Monthly Archives: February 2025

We have a couple of nominees this time, who we tie together because of their methodology similarities. The first is Rep. Van Orden (R-WI), who has filed an impeachment motion … against a judge:

Impeaching Paul Engelmayer, judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The second is Rep Eli Crane (R-AZ) doing the same thing … to the same judge:

“Using the powers of his high office, Judge Engelmayer interfered with the will of the people,” Mr. Crane’s impeachment resolution stated. “In so doing, Judge Engelmayer used the powers of his position to engage in actions that overstep his judicial authority. By making a political decision outside the scope of his legal duties, he compromised the impartiality of our judicial system.” [The Washington Times]

There are co-sponsors involved, but they were slow to the gate and are, therefore, excluded from the nomination. The decision of your celebrity judge is final, of course.

Of course, this is wrong on more than one level. First, the notion that a judge slowing down radical, unheard of financial maneuvers by someone who has no qualifications – I speak of Mr Musk – to do the job is somehow an impeachable offense shows a lack of knowledge, or judgment, unacceptable in a member of Congress.

Typically, judges are impeached for offensive behavior, although the real point of impeachment is to curtail damage caused by corruption.

Second, the entire argument that the election result is a mandate is ridiculous. When your candidate gets less than 50% of the vote, it’s not a mandate – it’s a warning from the voters that both parties need to improve themselves.

Third, President Trump’s ideal role in cleaning up overspending is minimal; that is actually the role of these two members of Congress, along with some 530+ other members, now isn’t it? The purse strings are in Congress’ many hands, not the President’s. Try being responsible members, eh?

Another soap opera created by soap opera addicts. And it’s worth remembering that this judge was nominated by President Obama, and confirmed 98-0.

Erick Erickson seems to have it:

There is no equivalence between Ukraine and Russia in this war. Donald Trump, in yesterday’s General Assembly vote, aligned our nation with three ruthless dictators, all three of whom are actively engaged in the invasion of Ukraine.

That is wrong.

But I have no doubt he’s already back on his horse and whipping it along. Can’t have those rascally non-conservatives getting themselves organized.

Being part of the Axis of Evil won’t feel so bad, Erickson. Drink more bourbon.

Bitcoins have fallen a bit in value recently. Here’s a one month chart:

Back in late January, it was over $102,000/coin, so call it a 20% drop over roughly a month. Beyond noting that this much volatility invalidates any bids it may be making to become a real currency, I shall withhold any speculations. I’ve heard nothing about the cryptocurrencies sponsored by President Trump or his wife, Melania.

But the volatility is a warning. It’s up, it’s down – and Bitcoin isn’t just another investment. Real investments are in going concerns that are creating something of value. The value production of the cryptocurrencies lies in intangibilities, notoriously hard to value, and even harder when they have difficult to measure negative impacts on society.

Four kids and their Yorkie, named Fluffy. Or Gabriel. I can never remember.

Mysterious Island (2005) is a mixture of pirates, giant creatures out for a bite of dainty human flesh, and, ah, Captain Nemo and his submarine, the Nautilus. Oh, and Union and Confederate soldiers shepherding a few ladies.

It’s really quite the mess. The special effects, as well as the script, are particularly wretched, while the acting, featuring Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan, is not that bad. However, it also has some dude playing the pirate captain, who is stuck with terribly cliched dialog and compensates by leaving toothmarks all over the scenery.

All in all, absent a completist urge of some sort, I don’t think this is worth your time.

Somatic:

1. : of, relating to, or affecting the body especially as distinguished from the germplasm
2. : of or relating to the wall of the body : PARIETAL

[Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Why the best modern artists returned to nakedness to find the truth,” Sebastian Smee, WaPo:

All this particularity activates our sense of our own bodies, stimulating somatic memories of what it is like to touch and to feel the touch of others.

This was back on the February 18th, I fear I’m a little bit behind.

