Flying Spaghetti Monster = Trump’s Effort to Evade Epstein Files Scandal

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

For more than a week I have been watching Google Trends as Trump flings more and more spaghetti at the wall to find something that sticks.

Something with enough adhesion and coverage to hide his failure to produce the Epstein files, a kind of flying spaghetti monster more real than the snarky faux deity — sticky strands like the flip-floppery on tariffs, the unwarranted and unlawful occupation of Washington DC by National Guard, the embarrassing meeting with Putin on US soil.

US media has been helping Trump by allowing itself to be sucked into the noodly vortex with outrage du jour.

Yes, there’s a lot of outrage, and US media has failed to cover it in a way that conveys the depth of outrage. But they also allowed themselves to be led wholly off course by a convicted felon who is a serial liar and a serial business failure.

The one thing Trump has been consistently successful at in his lifetime: leading the media away from his failures.

Australia’s 60 Minutes did what CBS’ 60 Minutes in the US wouldn’t do. It stayed on course and covered the Epstein files scandal with this video aired August 17.

Meanwhile, Google Trends reflects Trump’s success steering US media and their consumers away from the gaping black hole that is the Epstein files Trump promised his base.

Google Trends, August 11, 2025 – search terms Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, tariffs, Russia

Google Trends, August 19, 2025 – search terms Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, tariffs, Russia

We cannot accept a Manchurian candidate run by Putin. We cannot accept the occupation of our cities at the Manchurian candidate’s orders.

But we absolutely cannot allow this Manchurian candidate to continue to throw tons of pasta to obscure his role in a human trafficking conspiracy.

Yes, his role, because he’s actively hiding the files by way of his proxies at DOJ, while allowing Ghislaine Maxwell privileges she should not have in the form of better detention conditions not permitted to sex offenders.

The conspiracy continues even after Jeffrey Epstein’s death; the victims are no closer to getting explanations about the human trafficking network in which Epstein and Maxwell operated, and the public including Trump’s base have been denied the files Trump promised as part of his campaign.

Press your members of Congress to get the files released. Press media outlets to stop being part of the conspiracy by inaction and to stay on the Epstein files. Don’t get buried under the flying spaghetti. Don’t let up.

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The Republican Hundred Year War On Democracy

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Our democracy is under attack, in a war planned and carried out by generations of filthy rich tight-wingers working primarily through the Republican Party. The war has come into the open under Trump, funded by the latest group of hideously rich dirtbags, the tech bros, and justified by a cadre of anti-intellectual grifters and yakkers like Curtis Yarvin.

We need to see the battlefield. Only then can we decide on how to act. As Marcy pointed out here, our role is explicitly political, as befits people who believe in democracy to our core.

The Battlefield

Introduction

The filthy rich have always held more power in this country than their numbers would support in a functioning democracy. Their control was somewhat restricted during the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th C., but SCOTUS did it’s best to beat back progressive laws. The political power of the filthy rich was sharply decreased during the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said this out loud in a 1936 speech in Madison Square Garden:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

The filthy rich hated FDR, and have spent nearly 100 years trying to destroy his legacy and our way of life. Generations of oligarchs arise over time in different sectors of the economy, and the wealth they control has increased steadily since then. But regardless of background, a significant number have a attacked every institution we have relied on as part of our heritage.

At the same time they have ruthlessly pursued their own interests without regard to the national interest.We know some names, like H.L. Hunt and other Texas Oilmen, and the Koch Brothers, and groups like the John Birch Society. We generally know about other threats, like the Christian Dominionists and White Nationalists.

The Republicans took over congress in 1946. One of their first acts was to pass the Taft-Hartley Act which was intended to undercut the power of organized labor. They continued a long tradition of\ anti-communism and anti-socialism. The Democrats responded by kicking out the Communists, many of whom were active in unions, and with the Civil Rights movement. The Democratic Party tradition of punching left has deep roots.

Trump and his henchmen are the culmination of this campaign. They are openly engaged in a war on every institution that wields power in our society and in or through our government. The success of a decades-long assault reveals the effect of that long-term guerrilla war by the Republicans.

