Technocracy

The plutocrats are coming out of hiding now.

Grease Up And Bend Over - Again

Reminder

Practically all of the people who own and operate "The Liberal Press" are part of The Epstein Class, and while they may have their producers and editors throw us a leftie bone once in a while, they're voting Republican, and the fact that they also send campaign "donations" to some Democrats is an exercise in ass-covering,

• or it's a move to drag the "moderates" a little further to the right
• or it's calculated to reinforce the attitude that politicians are all alike - they're all corrupt - and the neo-liberal corporate Dems are going to fuck us over too, so why bother?
• or
• or
• or

They live their values, and they vote their interests.

Those values are clearly on display in the Epstein files, and it's getting pretty goddamned impossible to miss what interests they're voting for.

Today's Belle et al

• Huge debt - and getting huger
• The deficit is growing
• Shrinkflation is accelerating
• Job growth sucks
• Mortgage foreclosures are rising
• Personal bankruptcy is rising
• Farm failures are rising
• Consumer Confidence is in the shitter
• and
• and
• and

But hey - The Epstein Class is doing just fine, so who cares about those workin' slob losers in the "middle class"? Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

How the hell do I short this market?

During a "shutdown", what essential services are cut, and what is kept up and running?

• The hotlines for reporting things like fraud and ID theft are taken down, but the office that handles corporate mergers and acquisitions is on the job
• Air traffic control operations for private jets may be impacted, but the commercial traffic has to be limited

40% of the gains in the stock markets is due to speculation on AI.

Keith

Fuck Jeff Bezos.

Whenever some schmuck like Dr Oz

argues any point regarding

the economy, it helps to mentally

substitute "my yacht money" for "the economy"

"Starting work younger,

and staying on the job longer

will be a boon to

my yacht money"

"We can't move towards

Universal Healthcare

because that would be

bad for my yacht money"

"We must cut the capital gains tax

because it's good for my yacht money"

"A tax code that's progressive and fair

would negatively impact my yacht money"

IF WE TAX THE RICH NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

Follow-Up

After the Vanity Fair piece (I posted it here yesterday), maybe more of the Press Poodles are waking up to just how shitty things are.

And maybe they're also beginning to see the unmistakable pattern indicating it gets a lot shittier (and pretty quickly) if we don't all get with the fuckin' program and put a stop to the Heritage Foundation's accelerating crusade to use our government against us - to finish subjugating us to a small group of plutocratic elites.

USAID cuts could lead to 14M deaths, including nearly 5M kids: report

“No rational person could think the USAID process was a good one,” said White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday of the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year. “Nobody.”

Her comment comes just after Elon Musk – the mega-billionaire who spearheaded the effort when he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative earlier this year – admitted that DOGE was a disappointment. Before USAID staffing cuts were announced in February, Musk called the agency a “criminal” organization on X, the popular social media platform he bought and re-branded.

According to research published in the Lancet journal this summer, the USAID cuts may lead to more than 14 million deaths globally by 2030. Of those 14 million, an estimated 4.5 million would be children under age 5. That amounts to about 700,000 extra child deaths per year, said UCLA, where co-authors of the study are based.

USAID was established by the late former President John F. Kennedy and it was later mandated by Congress. For more than six decades, the agency helped save millions of lives and served to further U.S. interests around the world through humanitarian efforts.

“The study warns that the impact of USAID cuts could extend beyond the agency’s own programs: international donors may also reduce their commitments, further weakening service delivery in countries already dependent on external support,” UCLA explained.

After the USAID cuts made headlines in February, polling showed that a majority of people (58%) opposed abolishing the agency and folding it into the state department, as President Donald Trump’s administration sought to do. Nearly 90% also said they thought the U.S. should spend at least 1% of its federal budget on foreign aid.

Moves to take apart USAID were also swiftly met with protests and lawsuits. A suit filed by the Public Citizen Litigation Group and Democracy Forward alleged the actions caused a “global humanitarian crisis.”

Wiles said she was “initially aghast,” at Musk’s plans to gut USAID.

“I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to USAID believed, as I did, that they do very good work,” she told Vanity Fair.

Wiles said Musk’s plans were already underway by the time he announced them. She also said his desire for “fast-paced” action was shaped by his business experience, including his work at companies Tesla and SpaceX, and it’s not how she would have handled things.

