Managing Expectations

Rev Karla Substack

It's No Good

I can't. With some of these people, I just can't.

You'll never change a mind

Unopened

But you can slip a mad man

Water

From the well he's poisoned.

-- Grant Peeples

Rhyming History

In the Upside Down

Dateline Washington, 1940:

Speaker of The House Sam Rayburn today called on Winston Churchill to resign, demanded the UK cede Scotland to Germany, and the US halt Lend Lease immediately - in the noble pursuit of a lasting peace with Mr Hitler.

Johnson says Zelenskyy may need to resign

Speaker Mike Johnson said Zelenskyy either needs to “come to his senses” or step down to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might need to resign to bring peace to his country following a contentious meeting between Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Friday.

“Something has to change,” Johnson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, echoing comments made Friday by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that.”

Johnson’s comments on Sunday come on the heels of a heated exchange between Zelenskyy, Trump and Vance in the Oval Office on Friday, where Zelenskyy was accused of not sharing enough gratitude for U.S.’s role in trying to end the war and not wanting to come to a peace agreement.

“The fact that he acted as he did, I think, was a great disappointment,” Johnson said of Zelenskyy’s behavior in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The meeting was supposed to be followed by the signing of a minerals deal aimed to provide future security guarantees for Ukraine. However, the rest of Zelenskyy’s visit was canceled after the Oval Office argument, with Trump posting to the social media platform Truth Social that Zelenskyy “disrespected the United States in its cherished Oval Office” and can only “come back when he is ready for Peace.”

Zelenskyy was subsequently ejected from the White House, leading to additional criticism of Trump for his rhetoric and behavior that day.

On Saturday, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a sometimes critic of Trump since he returned to office — disparaged Trump’s behavior toward Zelenskyy on Friday in a post to X, saying the U.S. is “walking away from our allies and embracing Putin.”

On CNN, Johnson said the Alaska Republican is “plainly wrong,” adding that “the person who walked away from the table yesterday was President Zelenskyy.”

While Johnson offered support for Trump on blaming Zelenskyy for Friday’s failed meeting, he did criticize Russia and Putin in both interviews — something Trump has shied away from doing, particularly since returning to office.

“I’d like to see Putin defeated, frankly,” Johnson said on NBC. “He is an adversary of the United States. But in this conflict, we’ve got to bring it into this war. It’s in everybody’s interest.”

“Putin is the aggressor,” Johnson said on CNN. “It is an unjust war. We have been crystal clear about that.”

Li'l Marco

Then Trump comes on the scene and they all crumble.

Told Ya

Is this the waste fraud and abuse

we're so worried about?

Maybe what Republicans are planning on is the removal of millions of people who cost more than they produce. So guys like Elon just want them gone. After all, you're either an asset or a liability. Nothing more. Am I right?

They're working to bring about a final solution to the problems of overpopulation.

There's just too many of "those people".

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie

We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”

Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition.

Mark Moore, the CEO of Mana, says ready-to-move boxes of the paste are now piled up in a Georgia warehouse and may never be shipped abroad. “If these contracts are not reinstated, there is no doubt children will die,” Moore told me.

This comes mere days after I reported that these shipments had been thrown into doubt because Trump’s mass firings at USAID included employees overseeing the latest round of contracts.

The nixed arrangements are just a handful of hundreds canceled amid the Trump administration’s appalling decision this week to terminate 90 percent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts. As the details of these cancellations have started trickling out, one thing is clear. This latest turn has wrecked the narrative that Trump and his MAGA propagandists have tried to spin about these cuts—they’re targeting “wokeness” inside USAID, they’re about “waste and fraud,” they’re designed to achieve “efficiency.” All of it has been unmasked as absolute nonsense.

The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of millions of people benefited; now they will not.

The details of the canceled Mana contracts illustrate the point. RUTF, the sweet nutritional peanut paste that Mana manufactures, is safe for ingestion by children who are suffering acute nutritional deprivation or are on the verge of starving to death. It comes in foil packets that don’t need refrigeration, making it easy to distribute in regions suffering extreme deprivation. RUTF is widely hailed as an extraordinary innovation in feeding children facing starvation and death.