Congress

Republican congressionals are weaklings. This has been a fixture of that party since the mid-90s. Newt Gingrich preached lock-step Republican voting, and Denny Hastert created the Hastert Rule, under which no legislation gets to the floor unless it can pass with only Republican votes.

Mitch McConnell made it his job to make sure that Obama couldn’t pass any legislation. He whipped Republican Senators so viciously they did his bidding. In his first term Trump violently assaulted Republicans who defied his orders. The party internalized fear so completely that it attacked its own members who voted to impeach Trump.

Now Trump simply ignores laws he doesn’t like, including spending laws, and arrests Democratic lawmakers on groundless charges.

The Administrative State

Under FDR, Congress began to empower agencies to carry out specific tasks necessary for a modern government. This gave rise to the administrative state. Republicans hate it. Ever since its inception, they and corporate Democrats have worked to hamstring  agencies.

Conservative legal academics expanded the use of originalism, and created a bullshit  originalist rationale explaining why our 250 year old Constitution doesn’t allow any significant power to agencies. This resulted in SCOTUS decisions on purely partisan grounds over the last few decades that protect the filthy rich and harm normal people. The number of delay and choke points is so great that our nation is drenched in chemicals known to be toxic, and thousands of others whose toxicity, especially in combinations, is unknown.

Trump attacked the entire structure with his firings, closures, and illegal withholding of funds. District Courts tried to stop it, but the SCOTUS anti-democracy majority has dithered or rejected their decisions. Republicans refuse to push back, even to support cancer research, surely a non-partisan issue.

Trump put incompetent people in charge of all agencies and departments. They were confirmed by the Senate, often with (unnecessary) Democratic support. RFK, Jr? Whiskey Pete Hegseth? Linda McMahon? Republicans allowed Elon Musk and a small flock of ignorant coders to terminate critical programs. Without agencies, our ability to govern ourselves is wrecked.

The Judiciary

The attacks on the judiciary began after Brown v. Board. Impeach Earl Warren, screamed billboards all over the South. But it took off under Ronald Reagan, who appointed a host of ideologues to the bench, leading to his failed effort to put the loathsome Robert Bork on SCOTUS.

Republicans responded to the rejection of Bork by pushing even harder to put right-wing ideologues on the bench. George Bush the worst stopped listening to the centrist ABA on judicial nominations. Trump handed judicial nominations to the Federalist Society and to Leo Leonard. McConnell made sure Democrats couldn’t appoint people to SCOTUS. Then Trump appointed a crank, a frat boy, and an dithering academic, none of whom have evidenced any core principles other than obeisance to Trump’s dictates.

The Fifth Circuit is full of nutcases and fools, among whom I single out the odious Matthew Kacsmaryk. The Fifth Circuit refused to rid itself of single-judge districts, and ignores judge-shopping, making this lawless nutcase the most powerful judge in the country.

Then in Trump v. US . John Roberts  crowned Trump king of the nation, and implicitly approved everything Trump and his henchmen have done. See, for example, the ridiculous order allowing Stephen Miller to export human beings to terrorist nations, issued without explanation, and without a full hearing. Roberts can only be compared to Roger Taney.

States

The federal system gives states a central role in assuring the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. Historically Republicans used what they called states rights to stop federal efforts to enforce the 14th Amendment. They were generally unwilling to attack state action in significant ways. Trump has started this assault on his own.

He hit states whose policies he doesn’t like by cancelling grants, by senseless litigation, and by sending in the National Guard, the Marines and ICE thugs. One of his earliest acts was to file a lawsuit against Illinois, Cook County, and Chicago, alleging that it’s unconstitutional for us to limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with ICE thugs. In other words, we have to use our own resources to fill Stephen Miller’s gulags.

Trump demanded the Republicans pass laws, including the Big Bill, that will harm Blue states. He helps Red States damaged by his tariffs. He attacks states who don’t force colleges and universities to follow his anti-DEI policies, meaning erasing not-White people from history and higher education.

Private Institutions

The Republican war on higher education began with Ronald Reagan’s attacks on California colleges and universities. The attack was two-pronged. He packed the boards of these institutions with Republican loyalists, a philistine group who demanded focus on job training at the expense of education. Public support was reduced dramatically, forcing the system to increase tuition. This led to a massive increase in student loans, and to debt servitude for millions of people.