“When Elon said, ‘We’re doing this,’ he was already into it,” she explained. “And that’s probably because he knew it would be horrifying to others. But he decided that it was a better approach to shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it.”

Additionally, Wiles described Musk as an “avowed ketamine [user]” and an “odd, odd duck.”

Musk left the government in May after a public falling out with Trump. However, the impacts of DOGE continue in the form of downstream layoffs, disruptions to the real estate market and more, as Audacy covered last week.

As for the impact of the USAID cuts alone, Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and coordinator of the study published in Lancet, said projections indicate a “sharp increase in preventable deaths, particularly in the most fragile countries.” For example, Reuters reported last week that the Trump administration’s USAID cuts have disrupted life-saving treatment for starving children in Kenya.

“They risk abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations,” Rasella said. “For many low and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.”

And not to get too conspiracy-addled, but Musk has been quite vocal about his concerns over "breeding" and first world population decline. Seems obvious to me that one of the things he'd be willing to do in order could to keep the white world white, is to arrange for the demise of lots of brown people.

Just sayin'.

A Shadow Government

Russell Vought is the Dark Prince of the Deep Swamp.

Today's Belle

The stakes are really high, and Republicans are losing, so they're trying to figure out how to kick the table over without making it look like they're fucking over the MAGA rubes - which, of course, was their plan the whole time.

I am wondering why they're going to meet at the Veep's place though.

My contention all along has been that Trump is a cat's paw - false front - patsy - whatever. He's there as a kind of grand diversion. While everybody's up in arms about what a total ass-wipe clown he is, behind the scenes, the Plutocrats are putting in place the mechanisms they'll need to rule this joint once they pull the lever that throws Trump out and puts Technobot Vance "in charge".

I just really don't quite understand why some people believe they can rule when they themselves know that cooperation and collaboration is how you have to do things if you want anything to get done.

Empires and monarchies and dictatorships always hollow themselves out and collapse under their own weight. And that whole process now takes an average of less than about 40 years - two generations - at the outside.

I'll say it again:

Better men than these jokers have been trying to conquer the world for 40,000 years.

And the world remains undefeated.

So Close They Can Taste It

The Republican project is to tear down what's left of our traditions of democratic self-governance in order to install a corporate plutocracy.

The new form of government will have only 3 main functions:

1. Defend American commercial interests abroad
2. Keep the domestic rabble under control
3. Settle contract disputes

Here It Comes

Ever get the feeling the people running the show in Trump's White House - as well as the MAGA freaks in Congress - are so dead set against Keynesian economics they just can't stand the thought of government having anything to do with the economy at all?

Yeah - me too.

This hard push to dismantle American government seems very much in keeping with what Nancy MacLean has been warning us about for years. ie: There's a cadre  of radical libertarians who believe there are only three things government is supposed to do:

1. Defend American commercial interests abroad
2. Settle contract disputes
3. Domestic law enforcement

Barnes & Noble

Here's my thing: I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist. I think capitalism most closely analogizes the natural order of things.

But that's not enough. I'm also in favor of appropriate regulation because god also favors regulation. Regulation is essential to keep any system healthy.

Blood sugar is a good thing, but too much of that good thing and we die. So god gave us a pancreas.

Without regulation, you create various feedback loops, which gives you runaway growth, and another word for runaway growth is cancer.

So anyway, the total transformation of American government is moving ahead at a rather brisk pace.

US announced job cuts surge 245% in February on federal government layoffs

WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - Layoffs announced by U.S.-employers jumped to levels not seen since the last two recessions amid mass federal government job cuts, canceled contracts and fears of trade wars, offering the clearest sign yet of the toll taken on the labor market by the policies of President Donald Trump's administration.

Global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said on Thursday that planned job cuts vaulted 245% to 172,017 last month, the highest level since July 2020, when the economy was in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the highest February total since the Great Recession 16 years ago.

Government accounted for the bulk of layoffs, with Challenger tracking 62,242 announced job cuts by the federal government from 17 different agencies. The government has laid off about 62,530 workers in the first two months of the year, a whopping 41,311% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

"When mass layoffs occur, it often leaves remaining staff feeling uneasy and uncertain," said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "The likelihood that many more workers leave voluntarily is high."