“Congress can’t do anything except complain about it,” [Senator Grassley (R-IA)] says, “but I think we have to have sympathy and understanding for people that are laid off.” [RadioIowa]

Where it refers to the firings of Federal employees, when Congress has authorized the funds to hire these folks for specific jobs. Grassley’s making the case that an Executive can fire who they want, as if Grassley works for the Executive; but Congress is the law making branch of the government, and the Executive is responsible for executing the actions to implement the laws, not decide if the laws should be implemented.

Trump is a case of someone believing propaganda and acting on it, and discovering that part of the definition of propaganda is that it’s false.

Grassley’s ninety-two, and should have the sense to simply retire.

Sadly, not all of the audience was charmed. Some were professional curmudgeons.

Fantasia (1940), as a mostly plotless experiment, defies easy description, and the fact that it was made 80+ years ago, when sensibilities were substantially different from today, and the experiential base in the area of animation far smaller, than today’s audiences’.

Think No Frozen (2013).

It might be best considered as eight experiments in mixing music with animation, and sometimes a bit of live action, as vignettes. It’s fun, it’s thought-provoking.

It’s even scary.

There’s good reason Fantasia is considered a classic, and that’s not confined to chronological origin. It’s a master class in telling stories through movement. Recommended.

It would seem there’s a bit of pressure being brought to bear on GOP Members of Congress, although whether it’s artificial or earnest is of some question. I brought this up yesterday in this post concerning the company that owns Truth Social. Today, I see three more townhalls mentioned, all in a single CNN/Politics article:

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald [R-WI-5th] was questioned by constituents about Ukraine and Elon Musk’s efforts with the Department of Government Efficiency during a town hall Thursday in West Bend, Wisconsin, according to CNN affiliate TMJ4.

One constituent asked, “How can we be represented by you if you don’t have a voice in Congress?” Other attendees brought signs, including one that read “presidents are not kings.” Trump referred to himself as a “king” in a social media post this week.

Fitzgerald disagreed with the president’s comments this week falsely accusing Ukraine of starting the war with Russia. “No, Ukraine did not start the war,” he said at the town hall, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky need to be “in the room” for negotiations to end the conflict.

Wisconsin’s Fifth District is heavily Republican. At least Rep Fitzgerald has publicly clashed with the President.

The second townhall was hosted by Rep. Glenn Grothman:

Grotham defended Musk’s efforts on Friday, telling WBAY, “I think if they understood more what was going on they would like him. They just don’t believe the degree to which he’s looking out for the average guy, which is what he is trying to do.”

Which sounds like political suicide to me. The final townhall was hosted by Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-OR), for whom I do not have a transcript, but is reported as also being contentious by CNN.

Again, townhalls are easily flooded by partisans. I have to consider this highly contingent on factors beyond my ability to evaluate.

But it is interesting.

Ostensibly fashion, it has the sour taste of a punkage of the fashion world, doesn’t it?

A while back I mentioned some new tech involving batteries built of aluminium. While I have nothing new on that, there’s an old tech battery, built in, ah, China, that may be a competitor for lithium ion batteries:

If you bought an EV with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, you could expect lower car payments, less fire risk and more years of use out of your car — but you wouldn’t be able to go as far on a single charge as you could with the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries commonly found in American and European electric cars. That trade-off has made LFP batteries the go-to choice for standard-range EVs in China, helping to make electric cars more affordable and limit pollution.

Now, American companies are starting to build their own LFP batteries to catch up to their Chinese rivals.

“I definitely suspect that there will be some homegrown LFP chemistries in the next couple years, and we’ll start to see it … grow quite rapidly over the next five to 10 years,” said Scott Moura, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley. [WaPo]

Lower range, but better for the environment, according to the article. That’s halfway there.

The classic play returns to the boards at St. Paul’s Gremlin Theatre (later note: this website appears to be seriously out of date), put on by the production company Theatre 55. If a bit rough around the edges, let it be known that the company, already constrained to players over the age of 55 where possible, was ravaged by a flu pathogen midway through its run. The effort, skill, and talent is still there, though.

Oh, and Audrey II ! Such a great special effect she was!

I am sad to report that the last two showings are tomorrow, so if you’d like to see Little Shop Of Horrors on stage, don’t wait, get your tickets now!