According to Moore, the cancellation of Mana’s latest contracts will mean that around 300,000 kids, mostly in Africa, don’t get aid packets that Congress intended for them. But we, too, are the losers: This paste is manufactured by American workers, and made of peanuts and dairy grown by American farmers, in a spreading of American bounty and goodwill that has long had bipartisan support. Now it’s piled up in a warehouse in Savannah, unshipped and uneaten.

All of this lays waste to the spin that Trumpworld has employed to defend the dismantling of USAID. For instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed all along that “lifesaving humanitarian assistance” will be spared. By any reasonable standard, many of the contracts that have just been canceled qualify as just that.

What’s more, there is no longer any way to pretend any of this is about “efficiency” or “good management.” Aid like this is incredibly cost-effective. Not only does foreign aid constitute a tiny portion of our budget; things like RUTF cost a relative pittance, but they spread a positive image of the U.S. abroad and each treatment can save a child’s life.

Then there’s Rubio’s claim earlier this month that foreign aid is merely being reviewed to ensure that only “dumb” aid gets cut. In reality, this “review” process has been appallingly terrible even from a management perspective. Assuming it’s true that the administration does intend to restore some of these contracts—which is difficult to believe—then why did this review process require them to be suspended in the first place?

Even if some of these suspensions do turn out to be temporary, they will nonetheless have terrible consequences. Programs like these rely on complex supply chains, involving workers in the U.S. and abroad. They require continued delivery of supplies and sustained administering over time. But many people benefiting from ongoing treatments at this moment have now been “completely abandoned,” Gawande said.

“They’re pausing a plane in midflight, and firing the crew, then trying to tell us that it’s not going to be a catastrophe,” Gawande told me. “Terminating the contracts means we’re not investing in a wind-down at all.”

The fact that these cuts were handled this way—wantonly and recklessly—tells us everything we need to know about the administration’s true goal: To broadcast a clear message to the world that we are now shrugging off any sense of obligation to the global poor. As Awande put it: “They’re almost gleefully celebrating the destruction of these programs.”

The Cult Explained

What It Is

MAGA will never turn on him.

He's a perverse Avatar for them.

As bad as they are,

he'll always be worse,

and that's their salvation.

Today's Nutzo

He has since deleted the post.

This is great -

he's declared

open season

on MAGA.

Lock-n-load, kids.

America's Twilight

The end of the West may be nigh

LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters Breakingviews) - China’s rise in recent decades had already put the world’s rich democracies on the defensive. Now Donald Trump is swinging a wrecking ball at the alliances, values and institutions that underpin Western power. While it may be possible to salvage something, the omens are not good.

The West is less a geographical definition than a geopolitical force and a set of values. It has brought together not just the rich democracies of North America and Europe but also countries such as Japan in a set of overlapping pacts and treaties. Underpinning these have been mutual interests and ideas such as the rule of law, free trade, democracy, standing up to tyranny and working together to solve global problems such as climate change.

This ethos has dominated the world since World War Two - and, even more so, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though its members have often not lived up to its values, it created the conditions for peace and economic growth in large parts of the world. But its geopolitical pre-eminence started to fray when the United States led an unwise invasion of Iraq in 2003, while its economic supremacy eroded after the global financial crisis in 2008.
Trump was always going to be a disruptive force. But the returning U.S. president has pummelled the international order with an unexpected vigour in the weeks since he moved back into the Oval Office. The former real estate developer had already hinted that he would use military force to annex Greenland, which is a member of the NATO defence alliance, and take over the Panama Canal. He has also threatened tariffs against the European Union and Canada, and pushed for the latter to become part of the United States. Most strikingly, he declared last week that the United States would take over Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, after its two million Palestinians inhabitants were permanently resettled elsewhere. Such a project could violate international law.

As if that’s not enough, Trump has ordered the United States to pull out of the World Health Organization, an international tax treaty and withdraw from the Paris climate agreement for a second time. He is imposing sanctions on people who work for the International Criminal Court. His administration plans to slash USAID, the humanitarian aid agency that has been a key component of U.S. attempts to woo developing countries since the 1960s, and has ordered a review, opens new tab of U.S. support for all international organisations.
The rest of the West is too weak to stand up to him. This is especially so in Europe, which desperately needs U.S. military support to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion. It is also true of Japan and South Korea, which cannot defend themselves against China and North Korea respectively without American help.