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is wielding the axe on public spending, an exercise that has resulted in funding freezes, deep spending cuts and the purging of thousands of federal government workers, including scientists and game rangers.

Trump has described the federal government as bloated and wasteful. A federal judge last week temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to carry out the mass firings of thousands of recently hired employees.

Federal government contractors have also been caught in the DOGE crossfire, extending the job losses to the private sector. Tariffs already implemented or threatened by the White House also added to companies sending workers home last month.

Challenger said the "DOGE impact" topped reasons for job cuts and was blamed for 63,583 layoffs, linked both directly to the federal workforce and contractors.

Downstream effects of DOGE, like loss of funding to private non-profits, accounted for another 894 announced job cuts. Most of the federal layoffs have been in Washington D.C., which has lost 61,795 jobs so far this year compared to only 60 in 2024.

Outside government, there were job cuts in retail, technology, services and consumer products industries. The federal government layoffs are not expected to show up in February's employment report, which is scheduled for release on Friday, as the purges happened outside the survey week.

But the hiring and funding freezes could have an impact on government and contractor employment. Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 160,000 jobs after rising 143,000 in January, a Reuters survey of economists showed. The unemployment rate is forecast unchanged at 4.0%.

I can see a method to the madness. Put enough people into a bit of a panic over their economic fate, and they'll hand you the power you want.

It's not much different from religion:

1. Sell 'em a make-believe disease
2. Sell 'em your make-believe cure

That's why religion and wingnut politics are so often intertwined - they're both basically the same fucking scam.

From The Bulwark

An oldie but a goodie from Nov 18, 2024

It’s Time to Consider the Worst-Case Scenario
Let’s go to the Bad Place together.

Jonathan V. Last

Until today I’ve resisted writing about the worst-case scenario for Trump’s second term. Instead, I’ve written (twice) about the best-case scenario.

But the conventional wisdom seems to have settled on the view that, Sure, this is all very bad. But also: It’s ultimately fine.

I view this as a dangerous failure of imagination.

So I’m going to lay out two big ideas for you today. The first is something like the worst-case scenario. It isn’t the literal worst-case scenario. The real worst case is always some version of “nuclear holocaust and everyone dies.” Instead what I’m going to describe is a 90th percentile variant: A set of outcomes that are the worst of the unlikely-but-not-black-swan timeline.

The second idea is that I’m going to try to persuade you that if Trump were actively pursuing such a set of outcomes, it would look very much like what we’re already seeing, right now.

In short, I’m going to ask you to expand your mind and peek over the horizon with me. But be warned: This isn’t going to be any fun.

Buckle up.

1. Forests and Trees

Last week Freddie deBoer wrote that liberals shouldn’t panic because, sure, Trump would be bad. But he wouldn’t be that bad.

A lot of awful stuff is going to happen. Some immediate pain points include the replacement of Lina Khan at the FTC with a pliable pro-corporate stooge, the dismantling of Joe Biden’s excellent NLRB, and an immediate gutting of federal wildlife and environmental protections. A lot worse will follow, very likely including even more tax cuts, which are the real reason so many upper-crust types held their nose and voted for Trump. (At the end of the day, there’s always enough will in Congress to cut taxes.) The incoherence that’s inherent to Trump’s foreign policy means that an honest-to-go shooting war might be possible. No relief will be coming for the Rust Belt or any other part of the United States hurt by deindustrialization. This all sucks and there’s going to be some dark times ahead.

At the same time, recent doomsaying has a lot of that usual Trump-era liberal chauvinism in it, where the relentless panic seems competitive and performative. . . . Yes, things are bad, but they’ve been bad before, and as destructive as the first Trump term was it wasn’t as terrible as people predicted. We’ve also had a worse presidential administration in clear living memory.

Is this a joke? Because I’m sorry but if you look at Trump’s second term and put “wildlife and environmental protections” in your top hundred concerns then something is deeply wrong with your priorities.

And the assertion that Trump’s first term “wasn’t as terrible as people predicted”?

He fired the federal government’s pandemic response team and then talked about injecting people with bleach while a global pandemic killed a million fucking Americans.

Then he assembled an armed mob and directed them to march on the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the duly elected incoming president from taking power.

If anyone had predicted either of those outcomes in 2016, they would have been dismissed as barking mad. The reality of Trump 1.0 turned out to be every bit the Worst-Case Scenario 1.0.

