Breathing Room: What’s in Your Shopping Cart?

[NB: check the byline, thanks./~Rayne]

Usually when I publish a Breathing Room post, it’s a bit of a break from politics. Unfortunately there’s little in our lives not affected by politics and current events.

Everything you eat or drink has been political, but now food and beverages are even more volatile than eight months ago.

A simple weekly task like grocery shopping is rife with pitfalls, more so than during the early days of the pandemic.

Here’s a sampling of fresh groceries I frequently order from the local store of a national grocer:

This is ridiculous, a form of stupid bingo. Whatever I planned to cook this week is out the window if it relies on any of these out of stock or low inventory items.

Sure, I could go to the farmer’s market to see if I can find a locally grown option, but I have my suspicions the local farmers are having problems getting vegetables picked.

It’s possible some farmers might not show up at the market because they’re immigrants — no idea what their legal status may be but it doesn’t matter if they are scared they may be grabbed. The Asian gentleman with the gorgeous cōng, the Hispanic couple with the tasty zapallitos, the other Hispanic family with the calabazas and repollos may not be there this year.

Some items aren’t and haven’t been available because of persistent bad weather due to climate change. I haven’t been able to buy Napa cabbage with any regularity for two years now. Some dishes I cook are just not the same using regular green cabbage as a substitute.

The problem isn’t just Stephen Miller’s irrational and cruel immigration policies but the inability of the US to restrain its consumption of oil and natural gas, making climate change worse each year.

I’ll work my way around these supply chain disruptions and shortages. I’ll manage around the absurd prices on some items thanks to Trump’s irrational approach to overseas trade.

What really worries me: how do the folks in the bottom deciles navigate this? Are their children not getting enough fruits and vegetables because their parents can’t buy enough of them on their budget, or can’t find them even if they can afford them? How are families supposed to spend more precious time and gas running all over to find vegetables?

How the hell is this making America great again?

Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question. None of this political bullshit causing shortages is necessary except to shake people down.

This is an open thread — tell us how you’re filling your shopping cart. Tell us how you’re helping others make ends meet.

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Children Died to Own the Libs

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Children died to own the libs.

Or children died because something-something-taxes-property-freedom.

Perhaps both – it could depend on your interpretation of the decisions made in Kerr County, Texas leading up to the inarguable, preventable deaths of children due to flash flooding last week.

Never tell me the GOP is the party of life because they refuse to govern in a way that protects life.

They would rather kill children to make a point that liberalism and democracy aren’t acceptable to them.

Others have expressed rage about Kerr County’s child sacrifices far more eloquently; Charlotte Clymer tells the thoughts-and-prayers crowd Do Not Put This On God because none of this was God’s plan.

Journalists in major news outlets have reported on the flash flood in Kerr County without being blunt about the immoral choices national, state, and local GOP elected or aligned government personnel made leading to child deaths. No one will be held accountable based on the wide swags they’ve made as to fault.

What really galls me is the public relations campaign slowly mounting to put down the complaints born of anger, grief, and frustration, using these deaths as yet another sacrifice on the altar of fascism.

Charlie Kirk takes a note out of Chris Rufo’s playbook blaming an Austin TX fire chief for fire and emergency response leading to mass child death, claiming the chief was a DEI hire.

Oh no, honey, no. Don’t go looking to blame DEI for the deaths, because the root cause was much earlier and DEI wasn’t the problem.

There are receipts.

Snapshot of top post at https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/114812383563824176

The replies beneath the post above share the 2016 engineering report on the installation of a flood warning system in Kerr County.

But further in replies utterly damning bits are shared. They were laid out in a Reddit post which I’ll share here (thanks to Reddit contributor timubce in r/Texas).

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 06/27/16

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was. And I keep hearing these reports of the old, old system, and I know we’re not going to deal with that though. Expect that to be gone where the Jones call the Smiths, and the Smiths call Camp Rio Vista, and Rio Vista blah, blah, blah, along down the line. But it’s still there and it still works. The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.

COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think — I think this and that’s what the committee is going to look at and how to do it. I think the going in position is that we don’t need to change anything, and is there a need to improve what we have. And if there’s a need to improve how much is improved. And what the options for doing that and what it would cost. And I think the first thing to do is say why change anything. It worked this long and maybe we don’t need to do a thing. And then it gets into the thing we talk about earlier today, and that’s risk mitigation. And you know there’s still people drowned and you know —
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And I hope you ask the question like who are we notifying, or who are we trying to get the message to? Are they these crazy people from Houston that build homes right down on the water?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Well, I think the thing is you say it’s for the general public and the crazy people from wherever they are, from Houston, okay, and then the camps, and then how do you get the message out to those, that’s all part of it, so it’s a pretty complex project.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I’m sure it is.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: And the question is do we need to do anything. And what do we want to do and what can we afford.
MRS. STEBBINS: Commissioner Moser, will you put it on the next agenda for discussion after you have this meeting on Thursday?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh, absolutely, right.
MRS. STEBBINS: Okay, thank you.
JUDGE POLLARD: I would comment that we don’t hardly have any crazy people that live here. The few that we do have we handle them through CSU.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Or they serve on this board.
JUDGE POLLARD: I’m just trying to keep us out of trouble here, okay. The media’s still here. All right. Any other reports?

************ /end edit

In 2016 Kerr County contracted for an engineering study on their current warning system and were told it was antiquated and inadequate.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 8/22/16

COMMISSIONER MOSER: We had at our steering committee meeting we invited also TxDOT to participate in that. So the original engineer, and both of them as a matter of fact showed up at that meeting. Their assessment was what existed today, and the Sheriff may want to comment on it, is antiquated and it’s not reliable. So we said okay with that, you know, not just that, but we thought that there was a pretty ill-defined system that we have. So the engineering study we thought would be appropriate. If the result of the engineering study says that — recommends that we enhance the system, okay, buying additional sensors, kind of like Comal County did. Comal County spent a little over three hundred thousand dollars, where they had add 8 locations to monitor the rate of rise of the river and streams.

COMMISSIONER REEVES: And while I agree with Commissioner Letz, that if we have a system that’s not working, we need to certainly look at that, technology is great, but still one of the best things, and you may disagree with me is the people up river calling. Because you’re probably going to get a call. I’ve received just this year from calls before it’s even had time for a warning to go off, I’m getting texts from Divide Fire Chief, and I think — where’d the Sheriff go? I sent you a text the other night, you may have got it too from him, but we’re knowing probably before, and I know with one flood that we had earlier in the year, by the time you got the warnings going off, it had been too late. Because it was coming out of just some draws that took too long to get downstream.