This two-pronged attack was immediately followed by other states, partly out of spite (Republicans) and partly on financial grounds (centrist Democrats). Republicans, ever the victims, claimed that universities were liberal and quashed conservative viewpoints, whatever those might be. The screaming got louder, and Trump used it to attack higher education a bit in his first term. All this was fomented and paid for by filthy rich monsters and justified by liars.

In his second term Trump directly attacked Harvard and Columbia on utterly specious grounds. He has made life miserable for foreign students studying here on visas, a deranged policy with no benefits to our nation. He has cut off federal support for basic research, the foundation of US leadership in most sciences and most technologies.

The Republican attack on law firms was focused on trial lawyers, a group that fought to protect working people from the depredations of pig-rich corporations. For the rest, the damage was largely self-inflicted. Firms grew to gargantuan size, taking in tens of millions of dollars. To keep that flow of money they surrendered professionalism and became servants of the filthy rich. When I started practicing law, we were bound by the Model Code of Professional Responsibility. The current weakened version of that ethical code is called the Model Code of Professional Conduct. Lawyers relieved themselves of all responsibility to society and the rule of law.

When Trump attacked, many of these behemoths were unprepared to act responsibly, and cravenly kissed the ring.

The attacks on private enterprise are smaller in scope. Primarily Trump seeks to force corporations to dismantle DEI programs, terminate support for LGBT initiatives and outreach, and similar matters. The media have self-policed rather than confront the craziness, a task made easier by their financial weakness.

What is to be done

The battlefield is enormous. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. None of us can deal with all of it. But each of us can deal with some of it. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. When we mass up on any front, we will have an impact.

I go to #TeslaTakedown. Hurting Musk is an indirect attack on Trump, and serves as a warning to the other Tech Bros. We have to keep that going.

Many of us are alumni of colleges under attack. I don’t give money to Notre Dame, even though my education there was sterling. I should have written a letter explaining why I would never contribute again, and why I removed a bequest from my will.

We can’t avoid all collaborating corporations entirely, but my family stopped using Target and cancelled our New York Times subscription. We can all redirect our spending. And then we can write letters saying we did it because they hurt our fellow citizens. Or even something fiercer.

Given the economic chaos and uncertainty, cutting spending, and front-end loading our spending, seem like sensible plans. We can point this out to others in our families and among our friends. As an example, Trump plans to increase tariffs on computers, or does he? Buy now and prepare to live with it for a few years.

Harvard and other major research universities have enormous endowments. They could open branches in Berlin, Paris, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Accra and anywhere they can find brilliant grad students. They can send their own professors, their own lab teams, and their own know-how out of a nation suddenly devoted to stupidity.

Law firms can announce plans to provide pro bono representation to people kidnapped by ICE thugs. Corporations can browbeat the Republican pols they have put in place, demanding sane economic and immigration policies. We can demand that they do so.

Conclusion

Notes: I wrote this from memory with a minimum of fact-checking. Corrections and additions welcome.

Someone should write a book about this war. Is there one I don’t know about?

Finally: In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy says that Napoleon was successful because he and his subordinates were able to concentrate their forces against the weakest segment of the enemy battle line. He tried to hold a large reserve to send against that weak point. That seems like a good strategy. Trump and the Republicans have spread themselves out over a gigantic battlefield. Let’s try Napoleon’s strategy.
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Featured image is a map of the Battle of Austerlitz won by Napoleon.

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Without a Doubt, Worse than Nixon

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

On March 18, 1969, the U.S. military launched a secret program authorized by then-president Richard Nixon. Code named Operation Menu, the U.S. bombed targets in Cambodia until May 26, 1970.

The program was never authorized by Congress; information about the bombings were withheld from both Congress and the American public.

It was a gross abuse of executive power and the basis for drafting an Article of Impeachment against Nixon. The article did not receive adequate support in Congress because a number of members of Congress felt they had not done enough to restrain Nixon with regard to the Vietnam War, and public opinion had not yet shifted firmly against Nixon because of the Watergate scandal.