It’s been a month and a bit since I last wrote about the stock price / market cap, yes, yes, different ways to express the same thing, of the stock of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., aka DJT. Last time we peeked in at this soap opera of a company, their only real product is its primary stock holder, President Trump, and perhaps the social media site, Truth Social, they provide. Their primary competition, due to similar styles, is the Elon Musk-owned X, née Twitter, with other social media, such as Facebook, being secondary competition due to differing styles of social media or, in the case of BlueSky, having lower profiles. X’s main draw seems to be transitioning from its style to its owner, incidentally, but I do not use X, so I cannot be authoritative.

The stock price of DJT five weeks ago was $39/share, roughly.

It’s been a month of the Presidency for President Trump, during which he’s drunkenly, metaphorically speaking, fired Executive Branch employees. Probationary employees come in great numbers and are least protected, so they’ve been fired first, but inspectors general, who are tasked with finding corruption and mistakes, and are thus a huge threat to a lifelong conman, have also been a favorite target. He hired the aforementioned Mr Musk to search computer systems for signs of corruption and waste, which are the lodestones[] of the political right.

Mr Musk has been notably prolix on the topic, but reportedly inaccurate. The media and, hopefully, everyone else has learned not to take Mr Musk’s pronouncements seriously.

One could credibly argue that President Trump is executing on many of his promises, although there are notable exceptions, such as admitting that inflation is not an easy demon to slay; he’s taken to blaming the previous Administration for necessary consequences of his own actions.

So what, if anything, has this meant for DJT? Is it skyrocketing in response to him keeping some promises?

This is the month Yahoo! Financial view of DJT, and so we can see DJT is down 21%; if we do the math for more than a month, $39 to $28, it’s more of a 28% drop. DJT has not been good to its buyers, but very good to its shorters. A $28/sh price translates to a market cap of $6 billion+.

So what’s happened? That’s always speculative, isn’t it? BlueSky’s profile has elevated in the last month, as it gains national media mentions. Incidentally, several of my friends, long-time (35+ years) social media users, have announced they are leaving X and Facebook for BlueSky. At the risk of sounding, well, old, this same sort of thing was happening forty years ago: Manage a site so that the users cannot trust the managers to treat them fairly, and, at some point, the herd picks up tents and moves to a different site. The “moat” that business analysts often discuss is quite fragile when it comes to social media, with threats from within (enshittification) and without (troll attacks).

Between the two threats, you have to wonder if all social media sites are going to become body farms, and we’ll all go back to interacting in Real Life. I presume Truth Social will remain popular, to the extent that it is, only so long as President Trump remains popular. At some point, its population will consist only of the top-level parasites who don’t understand why everyone else left. DJT will become worthless.

But that’s not quite the point. How shall we read the goat entrails that is the chart, above? I suspect that at this point, the Trump fanbase, MAGA, has bought all the DJT they can afford; professional investors have evaluated DJT, classified it as having little future, and either are not buying it or are even shorting it. Amateur investors, seeing President Trump’s popularity beginning to slip, are not buying. See this CNN/Politics story on a recent Georgia townhall in which a Republican congressman had a cool reception. It’s tricky to evaluate such townhalls, since they’re easy to flood with partisans, but I thought it interesting.

DJT is in decay mode. That doesn’t mean it’ll continue to decay. If DJT’s parent company has a trick up its sleeve, or announcement of a business alliance, or some other bit of news, it could easily leap upwards. Alix Breeden on Daily Kos has a take on its future, and, as it’s informed by more research than I have time for, it may have some interest.

As ever, I’m not a financial advisor, I’m just a worn-out software engineer with 4 decades in social media, some of it technological, some of it as a user, some of it as an author, some of it as a manager (not commercial). Find yourself a financial advisor. This is just honest opinion on a social media site that has no interest in screwing you over.

… but a defensive reaction. Here’s Erick Erickson:

Donald Trump has fired Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States.

He’s impressed by Ms Shogan’s “defiance” of President Biden when it came to the ERA count. And so…

This was a mistake. Donald Trump just fired the woman who stood up to Joe Biden and also who made veterans a priority for the National Archives. The Archivist should be a non-partisan position precisely because of the pressure brought by Joe Biden, and Ms. Shogan showed she had the fortitude to defy political pressure.