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I have one. I’m going to vote no because of numerous reasons. I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, and I see the word sirens and all that stuff in here. And of course, you say that these are steps that will be taken through the years. But that’s where you’re headed, there’s no question in my mind that’s where you’re headed. And you’re determined to do that. But step one of taking these funds out of special projects, out of Road and Bridge, that ticks me off a little bit.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 10/24/16

Mr. Hewitt: Sirens did not seem to get very much support. The thought was that sirens are better for tourists than local residents. The sirens would only be beneficial for someone that’s not familiar with the area, and wouldn’t know what to do.

The second part of the study contained recommendations for updating the system and sirens were purposely left out even though other areas had implemented them.

Regular Commissioners’ Court Agenda 01/09/17

Comal County has implemented a river guage and siren system that includes New Braunfels, Guadalupe County and the Water-Oriented Recreation District (WORD) as funding partners. When gauge heights reach a certain level, emergency management personnel are notified and the siren is automatically activated. Emergency personnel can also activiate the sirens remotely if they know flood water is headed downstream. The data from each gauge, including river height and rainfall, is avaiable online for anyone, including residents, to access.
The filed for federal assistance via a Hazard Mitigation Grant for 976k.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 01/09/17 Discussing the recommended warning system

COMMISSIONER MOSER: The cost of that whole thing is going to be like 976 thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. All of it, and the reason we’re here today and moving so quickly is that there is a FEMA grant that’s available until as long as we apply by January the 20th.
JUDGE POLLARD: Which is when President Obama goes out of office.
(Laughter.)
JUDGE POLLARD: Well, the reason I mention that is because he authorized this particular thing, and it’s going to —
MS. KIRBY: It’s a coincidence.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Going on the record with that it’s a coincidence. And so there has to be a presidential declaration of disaster to be able to have these kinds of funds available. So it goes away just so happens to be when he leaves office.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: So we’ve talked about, you know one of the things we said sirens and we said we don’t want sirens, too many many people said they did not want sirens when they had these — when we had these gatherings. Code Red, and I don’t know if Dub wants to chime in on this, but Code Red is the same that’s going to get information to a lot of people; not to everybody, okay. One of the things that we’ll do is identify a point of contact in all of the camps, we won’t communicate with everybody in the camp, but we have a point of contact at the camp so that they can disseminate people within — to people within the camp, like during the summer when kids are there, or to RV parks. Now, if the RV parks want to have a siren themself when something goes up that’s up to them. That’s not part of our thing. So getting the information to the public is the end item of this whole thing. The first thing is sense a flood, then communicate that information to the local authorities, to the right authorities, and then for them to have a system by with which to disseminate the information to the public.

SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: The only thing I have to remind people, unfortunately, I guess I’m one of the ones that – Harley maybe has been around here to see some very devastating floods and quite a bit of loss of life. No matter what we do it’s going to be up to the public, okay. The notification is great. I think the — just the markers, the posts at the crossing is one thing, but it actually oughta state that at that level that your car may wash off, get people’s attention at that crossing. The only other thing is, and as Bob can attest to, most of the time it has been informal where we call people. Unfortunately, the time we had the most devastating one down on the east end of the County down at the camps, I was working that night, spent 72 hours pulling kids out of fences. But we call people, we called camps, they made the decision that they thought they could beat that ride, and then that no matter what we do and no matter what we install there’s going to be loss of life. It’s educating people.

COMMISSIONER REEVES: And I will say and, Sheriff, you can correct me if I’m off base on this, the camps have had a very good system of letting down river if there’s a rise, they’re phoning their competitors or colleagues down river and letting them know what happened. It’s informal as you said, but it’s been a very good system to let them know over time.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: Right. The camps and they do, they notify each other, we notify them, they notify — there’s a lot of informal things that really do work real well. It’s not totally those unless they try to get them out too quick in trying to beat it. Because this river can come up in a instant, we all know that with the drainage. But it will go down just as quick if they just hold tight with what they’ve got. But the whole key is just getting people that are traveling up here from somewhere —
COMMISSIONER REEVES: That’s my concern is ones that don’t live here.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: That’s everybody’s concern.
JUDGE POLLARD: So this is kind of an offer, or to see if it’s accepted by and also agreed to by UGRA and the City.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Correct.
JUDGE POLLARD: And if they don’t then where are we with this?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: If they don’t then we just forget the whole project.
JUDGE POLLARD: Just dead in the water.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Dead in the water, right. It’s dead in the water.
COMMISSIONER REEVES: Question —
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Or the pun for the Flood Warning System.
JUDGE POLLARD: Dead in the water.
After failing to secure a grant, they continued to kick the can down the road.
2021 rolls around and they have over 5 mil in ARPA funds in their bank and wind up with a grand total of over 10 mil.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 10/25/21 discussion of communication systems

COMMISSIONER LETZ: Well, I think that’s good. I just think that — you know, I’d like to get an idea of what the Sheriff’s radar systems are going to cost. I mean I just don’t want to send — go out and get public input on something and then us just not be able to follow up because we have a priority that’s different and we have additional information.
JUDGE KELLY: Well, but let me just explain. What all of these are intentioned to do is to initiate the education system. We need to get the Court educated. We need to get the public educated. Everybody knows that we have over $5 million sitting in our bank account that the Federal Government sent us for these ARPA funds. And they’re not really grants, they’re funds.

MRS. LAVENDER: And as the Judge said, there’s a huge category. There’s a bunch of things that you can spend the money or — or secure the money to spend. And when we use the term grant, grant is not really what this is. It’s just funding that’s been made available through this American Rescue Plan Act. It doesn’t require a match. It doesn’t require, you know, that kind of structure. But it does have strings attached. It’s not free money.

COMMISSIONER LETZ: And that’s my concern, Judge. My concern is that from my understanding what the — well, I won’t say LCRA because I know what their number is. The number from the Sheriff’s Department, the number from internal communications, we’re already over 5 million dollars, so I don’t want to go out to the public requesting — we have no money to do it.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well, at least we make the determination that that’s the first —
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right. But —
COMMISSIONER BELEW: Then it’s done. But we haven’t made that determination.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That’s why I think we need to get discuss that phase. We need to get those numbers — I mean, my opinion is law enforcement and the internal communications are the number one and two. I’m not sure which order. Probably law enforcement first. And — and I haven’t heard the rest of the Court say what their top two priorities are but —
COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, that’s mine. Because not only does it cover that, it — the Sheriff’s office, communications, getting it up to speed, and also the Volunteer Fire Departments and making sure that we can communicate with other counties. As we saw last winter, I mean, communications is one of our biggest weaknesses and there’s the Sheriff up. I’m sure he’ll back me up on that. Communications was a problem. Go ahead, Sheriff.
SHERIFF LEITHA: Yeah, I kind of agree with Jonathan, if you go that direction. Now, we had a meeting, did attend with LCRA, a very good meeting, just preliminary. Preliminary, I’m looking at $3 million for just me. That’s just us and — the Sheriff’s Office. That’s not including we have the constables, we have Animal Control, we have the fire department. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be checked into. Are we going to provide radios or not. But I can tell you, I mean, it kind of shocked me. But that was three million right off the bat. And — and that’s not even going into all the other agencies. Are we going to supply those radios, they’re very expensive, to all the fire departments or not. So this is something we really need to look into, if we want to go that direction with the new infrastructure. Also, visiting with the Chief on a daily basis, you know, that’s kind of the direction they’re going. I’ve requested to be on the same radio system they are. Only because the fire department dispatch is out of the County. But the radio system will be very expensive.