DeBoer is, like many people grappling with Trump 2.0, making a bunch of category errors and failing to imagine what a true worst-case scenario could look like.

And let me tell you: It has nothing to do with tax cuts, the FTC, and the NLRB.

When We Were Great

Here in USAmerica Inc, the top 10% currently own close to 70% of all the wealth in the country, while the lower half own down around 3%.

When "we were great" (ie: the late 1800s - back where Trump and his plutocrat buddies want to take us) the top 1% (about 4,000 families) owned as much wealth as all other families combined.

It's my contention that they're not trying to push us back to the 1950s, or the 1850s, but all the way back to the 1750s.

A Question

Why is his left hand not on the bible?

I don't know that it makes any difference in any real sense, but generally, your left hand goes on the bible - or the Baghavad Gita - or Mad Magazine - or whatever the fuck you think might impart a little sense of gravitas to the occasion, or convey to onlookers that you actually mean what you're saying.

C'mon - WTF, Donny boy?

And a purple tie? Purple - as in what - royalty?

You think this isn't going to be one fucked up ride?

We have 651 days until the Mid-Term Elections. 651 days to slug it out with a soon-to-be entrenched administration, that I think is absolutely bent on hot-wiring this thing so they can drive us over the cliff into a full blown plutocracy.

Plutocrats On Parade

The MAGA-verse’s Clash of Titans

Steve Bannon’s attack on Elon Musk exposes one of the biggest fault lines running through

In order to catapult himself back to the White House, Donald Trump has grown his Make America Great Again party into a very big tent. That tent includes many uncomfortable alliances, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the oil companies he used to fight when he was an environmental lawyer. But perhaps the most tenuous of bedfellows are right-wing techno-oligarchs like Elon Musk and populist nationalists like Steve Bannon, who want to do away with Big Tech’s undue influence over government. And after Inauguration Day, the strength of this unlikely alliance is going to be put to the test.

The math of the situation is pretty simple: Trump’s campaign and other Republican candidates got about $277 million from Musk, the world’s richest man, who, like so many wealthy donors, now wants his seat at the table. And like it or not (personally I do not), the system is set up to reward donors like him. While many have already been appointed to plum gigs like ambassadorships and Cabinet posts, Musk, who is slated to co-run the Department of Government Efficiency, has other ideas for his role in Trump 2.0. The billionaire CEO wants to drastically cut the federal budget, and he wants to do it with some help from his friends (other millionaire and billionaire tech bros). Musk’s plan to gut the federal bureaucracy does not run contrary to MAGA; in fact, it’s exactly what the folks behind Project 2025 want to do. But his quest to take over the administrative state does set him in direct opposition with Bannon—one of Trumpworld’s loudest voices, who has repeatedly railed against globalism and corporate America’s “ruling elites” while pushing for “populist revolt.”

“The two are pro-Trump, but that might be all they have in common,” Oliver Darcy, who writes the Status media newsletter, texted me over the weekend. “Bannon is a populist and has taken a tough stance on billionaires trying to use their wealth to purchase political influence. My suspicion is that Bannon believes Elon is primarily interested in exploiting the MAGA coalition to benefit his companies and bottom line versus being a real believer in the movement itself. Consequently, Bannon has spent years focusing harsh criticism on Elon.”

Musk and Bannon’s feuding has already spilled out into public view. Last month, after the Tesla CEO praised H-1B foreign worker visas for helping make America “strong,” Bannon told Musk to “sit in the back and study” because he was a recent MAGA convert. Trump’s former White House chief strategist went even further last week, telling an Italian newspaper that Musk “is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it. I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.” Bannon has also criticized the billionaire’s upbringing in apartheid South Africa. “Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” he said, arguing that Musk “should go back to South Africa,” and asking, “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans…making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

Three points on this: First, Bannon probably should have thought about Musk’s “evil” nature before Trump’s inner circle allowed him to basically bankroll Trump’s campaign. Second, the notion that the MAGA movement loathes racism—when the very phrase “America first” originated with antisemite Charles Lindbergh—seems to be a bit of a misdirection. And third, questioning Musk’s MAGA bona fides simply because he’s shifted his beliefs seems kind of strange since Trumpworld is chockablock with converts of all stripes: JD Vance was Never Trump before 2018, Musk donated to both John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004, and Trump himself was a Democrat as late as 2001. Indeed, perhaps the only trait all these people share is a thirst for self-advancement.