Three of six Articles of Impeachment did receive approval, however; the unauthorized bombing of Cambodia emphasized the abuses of power delineated in the approved articles.

Fortunately for Nixon, Republican members of Congress took him aside and told him they had the votes to impeach and remove him if he didn’t resign. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, avoiding hearings and heightened scrutiny of his abuses of his office.

Donald Trump authorized the bombing of Iran. His secretary of defense did not restrain him by requiring an Authorization for Use of Military Force. Neither of them made much effort to keep the mission secret as it launched Saturday as Trump posted about it to his personal Truth Social account.

Congress was not informed of the operation in order to debate an AUMF. Congress received testimony from Trump’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on March 25 in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which she said,

… The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.

In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. …

There were exchanges with the media and public between the administration about Gabbard’s statement regarding the enriched uranium stockpile. If the status of that stockpile had changed with a firm move toward arming a weapon occurred, there has been no effort to communicate that with the Senate Intelligence or Armed Services Committees.

The American public was lied to by Trump who announced this past Thursday, “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

Trump waffled publicly about U.S. military action against Iran, saying, ““You don’t know that I’m going to even do it,” Trump told one reporter. “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do. … “ I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final [call] … I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know?”

Trump failed to request approval from Congress before making that final call some time between Thursday and Saturday.

It’s possible the call had already been made and Trump’s apparent indecision was a head fake. An analyst with Haaretz seemed to think this was a possible strategy. EDIT: The Atlantic published an article at 12:29 a.m. ET Sunday in which they reported Trump had already decided to bomb Iran on Wednesday, before his public statement about a two-week window of decision.

Head fake or no, Trump violated the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 which grants Congress the power to declare war. It is not a power granted to the executive who “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” under Article II, Section 3.

Trump has already repeatedly failed under the Take Care clause. This first strike against Iran conducted without Congressional approval should be a road too far.

The blowback from this may be enormous, beginning with global economic effects due to instability in the fossil fuels market and may include terrorist or overt military strikes against U.S. targets, perhaps by way of surrogate networks Gabbard also testified about on March 25.

Trump is without a doubt worse than Nixon. He should be impeached — again, yes — and this time removed from office.

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No Kings Rally After Action Report

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I went to the No Kings Rally at the Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago today, with friends and family. The weather was pleasant, temperatures in the upper 60s and hazy, turning mostly sunny. My younger grandchild lasted nearly an hour, in large part because a kind person handed him a red, white, and blue pinwheel. Most of our party left at this point, except my daughter.

We couldn’t hear the speeches, the chanting was too loud. Eventually the crowd started marching. Apparently a large part went north several blocks to the Chicago River where they saluted the Trump Tower with shouts and hand signals. They eventually turned down Michigan Avenue.

We went with another enormous group headed south for several blocks before turning back towards the Lake and then north. At this point, I was slowing down, and my daughter saved me from myself. We walked to Michigan Avenue, where we saw the lead marchers moving south. So we ate lunch outdoors and watched for 40 minutes as the group moved south, chanting and whooping.

When we finished lunch they were going strong, so we went back to the march and did another eight blocks before it petered out. The Red Line was jammed to the doors. As we exited the station, a guy asked if the march was peaceful. It sure was. Huge and peaceful.

Shout-out to the police, who did a good job of coping with what I think was a much larger crowd than they or the organizers expected. Another shout-out to all the people inconvenienced by the enormous crowd, many whom honked and shouted their support, and not one of whom offered suggestions about my life choices.

Lots of great signs. One I liked: No Kings Only Prince with a photo of the musical genius. Another great thing, after we got back, we watched Trump morosely watching his wretched parade in wretched weather.

What did you see and do? Any memorable signs?

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Photo by Artemisia

 

 

 

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Despite Pete Hegseth, Signal is Good

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Why you should use Signal (But maybe ditch Whatsapp?)

Pete Hegseth is Bad at His Job

The Secretary of Defense and Fox Host Pete Hegseth keeps using Signal to talk about war plans with people he’s not supposed to be talking with at his day job. He also gets caught, because he’s bad at security as well as his job. Hegseth uses his personal phone for Department of Defence business, including killing a lot Yemenis.