COMMISSIONER BELEW: And — but if we upgrade, we will also be able to communicate with the surrounding counties.
SHERIFF LEITHA: Yes. We will be. And it’s a very big project. You know, something that’s going to take some time. Very costly. And there’s a lot of questions, you know. We’re opening a can of worms, you know. We discussed we really need the volunteer fire department input. We’ve already gotten some kickback –I mean some — some — you know, and that’s why I didn’t open this can of worms. It’s going to be a long, drawn out process, you know, to do this. It can be done. But like I said, it’s very costly. Something I can say like Don asked me, I mean, in the long run in the five year we can save money. We pay over $300,000 a year in tower leases. So there is going to be some savings down the line, just to let you know.
And they still don’t update their flood warning system.

The people also didn’t want to spend any of the ARPA money because it was tied to the Biden administration. Even the Judge suggests just holding on to the money so that it can’t be sent to states that don’t share their same values. And now we have 10s of people who have died and many might have lived if the county had updated their flood warning system and installed flood sirens along the river like the multiple counties/towns around them did.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 11/08/21

Resident: Are you accountable to anyone for how you spend it? Or is it a, kind of, a reward and shows your support for this particular program? It’s not free money. Being present as we talk. How do we know this? Immediately. Unless you want it on the COVID lies and vaccination pressure, you have to send it back. Those are heavy strings. And those are strings. The deep state harangue and vilified President Trump for calling COVID for what it was and then suggest responses that were non-draconian, and then when Biden took office, the leftist government took its gloves off. It has lied and lied more about this COVID — about COVID.
The temptation is great, you’re accountable, and we would like to know where your allegiance is.
Resident 2: And I’m here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House. And Kerr County should not be accepting anything from these people. They’re currently facilitating an invasion of our border, and we’re going to support these people? So that’s what I have to say. Thank you.
Resident: I happen to know that there is no such thing as free money. It’s never government-funded; it’s tax-payer funded. So they’re taking our money and they’re putting strings attached to it and then they’re giving it back to us. And they’re going to get their foot in the door in this county. We don’t want their money. I feel like the people have spoken and I stand with the people. Thank you for your time.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: We have money in the bank, $5.1 million, that was sent to Kerr County.
JUDGE KELLY: We didn’t ask for it. They sent it.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: They sent it.
MS. DEWELL: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: The money is in the bank right now. Hasn’t been spent. In the event that you don’t spend it, you send it back. That’s part of the Treasury’s rules on it. If you do spend it, whatever percentage, there would be no expense to the taxpayers in Kerr County. It would all come out of that account, no matter what you do with it.
JUDGE KELLY: And GrantWorks has been very helpful in — in getting us focused on what colors between the lines and what doesn’t. As of last Thursday, when I got a call from Bonnie White telling me about this — the problem that y’all were going to present at the meeting, I went and got on the telephone to their Senior Vice President from GrantWorks. And there — there are discussions that they want to have with us and so we want to sit down and listen to them. And we want — we want you to hear them, too. Because you’re the public. But we — we need to know and get very comfortable with where we are with this grant before we start taking that money. And the claw back was the first thing. As far as where that money sits for the next year or two, my old law partner John Cornyn tells me that if we send it back it’s going to New Jersey or it’s going to New York or it’s going to —
MRS. LAVENDER: Or California.
JUDGE KELLY: — or California. And so I don’t know if I’d rather be the custodian of the money until we decide what we have to do with it rather than giving it back to the government to spend it on values that we in Kerr County don’t agree with. So —
COMMISSIONER BELEW: And any spending of it would have to be done in Commissioners’ Court so you’ll be able to see it and know it.
They eventually signed a 7.5 mil contract with Motorola in 2022 for a county emergency communications system. The system would provide 95% radio coverage to firefighters, EMS and law enforcement.
But hey at least the UGRA has had developing a flood warning system on their Strategic Plan doc since 2022 which they kept rolling to the next year plan.

UGRA Strategic Plan 2025

B-2. Work with local partners to develop Kerr County flood warning system
• In January 2017, UGRA partnered with Kerr County in a FEMA flood warning implementation grant request for $980,000. The project was not selected for funding and most of the funds went to communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
• In FY18 the USGS installed a high intensity precipitation gauge at the streamflow site on the Guadalupe in Hunt included in the agreement with UGRA.
• During the previous reporting period, a pre application for a county wide flood warning system was submitted to the Texas Water Development Board Flood Infrastructure Fund. The project was invited to submit a complete application, but UGRA declined due to the low (5%) match offered through the grant.
• UGRA participated in the update to the Kerr County Hazard Mitigation Action Plan which addresses hazards including flooding. The final plan was submitted to FEMA in April 2025.
• During this reporting period, UGRA requested bids for a flood warning dashboard that combines multiple sources of data into one tool. The project will also recommend future improvements to monitoring equipment related to flood warning. Information from this dashboard will be used by UGRA staff and local emergency coordinators and decision makers. A contractor for this project was selected in April 2025.

Breathtaking.

They didn’t want to be inconvenienced by alarms going off in the middle of the night.

They didn’t want to spend the money available because it came from Democratic administrations.

They willfully chose to put children in harm’s way because it was convenient and didn’t cost them local tax dollars, in a wealthy county in Texas.

They willfully chose to kill children by outright neglect to own the libs.

They can’t blame a lack of local funding when the county has been home to so many wealthy individuals:

Another retirement destination, Kerrville turns out to have a similar concentration of the comfortably well off, ranking second in Texas for millionaires per capita, with 1,244 among its 20,749 residents, or 6 percent.

Source: San Antonio Express-News

Kerrville is the county seat and likely where all the meeting minutes above were recorded.

And there is not a lick of DEI involved here as far as I can tell. When FEMA created and published flood maps including Kerr County, they hadn’t yet been under attack by DOGE and Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives. The maps clearly showed a risk the county commissioners didn’t want to address.