The most likely factor determining Musk’s fate in the MAGA-verse is whether he and his ilk want to make the federal government more dysfunctional—as Musk did with X, a husk of the site formerly known as Twitter—or more efficient. And if it’s the latter, what would a more efficient government actually look like? The New York Times reports that after inauguration, a “group of Silicon Valley–inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they seek to cut costs like Mr. Musk did at X, his social media platform.”

It’s possible that this plan will work, and Musk is far from the first person to muse about cutting the federal government. But it seems probable that the billionaire’s plan will devolve into a fiasco of epic proportions: Musk himself has, worryingly, acknowledged that ordinary Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” in order to put America on firmer fiscal footing, i.e., pay for Trump’s tax cuts for the very wealthy. Whatever the case may be, Musk’s plan could create a scenario in which he has more control over the levers of power than even Trump.

What does seem certain is that Musk will wield his MAGA clout to help his companies and to grow his personal wealth. “We’ve seen peak Elon, his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the true issues, and, quite frankly, his support of just himself, the sole objective is to become a trillionaire,” Bannon told the Italian newspaper. “That’s his objective.” Bannon is likely correct in claiming that Musk wants to achieve “techno-feudalism on a global scale.”

Still, peel back their ideological differences, and it’s hard to see how this is anything more than a power struggle to control Trump 2.0. Are we really meant to believe that Musk is really any more self-interested than, say, Trump? Everyone in and around Trump’s second administration—from the tech founders funding his inauguration to the billionaires in his Cabinet—strikes me as self-interested. We’re about to witness what happens when public service is being conducted by a mass of people who don’t believe in serving anything but themselves.

Time To Save Capitalism ...

... from the capitalists - again.

The plutocrats bought more and more coin-operated politicians who actually made it illegal for the corporations not to pimp their profitability (see Sarbanes-Oxley). They have a perverse incentive to turn everything into a revenue opportunity in order to wring every last penny out of it.

The way 21st century capitalism works is the equivalent of hunting to extinction a prey species vital to the survival of humankind.

Told Ya

That Slippery Slope Thing

The kicker here of course is that they're creating a new agency to grace this fucked up racist shit with the appropriate official imprimatur.

And I realize this is the classic Slippery Slope Fallacy, but if this thing is left to its own devices, it will morph into a spoils system, where people can point at an immigrant-owned business or property, make whatever claims of illegality that seem to fit, and confiscate that commercial entity, splitting the proceeds with the coin-operated asshole running the Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program.

Sure hope everybody's ready for an American version of Kristallnacht. Cuz that's where we're headed if we don't wise up and stop it.

Missouri Republican proposes $1,000 bounty program to turn in undocumented immigrants

State Representative An incoming Missouri Republican lawmaker introduced a bill this week that would offer $1,000 bounties to residents who turn in undocumented immigrants to the state highway patrol.

The bill, filed by Sen.-elect David Gregory, a St. Louis-area Republican, would require the Missouri Department of Public Safety to create phone and email hotlines as well as an online portal where Missourians would be able to report alleged undocumented immigrants.

The bill is among several pieces of legislation that deal with illegal immigration ahead of next month’s legislative session. They come as President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans across the country have made frustrations with immigration, and the U.S.-Mexico border, a hot-button issue.

In addition to the payouts, Gregory’s bill would require the Department of Public Safety to create a “Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program.” The program would certify people to become bounty hunters to find and detain undocumented immigrants.

Individuals who are licensed as bail bond agents or surety recovery agents would be able to apply to become bounty hunters under Gregory’s bill.

Undocumented immigrants who are caught by the bounty hunters would be considered guilty of “trespass by an illegal alien.” Those found guilty of the offense could face jail time and would be prohibited from voting and other rights.

Gregory, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had made illegal immigration one of the central focuses of his Senate campaign. He filmed a campaign ad at the southern border with Mexico and has promoted media coverage of his bill on social media.

Edgar Palacios, executive director of Revolución Educativa, a Kansas City group focused on education issues in the Latino community, said Gregory’s bill was “horrendous.”