What Hegseth was supposed to use instead of his consumer cell phone is a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I’ve been in one. I was emphatically invited to leave my phone at the door. There were large men making this point to me, and I took it to heart. A SCIF is secure, but it is as much about control and legal obligations as it is about security, and rightfully so. Secure communications for a national government don’t just require security, they require accountability, integrity, and a durable record. After its classification period, that information belongs to all Americans. Historical accountability is something we’ve decided matters, and encoded into our laws.

On a technical level I wouldn’t be shocked if SCIFs use some of the same technology that’s in Signal to secure communications. It’s good stuff! But SCIFs are SCIFs, and consumer cell phones are cell phones. Your phone is not designed for government records retention, or hardened against specific nation-state threats. But modern, up-to-date phones have very good security, more hardened then most of the government systems that have ever existed. And it’s right there! In your phone without you having to do anything to get it! (Except apply new software updates when they turn up.)

So despite the fact that Hegseth’s phone would be one of the more targeted in the world, and Hegseth himself is an idiot, his phone isn’t necessarily compromised. It might be, but it’s hard to be sure. It’s quite hard to hack a modern phone, especially if the person using the phone updates it every time there’s an update released, and doesn’t click on things they don’t know are OK. There are fancy attacks, called Zero-Click Attacks, that don’t require any user interaction, but they’re hard to build and expensive.

At any given moment, you don’t know whether someone had a working attack against an up-to-date iPhone or Android until it’s discovered and patched. But mostly, the average user doesn’t have to worry about trying to secure their phone. You already secure your phone when you update it. The hackers aren’t in a race with you, or even Pete Hegseth, they’re in a race with large and well-funded security and design teams at Google and Apple — and those people are very good at their jobs. This is why the nerds (like me) always tell you to update software as soon as possible; these updates often patch security holes you never knew were there.

You’re more likely to download a vulnerability in something like Candy Crush, weird social media apps, or random productivity tools you’re tying out. But the folks at Google and Apple have your back there, too. They’ve put every app into its own software-based “container,” and don’t let apps directly interact with the core functions of your phone, or the other apps on it. Hackers try to break out of these containers, but again, it’s not easy. Even if they get a foothold in one, they might know a lot about how good you are at subway surfing, but not much else.

It’s hard out here for a phone hacker.

Sometimes the hackers hit pay dirt, and find some flaw in phone software that lets them take over the phone from the air, with no user interaction — that zero-Ccick attack. This is very scary, but also very precious for the hackers. Unless there’s a very good reason, no one is going to risk burning that bug on you. If an attack like that is found, it will be top priority for those big smart security teams at Google and Apple. There will be long nights. There will also be an update that fixes it; apply updates as soon as you see them. Once a vulnerability is patched, the malware companies have to go back to the drawing board and look for another bug they can exploit to get their revenue stream back.

The high profile malware companies often sell their software, especially if they have a zero-click attack, to governments and corporations. They don’t want normal people using it, because the more it gets used, the faster they will be back at square one after Google and Apple take their toys away.

Nerd’s Delight

Signal LogoSignal is usually the favorite app your exhausting nerd friend keeps badgering you to download. It’s risen to even more prominence due to Pete Hegseth’s repeated idiocy. But this has caused doubt and confusion, because if you found out what Signal was from Hegseth’s leaks and blunders, it doesn’t look so good. Using Signal for DoD high level communications is not only illegal, it is stupid. Signal isn’t meant for government classified communications.

But it is meant for you, and it’s very good at what it does.

Signal is two things: First, an app for Android and iPhone (with a handy desktop client) which encrypts chats and phone calls. That’s the Signal app you see on your phone. second, the other part is the Signal Protocol, Signal’s system of scrambling communications so that people outside of the chat can’t see or hear anything inside the chat.