Kerr County’s demographics also make it highly unlikely any brown people were involved in critical decision making – according to the 2024 census the county is 92.9% white – but I’ll leave that to journalists to vet because it’s nauseating me on the face of it without additional digging.

Imagine public officials joking on the record in a public meeting that a flood alert system is “dead in the water.”

But sure, Charlie Kirk, attack Austin’s Black fire chief in Travis County, holding him to a higher level of responsibility than the nice, wealthy, nearly all white people in Kerr County who chose not to be inconvenienced. Blame the Black man and DEI for children’s deaths in Kerr County while that fire chief’s core duties are two counties away, responsible for fire and emergency response to over 1.3 million people in Austin.

Children’s deaths caused by nice white people who refused to protect the public because it was more important not to be inconvenienced by alarms, not to pay more local taxes, and not to take Democratic administrations’ funding to own the libs.

~ ~ ~

EDIT — 5:46 PM ET —

The Tennessee Holler @[email protected]
WATCH: “More could’ve been done.”

KERR COUNTY folks didn’t want to take money from “The Biden Regime” that could’ve been used for a flood warning system 👇🏽

Jul 11, 2025, 05:08 PM

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POS BFB in da’ House: Be Water, My Friend

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
― Ovid

“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
― James N. Watkins

I said empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water.
Now you put water into a cup it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow, or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.
― Bruce Lee

After passing in the Senate yesterday, the POS big fugly bill is back in the House for reconciliation where the Senate version is struggling to pull together adequate support for passage across the GOP caucus.

The Freedom Caucus in particular is unhappy with the $3.3 trillion increase to the deficit over the next decade this POS legislation represents.

Trump and J.D. Vance have been calling all the intransigent GOP members trying to coerce their support for the bill, threatening them with primaries.

No word whether Elon Musk and/or his America PAC have been making similar calls offering campaign contributions in exchange for their NO votes.

The situation is fluid. It could change rapidly.

You, too, need to be fluid and make like water. Be persistent. Keep calling your representative and let them know you want them to vote NO on this wretched bill.

Remind them, too, they are part of a co-equal branch of government and should not cow to another branch ― especially a branch which is supposed to “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” not order other branches around.

Call the Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.org.

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The Sound of Teeth on Bone: Leopard Eating Leopards [UPDATE]

[NB: check the byline, thanks. Update at bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

You knew eventually there would be intraparty autophagy given the conflict that emerged between Trump and his DOGE leader.

The leopard that bought a social media platform to ensure Trump and his party were elected is ready to gnaw on their faces. They were uncritical of Musk’s use of his Nazi bar X to aid their party, wholly accepting the wretchedness published alongside right-wing propaganda bolstering their position.

Now they’re going to have to face the fact the richest man in the world — the one person who could buy the lot of them with the change he can earn in a single day — is utterly enraged with them all.

I can’t blame him for feeling this way, either. I can’t stand Musk but I can understand his point of view.

Imagine burning up hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, of personal capital by personally taking on Trump’s Project 2025 government elimination measures as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Tesla Takedown movement was in no small part a response to Musk slashing away at government without restraint.

Then the party he supported with his $44 billion dollar acquisition of Twitter completely trashed that sacrifice by increasing the budget deficit while trying to hide the $3.3 trillion increase from the public, extending the debt ceiling to pay for their bullshit including the massive expansion of ICE.

Gnaw away, Musk. You bought it, you broke it, you own it. Bon appetit!

The last time Musk threatened to launch a new political party in opposition to the GOP, Trump got pissy and made a counterthreat.

This time I would watch for more than an exchange of words. Tells about Musk’s seriousness would include:

• Establishment of one or more national PACs to fund the new party;
• Establishment of one or more state and/or national PACs to run campaigns against incumbent GOP congress members;
• Co-option of existing libertarian/GOP/conservative PACs for the same (think Russia’s dark money co-option of the National Rifle Association from 2012-2016);
• Creation of an umbrella organization and subset entities across all 50 states and the territories launching the new party presence;
• Recruitment of candidates who are willing to run under the new party banner.

Meanwhile, Musk could continue to use the dead bird app to support his efforts, this time against the GOP. It worked to get them elected, it could work against them as well. Not a lot of additional investment required, especially since Trump’s big fugly bill is so damned unpopular making weaponization of the bill against the GOP a piece of cake.

Musk was worth $363 billion dollars today, even after losing $4.38 billion since Friday. That’s $100 billion more than the next richest man, Jeff Bezos. This is the kind of money which can buy small nations — it’s already bought an American general election. A single good day’s gain in the stock market could easily yield more cash for campaign contributions than the contributions made in 2024:

Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Over 65% of that money, about $5.6 billion, came from political action committees (PACs).

(source: USA Facts)

The danger to the left should Musk make good his threat: a new political party aiming at taking out the GOP in thrall to their mob boss Trump may peel away some part of the Democratic Party.

Could be centrists (including the not-well-closeted racists, misogynists, and bigots) who feel threatened by the inclusiveness of those left of them.

Could be the gerontocracy within the Democratic Party who feel their death grip on power and relevance weakening.

Could be the horseshoe left which shares fewer ideals with progressives and centrists than the far right.

Whatever the case, the Democratic Party needs to stay clear of the leopards as they claw at each other; they need to offer a strong, clear vision of the future while working on the vulnerable states and districts.

North Carolina, for example, is now in play given Sen. Thom Tillis’s principled stance on the big fugly bill, choosing not to run for re-election instead of kowtowing to the GOP’s mob boss.

Let the leopards gnaw on each other. Stay clear, get busy.

~ ~ ~

Action Items:

• Check out Indivisible’s Stop The Cuts page, especially the Take Action Now section near the bottom of the page.

• Weak on federal budget terminology? See the federal budget glossary at National Priorities Project.

• Or simply keep up the pressure and contact your senators to tell them to vote NO on H.R. 1 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, recruit others to do the same. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE — 8:30 AM ET —

Far more predictable than the weather. Somebody’s Depends are twisted about Musk’s threat.

Trump threatens to re-examine government support for Elon Musk’s companies as mogul trashes megabill
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-threatens-re-examine-government-support-elon-musks-companies-tra-rcna216156

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threatened to sic the Department of Government Efficiency on Elon Musk’s businesses, saying in a Truth Social post shortly after midnight that there was “big money to be saved.”

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump said in the post. “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” the president added.

A spokesperson for the Musk-backed America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the hours after Trump’s post, Musk reposted several graphics on X depicting a climbing national debt, which currently sits at more than $36 trillion, according to government data.

Emphasis mine. I am thinking of the aphorism, “I never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” antique in the digital age.

Musk can spill a lot more bits and pixels using X than Trump can with his personal social media platform.