“Immigrants are human and humans aren’t meant to be hunted,” Palacios said in an interview. “This idea of having a bounty hunter for immigrants is wild and I think it displays a narrative that, again, people see, not everybody, but certain people see immigrants as inhuman.”

Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP State Conference, drew parallels between Gregory’s bill and legislation historically aimed at marginalized groups such as the 1820 Missouri Compromise which admitted Missouri as a slave state.

“This bill by our new senator has returned exactly to those roots,” Chapel said. “You’re going to create a system that is not only going to differentiate people based on how God made them, which, in my spiritual belief, is just fundamentally wrong, but then you’re going to try to create in a system…that seeks to differentiate people in much the same way that some of the Jim Crow laws did.”

Chapel referred to the bill as “a really draconian and racist piece of legislation.”

“It scares the hell out of me,” he said. “And the reason it does is because I already know that Black and brown people have been catching hell in the state of Missouri for a very long time.”

Impact on Kansas City

While Gregory faces blowback for his bill, it comes as Missouri politics have been awash in rhetoric about migrants. The focus on immigration would have an outsized impact on the Kansas City region, which has become a center of migrant arrivals over the last decade, according to U.S. immigration court data analyzed by The Washington Post.

Since 2014, roughly 8,300 migrants have settled in Jackson County since 2014 and 37% came from Honduras.

Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Mike Parson sent Missouri National Guard troops to aid Texas, which has promoted a plan dubbed “Operation Lone Star” that uses Texas state resources to combat illegal border crossings.

Parson, who will term out of office next month, heavily promoted the deployment, even though he later vetoed funding to continue it.

Candidates for office in both major parties emphasized illegal immigration on the campaign trail, including Democrat Lucas Kunce. But the issue was perhaps the most prevalent in the race to succeed Parson as governor, with all three major GOP candidates touting immigration frustrations in campaign ads and public statements.

Each of the three candidates, including Gov.-elect Mike Kehoe, also seized on comments Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas made in April welcoming migrant workers who are in the United States legally.

Amid the campaign rhetoric, outgoing House Speaker Dean Plocher, a Des Peres Republican, also created a committee that focused on “Illegal Immigrant Crimes.” The committee held hearings across the state, including in Kansas City, to maximize public attention on the issue.

For Palacios, with Revolución Educativa, immigrants are coming to the U.S. in search of a better life and to pursue “the American dream.” He said politicians should be focused on ensuring everyone has access to education and opportunities.

“I think the narrative is harmful. I think it’s designed to create fear amongst certain members of our community,” Palacios said. “It riles up a base that may not fully appreciate, again, the value that immigrants and folks from the migrant community bring, not to our state, but to our country.”

What A Revoltin' Development

I guess I'm wondering about two things here.

Maybe the fact that we have way too many guns in this country will be something of a deterrent to the accelerating rise of plutocracy.

And if that's case, then I have to wonder when we might see a total reversal of the norm that's favored ammosexuality for the last 45 years, so the big companies lobby the regime in Washington to start pushing to disarm America - fully supported by MAGA, and vehemently opposed by "the left".

Is the insurance carrier committing a violent act by denying care?

Can we overlook the murder of an insurance exec, calling it justifiable homicide?

Shit just gets weirder as we go.

Oh, Elmo

Cuz Elon Musk loves "free speech", and he never censors or suppresses content on twixter.

Trump campaign worked with Musk’s X to keep leaked JD Vance file off platform

Journalist who published vetting document on Republican running mate was kicked off site formerly known as Twitter

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign worked with X to prevent information about JD Vance from being posted on the social media platform, a move that resulted in the journalist who revealed the information being kicked off the site, according to reports.

The former president’s team contacted X, owned by the billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk, about a 271-page document compiled by his campaign to vet his running mate that was linked to by Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist, the New York Times has reported.

X responded by blocking links to the material, claiming that it contained sensitive personal information such as the Ohio US senator’s social security number, and banned Klippenstein from the platform.

The materials published by Klippenstein on his Substack in September appear to be related to a hack of the Trump campaign earlier this year, which the FBI has linked to Iran. Documents from the hack have been shared with several media outlets, which have chosen to not publish them.

Media outlets did not reach the same decision when they gave significant attention to files from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign that had been hacked and leaked by Russian intelligence before she ultimately lost that election to Trump. At one point, Trump had said he hoped Russia would be “able to find” some of Clinton’s files.

