for cats when I started following Turkish social media three years ago. I saw some interesting stuff: a cat sitting in at the top of an escalator with people stepping around or over it; another cat ensconced at the end of a grocery store checkout line conveyor belt. As with the escalator cat, no one shushed it away; the customer just passed their groceries over the cat to the checkout lady.
I also saw a cute picture taken at a Turkish Air Force base. There was an extreme cold spell, and the airmen had set up small bunkbeds in a warm room. There were a dozen or so cats lounging in them.
And there was some wild security camera video scanning a city sidewalk. It showed some asshole walking up and kicking a cat that was just sitting there minding its own business. Then another man ran up and began pummeling the first man with his fists.
trollhattan
@frosty:
:-) LOL, so relatable.
Proud to report taking a wheel to the bike shop because I couldn’t mount the tire without creating a leak. Yep, paid a grownup to put on a bike tire.
Geminid
@chemiclord: That would be an interesting election, but I don’t think we’ll see it. Curtis Sliwa is polling at 17% and has no reason to drop out. He certainly wouldn’t because he likes Cuomo because nobody likes Andrew Cuomo.
Plus, I think Republicans think they can make political hay out of a Mayor Mamdani. That seems unlikely to me, but they believe it.
Melancholy Jaques
I was on bluesky, saw Nate Silver was trending and like a dumbass I had to look.
Now I need to ask, What the fuck is Blueskyism?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@catclub: I once owned a semi-exotic for which anything more than an oil change required dropping the block. But the car was designed for that, – so the cost was lower, since it could be performed easily. Also in the plus column, motor mounts were never an issue.
In contrast, the far newer, more economical and practical, also-German product that replaced it had a capacious engine bay for the four-banger that rode there, so the power plant could get all its work performed without removing it. So, when the motor mounts worked loose, it was an unpleasant surprise – complete with mystery oil and coolant consumption (thanks to unanticipated motor movement).
Bill Arnold
@RandomMonster:
In one of those social media posts above, Lutnick was complaining about CNBC’s use of the term “State Capitalism” to describe some recent Trump administration actions. My immediate reaction was “What, you’d prefer the term National Socialism?”, and after verifying that he is of Jewish decent, I still want to say it to his face.
eclare
@different-church-lady:
Please don’t ever stop the all caps. They reassure me.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@different-church-lady: Not a different planet; just a lower level of Hell.
SteverinoCT
@catclub:
I once paid a dealer $90 to change the fog lights on my Civic after one blew (you change them both because you know it’s only a matter of time). How hard is it to change a light bulb? I could NOT get my hand in there, nor any tool.
SteverinoCT
@frosty: heh. That’s what I get for not reading through the comments. I just posted the same story.
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold: Who in this POS maladministration isn’t a Nazi?
Jay
@Melancholy Jaques:
Blueskyism is the current left/center/liberal/scientific/community/ real news/etc abandonment of The Dead Bird Site for an online space with much fewer Nazi’s.
Tim Onion credits Blueskyism for making The Onion one of the largest and most trusted print media companies in the USA.
eclare
@Geminid:
Kedi is on my watch list. I saw the video of the kitty at the top of the escalator, everyone just steps around. Don’t disturb the kitty!
That is a nice thing.
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
Isn’t that just Communism?
Jackie
WHOA! I didn’t see this coming, although I applaud him for making this decision. Who’s gonna step in Nadler’s shoes?
prostratedragon
The phone number is 855-435-7693.
eclare
@Jackie:
Very cool!
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Jackie: Now if only we could get the ones we could do without to do this.
mrmoshpotato
Because the tariffed countries aren’t the ones paying the tariffs! YOU NAZI DUMBSHIT!
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: Tell them everyone lives 25 miles out in the lake.
Jackie
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
Maybe Nadler will set the example and pave the way for others to follow. I don’t want to see an exodus of seniority and experience, but we’ve had, what three deaths while in office this past year alone? I don’t get the desire to die in Office, knowing full well EVERY SEAT/VOTE COUNTS in congress right now.
ARoomWithAMoose
@trollhattan: “report taking a wheel to the bike shop because I couldn’t mount the tire without creating a leak”
no shame there, all the newer mid priced and above clencher tires essentially have tubeless ready beads on them. I’ve had some tight enough I ended up squishing a pinch flat in the sidewall trying to use tire levers to get the tire mounted.
There are several brands of a $10-$25 plastic tool that hooks onto one side of the rim that lets you lets you lever the bead on the far side over the other rim. Look for “bicycle tire bead jack”. Light and small enough to carry along with some tire levers if you want to be able to replace a flatted tube on a ride but know the tire was a pain originally mount on the rim.