Still amazing even after all of Trump’s previous tantrums that he believes it’s acceptable to weaponize government against an individual exercising their First Amendment rights, to benefit his personal and partisan agenda. Is this an official act? Debatable.

Whatever the case I’m buying popcorn futures this morning ahead of Round 3.

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Graphic: Quino Al via Unsplash (mod by Rayne)

Making America Gross Again: Big Fugly Bill Hits the Senate Floor [UPDATE]

[NB: check the byline, thanks. Updates will be added at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

Trump’s big ugly bill will be up for a vote in the Senate this morning.

It takes money from hungry children and gives it to the already rich as Marcy has previously said, and the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities has quantified.

But this bill is a mortal menace to many Americans because of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.

ER doctor McNadoMD spelled out the revolting death threats this bill poses:


EMTALA: Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986. They want to ditch 39-year-old legislation which assures Americans obtain

— a medical screening examination (MSE);
— are stabilized with an emergency medical condition;
— are transferred or accepted as a patient as appropriate and needed.

What are we left with if the GOP Senate knocks off EMTALA?

We already lost so many health care professionals because of COVID and have yet to replace them. COVID also cost this nation hospitals, thanks in no small part to right-wing refuseniks who rejected vaccines and masks. Rural hospitals were at risk of closure before COVID; 19 were closed in 2019. A net 50 rural hospitals were closed between 2017 and 2023.

We simply don’t have enough health care professionals or hospitals BEFORE the damage this bill’s cuts could wreak.

My 94-year-old father-in-law, a veteran, died last August. He ended up in the ER more than three times inside his last 18 months because his nursing home couldn’t handle his needs — basically a soft form of eviction until he was stabilized and returned to the home. This happened in a small town where the resources for his care were limited. If the local hospital closed, he’d have simply been evicted and died.

But I suspect the GOP doesn’t give a shit about lifelong GOP voters once they’re as elderly as my FIL was, without the kind of money to burn on political donations. They certainly don’t care about veterans. The GOP congressional caucus has become the death panels they warned us about.

And who pays for the unpaid ER visits — before the hospital goes bankrupt? We who have private insurance do, through increases to our premiums as hospitals increase overall charges to absorb the losses. This is an invisible tax on us, where Medicaid is fully visible.

In other words this is a definite death sentence for a group of Americans and legal residents who have kidney failure.


I don’t have words for this, but this is reality.

This is a real massacre being staged in the Senate, Kellyanne.

Across America especially in smaller cities and towns, Americans are going to face increasing poverty, illness, and death if this big fugly bill passes.

~ ~ ~

I need to get this post up so that you can see the problem and start working the phones and emails. I’ll continue to add to this post for a bit because you need to read what this ER doctor says about the bill’s likely impact if it passes.

Contact your senators and tell them this bill, H.R. 1 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is simply not acceptable. Contact your family and friends, explain quickly how bad this bill is and tell them to contact their senators, too.

Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.

Call even if your senator(s) are Democrats or Independents, because they need to know how you feel, they need to know backsliding isn’t acceptable. Don’t trust they will do the right thing without hearing from you (I’m looking at Pennsylvanians especially given Sen. Fetterman’s increasing unreliability).

~ ~ ~

UPDATE — 2:09 PM ET 01-JUL-2025 —

The POS BFB passed with JD Vance casting the tie breaking vote.

Via Associated Press:

Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.

Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top. The three Republicans opposing the bill were Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The GOP owns this POS. It’s on them, they have committed to hurting this country.

Furthermore, they have completely abandoned any pretense of being the party of fiscal responsibility having voted to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

** Do not let this lead you to despair. Let it anger you, and let that righteous anger motivate you to action.**

Continue to call your members of Congress — excoriate them if they voted for this POS BFB, thank them for rejecting it if they didn’t.

Find out when your members of Congress will be home over this break and whether they are having in-district sessions. Be there in person to communicate with them.

Our next major concerns should be how to care for others who will be directly damaged by this GOP bullshit, and how to protect the elections ahead.

Take the holiday break to rest up and ready yourself for the next phase.

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Sunday Night WTF: Tankers with a Tantrum

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Journalists need to validate this information and ask Whiskey Pete Hegseth WTAF is going on that so many tanker aircraft were deployed flying due east of the U.S. on a Sunday night.

 

Note the timing of each post with newer at the top and older at the bottom; the top two were obtained via Threadreader (time not available but assumed to be later than 21:02 ET), the others via Xitter. There may have been newer posts on Xitter but the platform wouldn’t let me dig any deeper without logging in and that’s not an option for me.

The number of tankers dispatched in the same direction on a Sunday night is quite odd given 40,000 active duty personnel deployed at multiple bases in the Middle East and at least two naval destroyers in the vicinity. The vessels are part of an increasing naval presence in the region over the last several months.

Now note the tantrum Trump had this evening on Truth Social – or a tantrum-like statement mimicking Trump’s habits – in which Trump appears to order stepped up ICE raids in blue cities and states, using DHS as a political weapon. (Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, is this your work?)

Note especially the timing of the tantrum.

What a coincidence that one hour after this tantrum on Trump’s blog there are more than 20 military tanker aircraft in the air. It’s almost as if somebody wants their opposition to be too preoccupied to notice there has been no Authorization for Use Military Force or Declaration of War approved by Congress let alone an attack on the US meriting such authorization/declaration.

You might want to contact your members of Congress about this and ask them WTF.

You might also ask them whether they would consider impeachment and conviction for abuse of office in the form of politicization of an entire cabinet-level function.

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This Is Your Social Safety Net on DOGE

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Elon Musk has repeatedly said government functions should be privatized.

You already know how that works out for the U.S., because it’s one of the biggest single differences between the cost of living in other first world countries and the U.S.

It’s also one of the biggest differences in life expectancy between other first world countries and the U.S.

Healthcare in the EU, for example, costs much less than it does in the U.S., and outcomes measured in life expectancy are far better.

But healthcare in the EU is not fully privatized; though not identical across all EU members, it’s based on universal access and publicly subsidized.

Ditto for Canada and Greenland, the countries Trump wants to seize. Better that they seize us and bring their healthcare systems with them.

But this month has also demonstrated the risk of taking Elon Musk seriously when it comes to privatization.

Imagine this is our social security system:

Screenshot of the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq composite indexes mid-day Friday, April 11, 2025 via Google Finance.
 

Who’s not going to get their checks if the bottom drops out even further? Why should Americans who’ve paid into Social Security over a lifetime of work have to worry about additional risk to their futures because unelected and unconstitutionally appointed Musk believes exposure to the market is what Americans need?

It’s bad enough that Americans’ cost of daily living expenses is further exposed to market risks because of Trump’s misbegotten, ill-considered tariffs. Musk believes Americans’ retirement years should be even more deeply risky.