The leaked dossier on JD Vance is revealing in all the things it doesn’t say

The removal of the material from X has highlighted the increasingly strident support of Musk, the world’s richest person, for Trump’s attempt to return to the White House after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. After buying Twitter in 2022, Musk said that he was an advocate of free speech and the open sharing of information, even if it offended either political party.

Last week, Musk appeared at a Pennsylvania rally alongside the former president, performing an awkward jump on stage before declaring that “I’m not just Maga – I’m dark Maga” while invoking the Republican nominee’s Make America Great Again slogan.

Musk added that “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win in November against Kamala Harris, complaining that she and her fellow Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively”.

Klippenstein, whose X account was restored following the New York Times reporting, said in a Substack post on Friday that Musk had purchased political influence and “is wielding that influence in increasingly brazen ways”.

“The real election interference here is that a social media corporation can decree certain information unfit for the American electorate,” he wrote.

“Two of our most sacred rights as Americans are the freedoms of speech and assembly, online or otherwise. It is a national humiliation that these rights can be curtailed by anyone with enough digits in their bank account.”

Musk is set to appear at further Trump rallies – and he may even knock on voters’ doors for the campaign in Pennsylvania in the coming week. He has funded a political action entity called America Pac that has spent around $80m to help Trump reach voters in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania.

Is This Infighting?

No, not really. Nobody is arguing the actual policy points - although there are some differences - they're only arguing about how hard they should push the thing.

Translating: 

"We plan on doing every shitty thing the Dems say we're planning to do, but we know we need to dial back the stridency in public so the unwashed hoards of idiots we need to vote for this pile of dog shit will be less frightened by it."

Project 2025 ex-director condemns Heritage president’s ‘violent rhetoric’

Paul Dans, who led the project until July, also called on JD Vance to withdraw his foreword for Heritage President Kevin Roberts’s book.

The former director of the right-wing policy and personnel blueprint known as Project 2025 is condemning what he sees as “violent rhetoric” from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and calling on Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance to retract the foreword he wrote for Roberts’s book.

“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well,” Paul Dans, who led Project 2025 until July, said in an interview. “There’s no place for this sort of violent rhetoric and bellicose taunting, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has now been subject to not one but two assassination attempts.”

Roberts, who took over Washington’s preeminent conservative think tank in 2021, declared a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be,” during an appearance on a pro-Trump podcast in July, before a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. That same month, Roberts started marketing his book, whose cover proposed “Burning Down Washington” and featured an image of a match.

Roberts declined to be interviewed. Heritage spokesman Noah Weinrich said Roberts’s remark on the podcast was meant to warn of left-wing violence. “Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr. Roberts’s comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” he said.

Roberts used similar language in online promotional materials for his book. In early versions of the text reviewed by The Washington Post, Roberts called for “a political revolution” to “overthrow today’s incarnation of the ruling class,” argued that the nation “must be destroyed and replaced,” and supported the elimination of institutions including the Ivy League, the FBI, Fairfax County Public Schools and the Boy Scouts.

Dans and Roberts disagreed over the direction of Project 2025, a collaboration among more than 100 right-wing groups that was convened by Heritage and run by Dans. Dans blames Roberts for much of the backlash that the effort has received. He said he warned Roberts against provocative media interviews and hyperbolic language, especially after the Trump campaign repeatedly disavowed Project 2025 and warned participants to stop talking to reporters about plans for a second Trump administration. Over the summer, Democrats turned Project 2025 into a byword for Trump’s second-term agenda and argued that voters should oppose it.

“There’s really no place for this level of rhetoric, let alone from the head of an august think tank,” Dans said. “And by doing that, he’s essentially besmirched the professional reputations of everyone involved in Project 2025.”

A lawyer representing Heritage dismissed Dans’s criticisms and suggested he is motivated by a dispute with his former employer. Dans declined to comment on the circumstances of his departure.

After a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, wounding the former president and killing one attendee, the promotional text for Roberts’s book was revised to soften some of the most inflammatory phrases. Gone was a reference to overthrowing the ruling class; the revolution was specified as “peaceful”; and Fairfax County schools and the Boy Scouts were spared. The subtitle changed from “Burning Down Washington” to “Taking Back Washington,” and the match disappeared from the cover.