And it’s all in the last sentence, because President Trump cannot tolerate dissent, not even potential dissent. After all, dissent has to start somewhere, and dissent will be the origin of his downfall, so you gotta stamp it out wherever it’s located, even if it’s not active.

I’m unsure as to whether Erickson doesn’t understand his broken President Trump, or is merely covering up.

Readers may recall I mentioned a DoJ official by the name of Emil Bove as being a likely candidate for being in the news just a day or two ago. Lo and behold, he’s begun fulfilling my open-ended prophecy / prediction:

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) either has an absolutely terrific sense of humor, or she’s playing President Trump like a harmonica, or … stroke that ego! Anyways, she’s filed a bill, H.R.1395, with the title

To amend title 5, United States Code, to designate Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day as a legal public holiday.

Yep. No kidding. I think that’s worth a Landgrebe Award Nomination. Or possibly she should be on SNL.

Flow (2024) is a hard movie to describe. Lacking dialog, the audience must interpret the scenery and actions of the animals that appear, because there are no humans, and the film implies that, in this alternate Universe, they either never existed, or they’re gone without explanation. The cities the animals encounter in the course of their quest for survival look like some of the cities built by the old South American civilizations: monumental stone work, pyramids, and etc, and the South American capybara, a giant rodent, is among the lead characters.

It’s all animated, and seems to be of superior quality, although my Arts Editor did mutter something about Water doesn’t look like that! at one point. The animals seemed quite accurate in their movements; the behaviors, on the other hand, are a trifle difficult to believe unless we accord the lead characters, which are a cat, a dog, a capybara, a lemur, and a secretarybird, an increasing intelligence as time passes. That’s not unreasonable.

Near the end, the movie seemingly lapses into incoherence. Perhaps more sagacious viewers than I grasped the meaning of the last few incidents, but the lack of satisfying explanation, while not necessary in every story, see Last And First Men (2020), just increased my frustration in this particular case.

All that said, the art is excellent, and the story is engrossing. I can’t quite Recommend it, but it’s darn good.

Now-former Southern District of New York lead prosecutor Danielle Sassoon’s opening paragraph from her resignation letter to AG Bondi:

On February 10, 2025, I received a memorandum from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, directing me to dismiss the indictment against Mayor Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, which would require leave of court. I do not repeat here the evidence against Adams that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed federal crimes; Mr. Bove rightly has never called into question that the case team conducted this investigation with integrity and that the charges against Adams are serious and supported by fact and law. Mr. Bove’s memo, however, which directs me to dismiss an indictment returned by a duly constituted grand jury for reasons having nothing to do with the strength of the case, raises serious concerns that render the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.

Sassoon and, presumably, the balance of her team, of which six followed her out the door, are Republican. Good for them.

Emil Bove is a name to mark and watch for. It would seem he sees himself as the power behind the throne. I think he just made himself into a target for those who like to fill prisons with corrupt government officials.

And he sounds particularly morally depraved.

Steve Benen’s coverage of the firing of Inspectors General (IG) by President Trump and the reaction of Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Durbin (D-IL), both IG supporters, is convenient:

“We write to you today concerning the reported firing of Inspectors General (IGs) from 18 offices,” the senators’ correspondence began. “Congress was not provided the legally required 30-day notice and case-specific reasons for removal, as required by law. Accordingly, we request that you provide that information immediately.”

I spoke directly to Grassley’s office — just hours before the public learned about the White House firing the USAID inspector general — and the senator’s office confirmed that the president and his team have not responded to the senators’ request for “immediate” information. [Maddowblog]

My question is this: when will President Trump try to fire Grassley and Durbin, and will the Republicans understand the magnitude of their error in supporting President Trump even then?

I guess my camera got out of control.

They are cute pictures, though, but I wish there was more contrast. As the sculptures are lit in colored lights at night, that might have been a better choice.