It makes zero sense to listen to a man who has no empathy for others’ concerns, who has no experience dealing with a limited income and trying to make ends meet. He doesn’t have adequate background let alone personal history to make such judgments about what will work best for the American people; he doesn’t even view his children’s health as personal obligations (ex. recent public pleas by two of his children’s mothers for assistance with healthcare matters).

~ ~ ~

What really takes the cake is the silence of the business world.

Of course the financial industry is silently slavering over the chance to get their grubby mitts on our Social Security, and they’re staying quiet about it because they know they dare not set off the American public.

But Jeff Bezos’ Amazon-derived fortune was made in no small part off the subsidy that the U.S. Postal Service has been to American business.

USPS is the fallback for shipping nearly anything nearly anywhere in the U.S.; Bezos didn’t have to worry about whether his books would sell in North Utter Remote, Outer Territory USA. There was a post office nearby where purchasers could pick up their orders if they couldn’t be delivered to their door by USPS carriers on foot.

Bezos didn’t have to negotiate that. Didn’t have to buy sorter equipment, trucks, hire and train personnel, build sorting facilities, so on. All of that was on our dime when it wasn’t paid for by postage, until Amazon was successful enough to consider reducing shipping and handling costs further with their own trucks.

Furthermore, Bezos knew what the competitive rate for shipping a majority of Amazon’s products would be based on USPS rates – rates set by USPS bidding out trucking and equipment purchases. When Amazon started buying its own trucks, Amazon knew its costs had to be no more than USPS’ costs to deliver.

In short, our tax dollars and our volume of postage helped underwrite Jeff Bezos’ billions.

And he’s just going to sit there smug and mum, enjoying his irrational wealth while Musk shoots off his mouth about privatizing government.

Because Bezos will probably ensure the next billions he makes off our backs is from Amazon Postal Service.

Can’t begin to imagine how much our health care will cost once Amazon has the contract both for postal delivery of medications and health care insurance.

You can only imagine when Musk takes his chainsaw to Amtrak what will happen next: he’ll claim only his vaporware Hyperloop is the alternative, and American people should pay him billions to implement it instead of a long-proven passenger rail system.

Privatization will not yield better outcomes for the American people and you already know that. Don’t wait until Musk uses DOGE to shut off funds to the USPS; he’s already targeted USPS personnel. Contact your representative and senators and insist that government should NOT be privatized.

Not our Social Security, not our mail delivery, not a single government service which could end up becoming a pricey-to-us privatized profit center for billionaires.

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Somebody’s Off Their (Shower)Head [UPDATE]

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

** 8:30 PM ET — UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST. **

While the market and Americans’ college funds, 401Ks, and retirement accounts whipsawed today after their multi-day plummet, somebody had other priorities.

I don’t know at what time this was published by the White House, but this has Trump’s tiny grip all over it.

He’s obsessed with water pressure, confusing it with showerhead function; he’s been obsessed for years with this.

December 27, 2019 – Trump Vs. Toilets (And Showers, Dishwashers And Lightbulbs)

July 23, 2020 – With 137,000 U.S. Deaths, Trump Stays Focused on Shower Heads

August 13, 2020 – ‘My hair has to be perfect’: Trump prompts change in showerhead rule – video

August 21, 2020 – Trump talks shower heads, sharks, and more on DNC’s last day

December 17, 2020 – Trump Bemoaned Water Pressure. Now His Administration Has Eased Standards

August 6, 2023 – ‘I Want Water To Pour Down On Me’: Trump Has Cold Words For Showers At GOP Dinner

January 7, 2025 – Making Sense of Trump’s January 2025 Remarks About Showerheads and Rain Falling from Heaven

I’m sure if I dig harder I can find more instances where Trump whined about water pressure in the shower but you get the gist.

And like 2020 when Americans were dying by the thousands each week from COVID and Trump complained about showerheads, Trump once again leaned into his personal bête noire while Americans became increasingly panicked about their financial well being and the state of the nation’s economy under Trump’s tariff-tax.

It’s ridiculous that our country has allowed one exceedingly vain man spend so much of our tax dollars on something which will not result in the blast of water he wants for his “perfect” hair.

Musk and his Muskrats are taking a chainsaw to our entire government, creating enormous risks in the misbegotten effort to increase efficiency and cut government spending — and Trump pisses away any efficiencies with his obsessive, unnecessary change to water and energy saving regulations affecting showerheads.

When the next Articles of Impeachment are drafted, there should be an article for abuse of power for personal use with Trump’s fucking obsession with showerheads as an example. Especially since it’s a form of lawmaking by the executive branch to the detriment of the American public.

~ ~ ~

While Trump was dicking around with his bête noire, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing. Many of you have already read or heard about Rep. Steven Horsford’s (D, NV-02) questions to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer about the dramatic change in the Trump administration’s approach to tariffs — a change which was announced over social media by Trump while Greer was in front of the committee, without apparent advance notice to Greer.

As Horsford noted, the Republicans on the committee weren’t in attendance. It’d be nice to know if those weasels left because they didn’t want to be on the spot on camera during the hearing, or if they were daytrading to capitalize on the announcement.

What isn’t being discussed is that the Senate had a similar hearing the day before during which Greer also testified about the tariffs. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) didn’t sound too happy with the Trump tariff-tax strategy, asking, “Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong?”

Greer does a weaselly tap dance in response.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto also grilled Greer more pointedly about the Trump tariff-tax upending the trade agreements including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) the Trump administration spent two years working on during Trump’s first term.

She asked, “Why would any country want to do business with us, much less negotiate a trade deal if we don’t even honor our ongoing our ongoing agreements?”

Greer did his weaselly tap dance again and she called him out on this because she and Greer had had a one-on-one discussion in her office about trade matters and the USMCA including a blanket tariff strategy.

It’s hard not to watch these video segments from two days of hearings and not come away thinking Greer’s job has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with providing a punching bag between the Trump tariff-tax and our elected representatives.

He does little in these excerpts to make one feel any better about the Trump tariff-tax, mostly because Trump himself appears to ignore Greer, doing anything he wants on a whim to screw with trade and the entire global market without accountability.

Not to mention dicking around with showerheads.

One might wonder when the GOP members of Congress will organize and get a collective spine and consider impeaching and convicting a president who thinks government is just his personal chew toy, treating Congress like they’re irrelevant.

How many angry constituents will it take before they catch a clue? Are they really more afraid of a guy obsessed with showerheads than their own voters?

~ ~ ~

Speaking of angry constituents, please recruit others to help combat H.R. 22, the voter suppression bill Republicans call the SAVE Act. Contact every person you know and ask them to contact their representatives and ask them to vote down this bill.