Signal Protocol, the encryption system Signal uses, is a technology called a Double Ratchet. It is an amazing approach that is pretty much unbreakable in a practical sense. The very short version of how that encryption works is this: Your computer finds a special number on a curve (think of the pretty graphs in trig class) and combines this number with another number the other person has, from a different spot on another curve. These numbers are used to encrypt the messages in a way that only you both can see them. (This number generation is done by your phone and servers on the net in the background of your chat, and you never have to see any of it.) You each use the numbers from picked out these curves to encrypt a message that only the other person can read. Picking out the number from the curve is easy, but guessing it from the outside is functionally impossible. Any attempt to figure out the points on the curve you used is very hard and tiring — meaning it takes the computer a lot of energy to try. In computers, very hard always translates to expensive and slow. The extra trick in Signal’s double ratchet is a mechanism for taking that already hard number to guess and “ratcheting” it to new hard numbers – with every single message. Every Hi, Whatup, and heart emoji get this powerful encryption. Even if someone was using super computers to break into your chat (and they aren’t) every time they broke the encryption, they’d just get that message, and be back at square one.

That’s expensive, frustrating hard work, and your chats aren’t worth the bother.

The Strongest Link, Weakened?

Messenger also uses the Signal protocol

Whatsapp adopted Signal Protocol in 2014, granting encrypted privacy and safety to over a billion people.

Signal is secure. Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal protocol too, and are also secure, for now… but Meta has made some decisions that complicate things. In a rush to add AI to everything whether you want it or not, Meta has added AI to its Signal Protocol-secured chat rooms. This doesn’t break the Signal Protocol, that works fine. But to have AI in chats means that by definition, there’s another participant listening in your chat. If there wasn’t, it couldn’t reply with AI things. If you’re not comfortable with this, it might be time to ditch Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger for Signal.

I’m personally not comfortable with it, in part because as far as I can tell, there’s nothing technically or legally stopping law enforcement from demanding access to that listening function in any chat room. It may only give the police access to parts of the conversation, but I’d like the chance to defend my data myself if it comes to it. I don’t want to have it picked up from a third party without so much as notice to me.

Meta is in the the room with you, like it or not. Is it recording all your chats somewhere? I doubt it. It’s a bad idea that would make too much trouble for Meta if it got out. But I can’t know for sure. I know there’s no listener in Signal, because the protocol makes hiding a listener functionally impossible. (To be clear, Meta isn’t hiding it, they’re advertising it. But it’s still a listener.)

Encryption for All

Make no mistake, that Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal’s protocol is wonderful news. It means that, without having to know anything about internet or computer security, one day there was an update, and billions of users got to rely on some of the best encryption ever designed, without even knowing it. This is important both for keeping people safe online, and for making society better, as activists, small businesses, families, and everyone with and internet connection can talk freely and safely to their people and their communities. It doesn’t stop ill-intentioned people from doing bad and deceptive things like lie, cheat, and steal, but it makes it harder for them to enlist the computers into their schemes.

The problem with Pete Hegseth using Signal is two-fold: He has to retain records legally, and ratcheting encryption is intentionally ephemeral. Signal is the worst way to retain records, beyond perhaps toilet paper and sharpie. The second problem is that if he does have a vulnerable app on his phone, or there’s a general vulnerability the teams at Apple and Google haven’t found yet, someone could be listening into what his phone is doing. Maybe even through his Candy Crush Saga, a fun game you will never find in a SCIF, no matter how much you wish you could.

SCIFs are kind of boring. No phones, the windows are weird (to defeat directional mics) and in my case, I had to have security escort me to the bathroom. I imagine that’s why an exciting guy like Hegseth doesn’t use them. But he is not only putting people in danger with his shenanigans, he’s also robbing the American people of a record that is, by law, our right to have. And it’s looking like an era of American history in which we want to be preserving evidence.

The Online Lives of Others

If you’ve never seen the movie The Lives of Others, go watch it. It’s great, and annoyingly relevant right now.

There is another threat coming from the EU and UK that rears its head every few years, and probably from the US soon enough as well. Many governments and law enforcement agencies want, have wanted for years, a scheme digital rights advocates call Chat Control. Law enforcement would have a back door into everyone’s encryption, usually a listener, like the Meta AI, but much worse. It would bug all chats — a spook in every phone. The excuse is always CSAM, or Child Sexual Abuse Material, but the proposal is always the same – to strip every person of privacy and the technical means to protect it, in the name of protecting children. This ignores a lot of of issues that I won’t go into here, but suffice to say the argument is as dishonest as it is ineffectual.