Betty
@Baud: Not for the first time, your Reddit post has already been deleted.
Gravenstone
@Baud: He’s already done that first go around. Some choice recipients include Limbaugh, Gym Jordan, Ed Meese (/spit), and Devin Nunes (but not his cow, sadly).
Gravenstone
@BlueGuitarist: That nym seems to be widely used on Reddit as well. Low bar, I know but still good to see.
Marc
@Rusty: My Dad worked in the technology licensing office at MIT for a while, they did it the old school way, actually trying to get companies to license their patents cold.
After working at two SV startups based on university research, then 20 years working in that graduate engineering department, the SV approach was clear to me. Professors and students (both undergraduate and graduate) were continuously encouraged to start companies based on their research, education was almost a secondary goal. The university liberally provides “angel” and 1st round funding, maybe 1 in 10 of these companies generates any return to the university endowment, but you only need a few Googles. Larry and Sergei actually came to the research center I worked for looking for money (before my time), they were refused, another department funded them instead.
Eyeroller
@Melancholy Jaques: I have some background in climate science. Not an expert, just some direct experience.
I lost interest in anything Nate Silver had to say once I heard about his chapter on climatological statistics in that book. He obviously has no idea about statistics that have a fundamental underlying physical theory. Everything isn’t baseball stats.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Jackie:
Medal of Honor…
Nobel Peace Prize…
Oh hell, I’m waiting for him to declare he deserves an Olympic Gold Medal…
Along with an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy, Emmy, and a Pulitzer…
And canonized by the Holy See!
mrmoshpotato
@The Republic of Stupidity: What sports trophies hasn’t the orange shitstain stolen yet?
Jackie
Cole put up a new post and it disappeared…
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
The Grey Cup.
Jackie
@Jay: Only because it’s Grey and not Gold.
Jay
@Jackie:
It’s silver, Canadian and the CFL is not corrupt. The BC Lion’s offered Colin Kapernick a position if he wanted to keep playing, but he thought he would be better suited to continuing his rights role in the US.
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: Still wondering if they really think they’re going to whip downtown from Great Lakes (north of Waukegan) every day.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon:
Just south of North Chicago.
Still a haul! They can pick up trash during the commute!
Jackie
@Jay: It was a joke. Lighten up Francis. ;-P
prostratedragon
Graham Greene
MagdaInBlack
@prostratedragon: Been wondering that myself.
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: Ah. Immediately south of Waukeegan, not north. Still, …
MisterForkbeard
@Jay: Gotta keep Giuliani from talking about the stuff he’s seen under Trump.
Jay
@MisterForkbeard:
I believe the proper term is “children”, not “stuff”.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: Yeah. Your point still stands. (Wonder what moron thinks the naval base is close to the city. Or are they thinking of Navy Pier?)
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: Not sure. Republicans and conservatives aren’t inherently keen on tariffs, but on the other hand, they are sort of a populist-nationalist thing that before Trump was kind of associated more with a piece of the populist left. Maybe they’ll believe in tariffs permanently now because Trump told them to. But I do kind of agree that a lot of them are mostly “believing” in them to parrot Trump.
I think Trump’s idea was vaguely to eliminate income taxes and replace them with enormous tariffs that would somehow bring in the same revenue… and if there’s one idea Republicans love forever it’s eliminating income taxes. They just don’t care much how you do it.
mrmoshpotato
Face The Nation interview with IL governor JB Pritzker
different-church-lady
@Jay: SILVER IS JUST SHINY GREY.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: “Thinks” and “thinking” optional with this crew. You know this, silly.
Mai Naem mobile
I don’t understand why these people think what they’re doing isn’t going to affect them negatively. Not just Lutnick and the tariffs, RFK Jr and Bessent and the Fed. Do they think their money and assets will be immune from the damage they’re doing to the country. Maybe they think they’ve got so much money it won’t matter but what about their kids and grandkids? Are they not worried about their physical security if they become known as quislings? If the Dems get back in power they damn well better punish these mofos. Every single one of them. If you can say you need to put some shoplifter in jail as a deterrent, these mofos need to be in prison for a few decades as a deterrent. If you don’t do that it just invites them to repeat it next time they’re in power.
Ironcity
@catclub: Don’s new job at the prison auto shop. Little hands useful finally.
Miss Bianca
@eclare:
@Geminid:
I’ve heard about Kedi from multiple sources (actually, probably all Geminid, now that I think about it), so now I’ve put it on reserve at the library.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: The cliff dwelling places in SW are oldest in US.
Paul in KY
@catclub: Highly trained capuchin monkeys! Who are very well taken care of, etc.