NOT DEAD YET

The West could yet survive this barrage. Trump’s bark may be worse than his bite. Last week he temporarily pulled back from imposing tariffs on Canada as well as Mexico in return for concessions on border and crime enforcement.

If the U.S. president is using threats to negotiate better deals for America, he may not carry out some of his more extravagant plans. But bullying allies and riding roughshod over international norms still weakens the West.

Trump could also confound doubters and stand by Kyiv. His latest idea is that Ukraine should supply the United States with rare earth minerals as payment for supporting its war effort.
What happens in Ukraine is critical. If Trump abandons it and Russia then bullies it into a miserable peace deal, that could be the final blow for the West. But if the president stands by Kyiv and helps force some reasonable solution, the West could limp on to fight another day.

Another hope is that the United States will go back to its allies and old values after the current president leaves office. But with right-wing nationalism on the rise throughout the West, Trumpism looks more like part of a trend than an aberration.

REST OF THE WEST

If the United States is no longer interested in the West and its values, the remaining countries could try to soldier on alone. The EU could build up its defences, as its leaders promised last week. The United Kingdom could form a stronger security pact with the EU, as it too pledged, opens new tab last week. The European countries could then cut economic and other deals with Japan, Canada, Australia and South Korea.

The rest of the West could reach out to middle powers such as India and Indonesia to negotiate trade and other pacts, as the EU has just done with the Mercosur countries of South America. It could eventually form more friendly relations with China.

Creating such a patchwork quilt would have to surmount a host of hurdles. For a start, Europe cannot do anything Trump would view as hostile, such as cosying up to China. There also should be no question of Europe forming more friendly relations with Beijing while it supports Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Even if the war reaches a reasonable end, it will be hard to stitch together a “mini-West” without the United States, whose economic output of $28 trillion, opens new tab in 2023 was almost as large as the rest of the West put together. The only realistic alternative pole around which countries could rally is the EU.

But the rise of right-wing nationalism in many of its member states may stymie initiatives to do more at an EU level - and a similar phenomenon in the UK may complicate efforts to bring Britain closer to Europe.

The rest of the West should try to protect whatever it can from Trump’s wrecking ball. But the chances of success do not look great.

What It Is

The level of misunderstanding that Republicans can count on where their constituents are concerned is monumental.

Ask almost any MAGArube about US military aid for Ukraine, and he'll probably tell you we've given billions of dollars directly to the government in Kyiv.

Likewise, ask them about SNAP and WIC and school lunches, and some of them will still launch into the bullshit about "young bucks buying champaign and lobsters with their food stamps", or Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs around Chicago. Or black moms actively trying to get knocked up again so they can up the amount on their monthly checks.

The amount of shit that's been poured into people's heads over the last 45 years should qualify some folks' brains as Superfund sites.

Anyway, here's an explainer from Parkrose Permaculture.

Today's Clapback

Democrats doing the work. Looks like MAGA thinks they can heckle and disrupt their way thru - the way "The Tea Party" did in 2010 - but a well-prepared Representative can change the outcome.

That's US Rep Janna Hayes (D - CT05) stompin' that guy's ass. He brought nothing but ego, and a butt-hurt DumFux News talking point, and she did exactly what needs to be done every time. Outstanding.

Overheard

We always knew MAGA was gullible, ignorant, cruel, thoughtless, obnoxious, illiterate, spiteful, bigoted, malicious, feeble-minded, callous, mean-spirited, uninformed, repulsive, hypocritical, crass, vicious, hateful, deranged, foul, useless, and stupid. But these days - holy fuck.

Clapback

Don't be callin' me the enemy.

Don't you dare call me evil.

Not when you've got

the mark of the beast

on your fuckin' forehead.

Oh, MAGA

"We demand meritocracy - except when it requires competition we're not prepared for."

Spelling It Out

Cruelty is the point,

the whole point,

and nothing but the point.

And once they're done with "them",

they'll be coming for you.