It’s an ongoing fight pitting children against a right of privacy and personal integrity, and it always will be an ongoing fight, because it would give the police and governments nearly limitless power to spy on the entire populous all the time.

Total digital surveillance is simply not a feasible way to run a society. It is the police state the East German Stasi dreamed of having. It must be resisted for human decency and flourishing. Let’s give the totalitarian desire for a spy in every phone no oxygen, it has no decency, no matter who it claims to be protecting.

Even if you never do anything that could be of interest to governments or law enforcement, using encryption creates more freedom for all. If only “criminals” or “enemies” use Signal, then using Signal becomes a red flag. If everyone uses Signal (or Signal protocol in Whatsapp/Messenger), then it’s normal. You get the measure of protection it provides from scammers and hackers, and you help people fighting criminals and resisting tyranny, all over the world. This is one of the reasons adding Signal protocol to the Meta systems was such a great moment in the history of the net. A good portion of humanity gained a real measure of privacy that day.

If activists and people “with something to hide” are the only people using encryption like Signal, it’s grounds for suspicion. But if everyone is using it, the journalists and activists who need it for political reasons don’t stand out. The battered partners and endangered kids can find it and use it safely to get help. And everyone is safer from scams and hacking attacks — because what you do and say has some of the best protection we’ve every conceived of as a society, even if it’s just your shopping list.

 

Correction: A previous version of this article included a description of Diffie–Hellman key exchange in the explanation of how Signal’s encryption works. Signal changed from Diffie–Hellman to Elliptic Curve Cryptography, which is much more efficient, in 2023. I regret the error. 

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

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[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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The Sound of Teeth on Bone: You Are Here

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Where to begin:

“Damn! You over here like, damn, Kamala, come back to me!” Akademiks joked, speculating that Ross may regret his enthusiastic endorsement of Trump on the campaign trail, now that the president’s economic policy has cost him at least $10 million.

In August 2024, Trump appeared on Ross’s livestream, where the young influencer gifted Trump a $100,000+ custom Cybertruck, Rolex, and his endorsement. While he was visibly morose over the financial hit, he didn’t have anything negative to say about Trump.

Source: Latin Times

Nothing bad to say about the man who cost him eight figures — so far.

This influencer is among many who are why Harris-Walz made no inroads with white and Latino men. They feel a need to belong to a tribe and it’s one which pulls up the tree house ladder to prevent women especially those of color from joining.

Harris warned them and they still can’t fully acknowledge she warned them and they were wrong, let alone admit that really is a leopard sitting on their chests gnawing on their cheekbones.

I’d like to laugh but my investment portfolio is down by a lot and unlike 2008 there was no safe haven I could trust thanks to DOGE Muskrats mucking about in Treasury.

At some point we’ll have to rescue these guys like Bluebeard’s last wife because we’ll be rescuing ourselves at the same time.

~ ~ ~

And now for something critically important — an urgent call to action.

Go to Indivisible.org and read the explanation about H.R. 22, a bill which will disenfranchise a massive number of voters. This is one of the methods by which Trump will attempt to hang onto the White House as well as a stranglehold over executive functions. If voters are deprived of their right to vote, they won’t be able to remove bad representation at mid-terms let alone the general election.

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

While all eligible voters will be affected, those most likely to be disenfranchised are married and divorced women because they will be assessed a poll tax in the form of additional identity documentation in the form of a marriage license. Trans persons and adoptees will also be affected negatively.

The bill also has a hole in it, and I’ll tell you right now it affects me, my father, and my sibling as an example. The word “territory” never appears in this bill, and my father is an American citizen born in what was then a territory, now a state.

Bill text at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr22/text

This legislation needs to die and the 107 Republican House members who co-sponsored it need to hear from their constituents that they are failing their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution.

Don’t let this slip by you, take action. We can’t trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing and protect Americans’ right to vote.

Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

 

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Stupid or Evil? It’s Definitely Not Liberation

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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

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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.

~ ~ ~

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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