See: https://indivisible.org/campaign/trumps-new-executive-order-eo-silence-americans-what-you-need-know

As our team member Peterr wrote in comments yesterday,

While it is critical to call your GOP representatives to let them know how much you are opposed to this un-American bill, it is at least as important to call your Democratic reps to tell them to stand up to this, and thank them for doing so.

As a pastor, I am quite familiar with getting phone calls from folks who dislike something I believe needs to be done. Getting the “thank you” calls makes it a lot easier to do what I believe needs to be done. This is how you help Dems grow a stronger spine.

Call your representative no matter their party affiliation. This is too important, leave no stone unturned. When you’re done, call your senators and ask them not to support the SAVE Act just as you did your representative.

If you’re a member of a women’s group, recruit them all because women are the largest single bloc likely to be disenfranchised by this bill.

Don’t wait, make this a priority because a vote could happen as early as today.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE – 8:30 PM ET —

H.R. 22 passed the House nearly along party lines, 220-208.

Four Democrats voted along with the GOP to disenfranchise a substantive portion of their own constituents let alone their own voters. Apparently they don’t care if they ever win election again.

Indivisible emailed an update; if you’re on their mailing list you may also have been told how your representative voted. Of course those of you who are represented by these four Democrats have been betrayed:

Ed Case (HI-01)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03)
Jared Golden (ME-02)

Our next step is to contact your senators and ask them to vote down the SAVE Act.

The Senate only is in session tomorrow (H.R. 22 was one of the last pieces of business on which the House GOP scheduled a vote before fleeing Washington DC). Congress will be on holiday break and in a state work session from April 12 through April 27.

Contact your senators’ closest local office and find out if they are having town halls or will be at other events where you can ask them in person to vote against the SAVE Act.

VoteVets has also sent out an email about the damage this bill poses to the rights of military personnel:

Trump and Elon’s agenda is overwhelmingly unpopular. We’ve got the GOP on their heels.

And now — like clockwork — Republicans are desperate to make it harder for people to vote.

Republicans in the House passed the SAVE Act today, under the guise of election security. It’s a blatant effort to make it harder for people to register to vote and cast their ballot. And if it becomes law, it’s going to impact Veterans, Military Families, and Active Duty.

SAVE would require all voters, including Military voters, to present very specific proof of US citizenship — either a passport or a birth certificate — in person at a government office in the United States to register or update their voter registration. Military IDs and service records are not enough proof to register. It would ban automatic, online, and mail in registration.

How might all of that impact Troops deployed overseas, their spouses, or disabled Veterans who can’t get to an office? It could effectively ban them from registering.

This bill is terrible. It’s an effort to suppress Military votes. If it passes the Senate, it’s going to undermine our elections. And today, we need you to speak out against it.

I hope VoteVets has a chat with veteran Jared Golden over his betrayal of veterans, military families, and active duty service members.

There’s one more important reason this bill needs to be defeated, besides the fact it will disenfranchise a massive number of American voters.

We voters can’t save Republicans from themselves and their leader if we can’t vote. Some of the GOP senators *know* everything is going to hell in a handbasket. They own it if there isn’t a brake applied. This is one of those brakes — they can vote to preserve their constituents’ right to vote by voting against the SAVE Act.

If you can’t find your senators’ local office numbers, you can always contact them through the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or use Resist.bot to contact them.

Don’t sit this one out, it’s far too big, far too important. It’s especially important to contact these Democratic senators if you live in their states because their track record isn’t good based on their previous votes related to immigration:

Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)
John Fetterman (PA)
Ruben Gallego (AZ)
Maggie Hassan (NH)
Mark Kelly (AZ)
John Ossoff (GA)
Gary Peters (MI)
Jacky Rosen (NV)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Elissa Slotkin (MI)
Mark Warner (VA)
Raphael Warnock (GA)

I’m embarrassed to say two of them are my senators. I will be contacting them, though. I can’t afford not to. And I will recruit others to do so, too.

Get them on the record as soon as you can, too. Where do they stand? Let’s keep track.

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Stupid or Evil? It’s Definitely Not Liberation

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I don’t have the words for Donald Trump’s liberation-by-massive-tax-increase yesterday. I’ll let an academic handle it:

The one problem with France 24’s video above is that it repeats Trump’s bullshit, even though it offers a rebuttal to the tariffs themselves.

The “economically illiterate” bullshit it repeated was the percentage Trump claimed other countries assessed the US. The numbers are skewed.

One potential source for the inaccuracy: AI. Krishnan Rohit queried several AI platforms and received a freakishly uniform response which may explain Trump’s numbers.

The rest of the thread can be found here.

Somebody with more smarts about large language models (LLMs) and AI will have to validate this, but it sure looks fishy. Given Team Trump’s predilection for appointing/hiring individuals based on ideology and affinity with Trump, it’s not impossible AI was relied on during the tariff formulation and rollout process, versus the expertise and experience of qualified individuals.

Whatever the case, Trump just rolled out a massive tax increase on the American public. Oddly, CNN conveyed this succinctly in spite of its bent toward pro-Trump rhetoric:

Note the rollout using one of the stupidest Trump appointees across either of Trump’s terms — Peter Navarro. He’d parrot bullshit all day if a mic is shoved in his face.

Also note the phrase “repeated belief,” not a fact but a belief. Team Trump expects the public take what they are saying on faith and not on the basis of past experience.

And then the outright lies CNN’s Chris Isidore points out in that bit emphasized with a red underline: tariffs are NOT paid abroad but here in the US by the importer. The tariffs are added to the cost of goods sold, thereby increasing the likelihood prices to consumers will be higher very soon.

Another academic explains how tariffs — taxes on buyers of imported goods work. See Richard Wolff’s explanation at 5:17 to 6:20 in this video:

Tariffs on imported goods = taxes on us.

You like coffee and tea? It’s going to be more expensive, especially since we don’t grow tea here and our coffee industry is minuscule, consisting of Kona coffee beans. Even fabric for clothing made in the US will be more expensive because we don’t have a fabric industry here in the US any longer at any serious scale; it would take years to re-establish manufacturing here.

Re-establishing industries to replace products now so much more expensive will be challenging given the cost of materials and the competition for labor both to build facilities and staff them after completion.

It’ll take much longer than the 10 years over which this massive tax increase is supposed to generate $6 trillion dollars in revenue — that’s about $1800 per American citizen, $150 more a month.

This country has made this same stupid choice before, so stupid it became part of a movie’s economics teacher’s schtick:

What does uber conservative Ben Stein think about this iteration of voodoo economics rising from the grave, wearing orange foundation and a straw-like hairdo, stomping about as if credibly alive? What does he think about Trump kicking off an unnecessary recession and possibly a depression with his irrational import duties?