Nothing's Changed

Why do "liberals" dislike MAGA? And why have so many decided there's no use in continuing a relationship other than what's the bare minimum (if that) with their MAGA friends and family?

From Sons Of Liberty, here’s a partial list of items that the majority of anti-Trump voters say honestly express how they feel about Trump supporters:

You saw a man who owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, and you thought "Fine."
(https://www.usatoday.com/.../trump-university.../502387002/

You saw a man who made it his standard business practice to stiff everybody he ever traded with, and you said, "Okay."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions...

You heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, and you said, "No problem."
https://abcnews.go.com/.../list-trumps-accusers.../story...

When he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../donald-trumps.../

When you heard him brag that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, and you exclaimed, "He sure knows me."
https://www.usatoday.com/.../president-donald.../4073405002/

You heard him relate a story of an elderly guest at his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, and Trump reacted with:

“‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” And you said, "That's cool!"

https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story

You saw him mock the disabled, and you thought it was the funniest thing ever. https://www.nbcnews.com/.../donald-trump-criticized-after...

You heard him brag that he doesn't read books, and you said, "Well, who has time?" https://www.theatlantic.com/.../americas-first.../549794/)

When the Central Park Five were exonerated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."

https://www.usatoday.com/.../what-trump-has.../1501321001/

You heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys for them, and you thought, "Yes!"
https://www.latimes.com/.../la-na-trump-campaign-protests...

You heard him tell people at a rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, and you said, "What a great guy!"
https://www.independent.co.uk/.../donald-trump-orders...

You've seen how he curries favor from a parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you've said, "Thumbs up!" https://www.theatlantic.com/.../why-cant-trump.../567320/

You hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise him and his accomplishments, and you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."

https://www.huffpost.com/.../trump-insult-foreign...

You've watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you've said, "What a genius!"
https://www.politico.com/.../138-trump-policy-changes...

You've seen him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you say, "That's smart!"
https://www.usnews.com/.../how-is-donald-trump-profiting...

You've heard him say it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you've said, "That makes sense."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../the-very-big-ocean.../

You've seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you've said, "That's statesmanship!"
https://www.cnn.com/.../donald-trump-dictators.../index.html

Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas, saying "they’re just animals” - and you say, “Well, OK they shouldn't be here anyway.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/.../more-5-400-children-split...

You've witnessed the myriad other manifestations of corruption, low moral character, and outright animalistic disregard for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning, and wearing your MAGA merch, and threatening to beat up anybody who speaks against him.
https://www.americanprogress.org/.../confronting-cost.../

The Cruelty Is The Point

As soon as you've convinced yourself that extraordinary - usually "extra legal" - measures are justified, then those measures become the point of the exercise.

We did some really stupid things in the early years of this century when we decided that waterboarding "suspected terrorists" was something we just had to do because what if there really was an existential threat, and blah blah blah?

I won't go into the details, other than to affirm what's already well-known. ie: You don't get any reliable information from your victims - they just tell you what they think you want to hear. So you end up with torture for the sake of torture.

Enter MAGA.

You can read Adam Serwer's piece in The Atlantic (from Oct 3rd, 2018), but it's behind a paywall. So here's Hawk with a YouTube reading:

We are MAGA

Cruelty

Immiseration

&

Death

Not A Good Start

So there won't be a honeymoon, and prices won't be coming down quickly, and the big-ass omnibus bill is a bit too complicated to get done before summer - if then - and the mass deportations will have wait a while, and at least some of Trump's cabinet picks are going to meet with resistance.

But hey - on the bright side, John Thune says he'll provide a little Congress 101 Tutorial for MAGA's mango-faced ape god so maybe he'll be a little less stupid about what it actually takes to get the whole governance thing done.

Fake Jesus have mercy.

Anna Akana

... explains MAGA's transgender bathroom panic.

Las Vegas Tidbits

Sometimes, when your hero is revealed to be false - to have feet of clay - it can be devastating to the point where everything breaks down inside of you, and it can lead you to some very dark places, where you can rationalize doing some very bad things.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but I won't be surprised if that had something to do with it.

And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect this ride to get bumpier as we go.

Duh