“The history of the present King of Great Britain President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”
“It is difficult to find another person connected to DOGE who has stronger ties to Musk than Branden Spikes.”
“You cannot be unfair, but still kind. You cannot be oppressive, but still kind — or exploitative, but still kind, or predatory, but still kind, or exclusionary, but still kind. You cannot be anti-diversity, anti-equality, or anti-inclusiveness and in any way be anything anywhere close to kind.”
“More pointedly, what does the sale mean for Bond’s future? Amazon, of course, had purchased MGM, Bond’s longtime home, in 2022 for $8.5 billion, mostly to get its hands on 007 IP and build it into a Marvel-style universe filled with bingeable TV spinoffs. The only things stopping them were Broccoli and Wilson, who had very different ideas for their father’s legacy, as well as a decades-long deal with MGM guaranteeing them creative dominion over all things Bond. But now that they’re out of the picture, Amazon can do whatever it wants. A TV show about Moneypenny? Why not. A prequel about Blofeld’s teenage years? Sure. More 007 game shows? Please no. But anything is possible. Amazon is now free to milk the franchise dry.”
“Axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing by DOGE”.
“Even your hobbies can’t escape global politics.”
RIP, Kevin Drum, longtime political blogger. I actually met him way back when, in 2002, when I had a business trip to Anaheim. Wild to think about now. Kevin was sane and level-headed, a whiz with graphs and charts, and a topnotch explainer of the obscure and esoteric. He will be missed. Josh Marshall, Mark Evanier, The Slacktivist, Paul Glastris at Washington Monthly, and Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein at Mother Jones give him fitting eulogies.
“These are a sample of the messages that targeted Elon Musk over the weekend, as thousands of protesters across the country flooded local Tesla dealerships to express their outrage over the tech CEO’s escalating war on the federal government.”
“This edition of The Entrenchment Agenda assesses the degree to which Trump has advanced his six most extreme anti-democratic measures in ways that, ultimately, aim to make it difficult for voters to dislodge authoritarians from office: (1) pardons to license lawbreaking, (2) investigations against critics and rivals, (3) regulatory retaliation, (4) federal law enforcement overreach, (5) domestic deployment of the military, and (6) the potential refusal of autocrats to leave office.”
“In a $12 billion-a-year industry, Manfred has far more incentive to deny Rose’s reinstatement — which again, is unearned based on the deceased’s lack of contrition or reconfiguration of his life — than he does to capitulate.”
Good for Ruth Marcus, but criminy the WaPo is a trash fire right now.
“Most presidents, as a general rule, don’t go out of their way to egg a recession on, for good reason.”
“But the issue is not only Elon Musk. It’s a general problem that isn’t going anywhere. It’s the reductio ad absurdum of the economic inequality debate, when levels of super power get concentrated in the hands of a single monomaniacal individual.”
“Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, a Democrat, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, a Republican, are teaming up on a resolution to allow new parents to represent their constituents by designating another member to vote for them, commonly known as proxy voting, for 12 weeks after welcoming a child. ”
“Basically: increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will reduce the number of satellites that we can safely have up in low-earth orbit, or LEO.”
“This is not just reckless; it is a betrayal of every veteran who served this country.”
“Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration.”
RIP, Joe Gwathmey, founder of Texas Public Radio, which brought NPR to San Antonio.
RIP, Mark Klein, AT&T Whistleblower Who Revealed NSA Mass Spying.
RIP, Oliver Miller, former NBA player who led the Arkansas Razorbacks to the Final Four in 1990.
“I appear to live rent-free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues.”
RIP, John Feinstein, sportswriter and author whose books include A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled.
RIP, Kenneth Hall, Texas high school football legend and Hall of Famer known as “The Sugar Land Express”, who held the national high school rushing record for almost 60 years; it was broken in 2012 by Derrick Henry.
“This is where we are. Observe, orient, decide, act. The side which acts faster and smarter wins.”
Drum inspired me into “scatblogging” as a riposte and antidote to his, and others’, catblogging.
Although too much mainstream Democrat for me, I saw him as personable in a way that Marshall, and certainly Kos, were not. My own tribute https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2025/03/rip-kevin-drum-scatblogging-roundup.html
“Many, maybe even most, of the people I’m talking to in private are still quietly cheering his move-fast-and-break-things approach.”
I would wager my next paycheck that every one of those people are very wealthy and in a far better position to ride out a recession than the average American. They may even have chances to snap up some bargains from those who could go bankrupt if the economy tanks hard enough. I have unlimited contempt for people who talk so blithely about how other people need to sacrifice and endure economic pain for some dubious new economic order, but there will not be even the smallest crimp in their posh lifestyles. Fuck them all.
As for WaPo, I’m one of the 100s of thousands who cancelled them once Bezos went full appeasement (the hypocritical cancellation of the Harris endorsement). I’m rooting for Mango Mussolini to screw over Bezos anyway.