This entire mess represents two facets of Trump his base haven’t accepted or ignored. He’s the kind of guy who likes to destroy stuff but can’t successfully build a better version afterward, as if he’s permanently stuck in the demolition phase of construction.

He’s also a plain old fashioned mafioso. All of this is a form of shakedown, borne by the American public as well as global trading partners. You know he’d lift tariffs on any country that offered him vigorish of some form. Quid pro quos are his thing.

He’s a made man — which may explain why tiny islands with US bases on them being assessed tariffs, but Russia isn’t.

Are we really supposed to believe that because trade with Russia is so low that Russia should escape tariffs altogether, while our most valuable trade partners haven’t?

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Reaching Velocity to Escape Anti-Vax Stupidity

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Before I go any further, here’s a public service announcement:

If you were born between 1960 and 1968 and have not been vaccinated for measles since 1968, go make appointments for a two-shot MMR vaccine regimen.

“Starting in 1963 we started vaccinating,” [CBS News’ Dr. David] Agus said. “The first five years of the vaccine — some batches of it were not very good. None of us really know which batch we got.”

“So you can either go to your doctor and say, ‘Draw a blood test and see if I have a high enough level,’ or just get the shot,” he said. “By the way, it’s a lot cheaper to just get the shot. So people who were vaccinated from 1963 to 1968 — that needs to happen.”

According to Agus, those who were born before 1957 were most likely exposed to measles, meaning 95-98 percent of them have enough antibodies to fight the disease. From 1968 to 1989 doctors gave only one shot, meaning immunity among those people may be a little lower than those who received two shots.

source: CBS News

I’m in that group and I’ve gotten my first shot of the series with the next in a couple weeks. I got mine at the local health department office, easy in and out. If you’re in the age bracket, get it done some place you trust.

~ ~ ~

I wish I could have gotten one at my usual provider – the pharmacy where I’ve gotten all my vaccinations for decades. Unfortunately that’s where things got weird immediately after my recent flu shot.

After getting my flu shot I asked the pharmacist – a new person I’d never see before – if I could get an MMR vaccine because of my age and uncertainty about my level of immunity to measles, if any. I had concerns because I was going to be around persons who were flying to and from Texas and could be exposed to measles during travel.

They told me the pharmacy only gives MMR vaccines to children, that I’d have to have a script from a physician to get one, and a physician might require a titer run first to determine if I needed a booster at all.

Then the pharmacist proceeded to tell me measles was only an Old World problem (what the fuck, I thought), that everyone in the Old World had immunity from exposures (what the actual fuck), and that the outbreak in Texas was from “border crossers” (OH NO MOTHERFUCKER).

I exited that pharmacy as fast as I could. I probably left a vapor trail behind me like the Road Runner.

I felt gross, digusted, like I needed a shower after that wretched dose of stupid.

I wish I’d known what that person really thought before I let them touch me, because I would have left and gone to a different pharmacy.

Having such a close brush with stupidity and racism was revolting. I didn’t dare confront this person in a confined space about their stupid assumptions knowing the measles outbreak was centered in a community of white Christian Texans of the Mennonite faith and not “border crossers” — code for those brown people coming into the US from Central and South America, which is the New World.

You’d think there’d be an institutional safety net protecting us from this wretchedness across the country. Sadly, we’re all of us now exposed to this kind of stupidity thanks to the Trump administration’s appointee helming Health and Human Services, our new chief anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

~ ~ ~

The Food and Drug Administration’s director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr. Peter Marks, resigned yesterday.

In his letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, Marks said he was “willing to work” to address the concerns expressed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the safety of vaccinations. But he concluded that wasn’t possible.

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” he wrote.

Of course this was RFK Jr’s work, not a resignation but a firing because Marks — a hematologist oncologist who earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University, followed by a Doctor of Medicine and PhD in cell and molecular biology from New York University — wasn’t willing to roll over and rubber stamp RFK Jr’s bullshit anti-vax nonsense.

And by nonsense I mean the deadly kind – misinformation and disinformation about vaccines directly leading to the deaths of 83 Samoans from measles after being misled by RFK Jr. about measles vaccinations.

That RFK Jr. learned absolutely nothing from these deaths, continuing to spread his well-known, well-documented dispersion of anti-vaxx bullshit, is a shame.

That he has now cost our country the top official in FDA’s vaccine regulatory system while the US is experiencing a spreading measles outbreak, is on the verge of bird flu making a human-to-human leap, and still dealing with the COVID pandemic borders on criminal.

His nonsense is even more toxic in that he not only discourages scheduled vaccinations; RFK Jr. has promoted alternative therapies which are not effective and instead create more health risks.

RFK Jr. – who is not a medical doctor, has no education in science, having a BA in American history and literature, a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a Master of Laws from Pace University — touted vitamin A as a means to treat measles. This vitamin only works to alleviate some measles symptoms in patients who are malnourished; it is not an acceptable therapy.

Unlike water soluable vitamins like B and C which flush out of the body as wasted in urine, vitamin A will bio-accumulate in the body’s fat until the body can use it. An excess of vitamin A can damage the liver. Knowing this you can predict what could happen next: someone takes RFK Jr’s bullshit seriously and poisons themselves or their children thinking they’re doing the right thing for measles.

What do you know but now there are patients with liver problems:

Several patients at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock have been found to have abnormal liver function, CNN reported, which can occur when a person takes excessive doses of vitamin A. Those being treated include “a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage,” the New York Times reported.

This is exactly the kind of crap which cost the lives of mostly infants in Samoa. Well-meaning parents took RFK Jr’s idiocy seriously and didn’t seek measles vaccinations which are safe and have spared hundreds of millions of people from illness and death over the last six decades.

The worst part of this mess is that some portion of the American public is just plain stupid and willful. They rely on authority figures to tell them what’s best; if it doesn’t conflict with their beliefs they’ll seize it. The parents of the six-year-old who died of measles in Texas are a perfect example:

The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.

“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.” …

“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said in English, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination children typically receive before attending school. She said her stance on vaccination has not changed after her daughter’s death.

“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of her other four surviving children who were treated with castor oil and inhaled steroids and recovered. …

source: Texas Tribune

I’m only surprised these poor children received castor oil and not cod liver oil for vitamin A therapy.

These are the kind of people to whom RFK Jr. is a real risk. We can only expect more illnesses and deaths among those who take seriously RFK Jr’s practicing medicine without a license let alone adequate appropriate education and training.

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How are we going to escape this stupidity? I don’t know, but you can protect yourself from some of the damage by making sure your vaccinations are up to date. Make sure your friends and family are up to date as well.

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