In August, Roberts said he would delay the book’s publication, originally scheduled for September, until after the election.

“Dr. Roberts initially was using a rhetorical turn of phrase to emphasize the need for certain aspects of the federal government to be restored to a citizen-centered balance, rather than being the captive of a small minority from the Left,” Weinrich said of the changes. “However, following the slanderous media coverage of Project 2025, Dr. Roberts did not want to allow the same voices to attribute false allegations of violence to his book as well.”

Roberts’s book includes a foreword by Vance, whom Roberts has described as a friend. Dans said Vance should distance himself from Roberts by withdrawing his foreword for the book. A spokesman for Vance declined to comment.

The notoriety surrounding Project 2025 has been a fundraising boon for Heritage, helping the foundation collect a record $150 million in 2023, according to the group’s public disclosures. Although Heritage publicly promoted Project 2025 as a $22 million initiative, its actual budget was less than $2 million, according to people familiar with the figures. Weinrich said $22 million reflected the annual spending across all Heritage departments and events to support the project, not only the budget for the project’s dedicated staff, and only 1.1 percent of the foundation’s 2023 fundraising was specifically directed to Project 2025.

“Project 2025 was and is an all-of-Heritage effort,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with Heritage and other think tanks, such as the America First Policy Institute and the Center for Renewing America, that he viewed as raising money off him. Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation especially drew the wrath of Trump and his advisers because of their ongoing self-promotion amid intensifying Democratic attacks.

“Project 2025 is radioactive to the Trump-Vance transition,” said Howard Lutnick, a billionaire investor who is co-chair of the official transition. “Zero. Total ban. Radioactive. Any of those words, feel free to pick them.”

Dans reiterated that Trump was never involved in Project 2025. He called it ironic that the project has become a political liability for him, because Roberts initially supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival in the GOP nominating contest. The Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025’s 900-page book of policy proposals at a 2023 conference that featured DeSantis as the marquee speaker. Trump was not invited to that event. He has participated in other Heritage Foundation gatherings and took a private flight with Roberts to a summit in 2022.

In August 2023, Roberts attended the DeSantis campaign’s after-party at the first Republican presidential debate. He contributed $1,246.97 to DeSantis’s campaign. (Roberts and his wife have also donated to Trump.) Several Heritage staffers, including Roberts’s personal press secretary, left to work for DeSantis. Once the Florida governor dropped out of the race in January, Roberts quickly shifted emphasis, presenting Heritage’s work as “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Weinrich stressed Heritage’s nonprofit status, which restricts partisan activities, to deny that the foundation favored candidates or coordinated with campaigns. “Heritage did not raise money in the name of staffing a second Trump administration,” he said.

Roberts’s ties to DeSantis were part of the reason that Trump’s campaign rebuked Project 2025 in public statements in November and December. Dans said he wished Trump’s advisers had weighed in privately. But he insisted he never heard from them, disputing previous reporting that said Trump co-campaign manager Susie Wiles complained to him and other Heritage leaders. The public admonitions served to draw more attention to the controversy, he said, and invite further Democratic attacks.

“We took the instruction, as we had before, to lay low,” Dans said. “But in the case of Kevin, he didn’t.”

Roberts’s continuing publicity efforts gave Democrats an opportunity to tie Project 2025, and by extension Trump, to more controversial positions supported by some Heritage employees but not by the Project 2025 policy book or the Trump campaign. Some articles and social media posts from Heritage have advocated stricter abortion bans than Trump has and cuts to Social Security. Dans said he warned others at Heritage to remove statements that were contrary to Trump’s position and would embolden Democrats to claim Trump would cut Social Security.

Roberts’s book also departed from Trump’s positions by criticizing in vitro fertilization and contraception, according to an advance copy obtained by the liberal group Media Matters.

“Heritage cannot and does not take direction from any political campaign,” Weinrich said. “Dr. Roberts was not seeking publicity: We were speaking regularly to other conservative leaders and supporters who desperately wanted — and still want — a plan for governance.”

Roberts has showed no sign of changing course because of the blowback.

“We allowed the radical left to define the brand Project 2025,” Roberts said at the New York Times Climate Forward conference on Sept. 25. “We should have — figuratively speaking — punched back. Lesson learned.”