I see right-wing pundit Erick Erickson is baffled and frustrated that there’s no left-wing riots against which he can rally his own folks:

Where are the riots? Where are they? Online, the left says there is a coup. On television and in the paper, they’re calling it a “constitutional crisis.” Democrats are demanding progressives get angry and take to the street. Elected Democrats have called for violence to fight Trump — they want rage. In the summer riots of 2020, and at events like the 2020, 2016, and 2012 Republican Conventions, protest organizers dropped off brings and pipes on street corners for the protestors. None of that is happening now. ANTIFA is AWOL.

Maybe, just maybe, it is because USAID is not around to fund leftwing non-governmental organizations. Let me explain:

Come on, summer!

And if you want to listen to him, go follow the above link. I didn’t.

So it’s important to note that, at least to the eyes of independent conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan, the ANTIFA organization, which is Dr. Kendi’s antifascist organization, has collapsed. I did not follow them, so I don’t know if the claims of corruption were true, but ANTIFA has been mighty quiet of late – a non-factor as one might expect an organization lacking a true, a factual, raison d’être, to become.

But that’s not at issue, and I only mention it to suggest Erickson’s looking to put up the quills in his listeners’ backs. There’s nothing like violence to transform folks’ controlling passions from reason and rationality to the emotions of fear and rage. The latter, as is widely known, are far more easily manipulated by “leaders” of unknown morality and goals.

And what must concern those running the whole show, giving Erickson and his analogs their marching orders? That thinking people, observing President Trump’s actions, his partial abdication of position to libertarian nut-case Mr Musk, the failure of his minions’^[1] to find evidence of the actual existence of popular-to-the-right conspiracy theories, the rising prices of various items, the protection of corrupt individuals such as Mayor Adams (D-NY <- Yes!) of New York City, the refusal of Senate GOP conference members to vote against such travesties of nominees as now-AG Bondi (R-FL)^[2], now-DNI Director Gabbard (who-knows-what-Hawai’i), now-Defense Secretary Hegseth (Fox-News), and now-HHS Secretary Kennedy (beats me – how about Publicity-Hound)^[3]… breathe … and they may start thinking that it’s time to relieve some members of Congress, and even Mr President, of their positions before the United States implodes. Heavens to Betsy.

Bizzaro-theories are marvelous tools for manipulating voters, but for those theories that can actually encounter reality^[4], it’s a disaster when that occurs. Tariffs are foreign taxes? According to economists, that’s bizarro. What’ll happen when they’re actually applied? Inflation recurs at 10%+? Then what?

But to get back to Erickson, he’s in an impossible situation. President Trump is a corrupt and mendacious individual of record magnitude, and he’s a product of the Republican Party; responding that he was a Democrat for most of his life is one of those responses which will actually redound on your head, as Trump got no traction in the Democratic Party, only in the Republican Party.

If he was honest, he’d step out and condemn Trump, Hegseth, Musk, and all the rest. Even those he considers friends. They’re all power-chasers with no moral constraints.

¹ Annoyed at the ambiguity? Do I mean President Trump’s minions, or do I mean Mr Musk’s minions? If this ambiguity bugs you, good for you! The truth of the matter is that I intended that ambiguity, because I mean both! I suppose I might have substituted their minions for his minions, but that might imply a false equality between the two. However, in the spirit of ambiguity, I shan’t say which is the inferior.

² I wonder if former Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is beating his head on a countertop somewhere out of frustration, as he was President Trump’s initial nominee for AG, but bowed out as the Senate made noises about rejecting him. Or is he looking around and saying he doesn’t want to be part of the Trump shitshow? No, if half of the House Ethics Committee report on Gaetz was true, being part of a shitshow is Gaetz’s raison d’être. Look for bruises on his forehead if a picture of him shows up soon.

³ Notably, Senator and former GOP Leader McConnell (R-KY), the man who bears a disproportionate load of blame for this utter debacle, has voted against the three last nominees. He’s still to blame for abandoning his responsibilities of upholding Senate rules and traditions and not lying. Senators Murkowski (R-AL) and Collins (R-ME) voted against Hegseth as well, but they are permitting foolish loyalties to dictate their votes concerning other nominees.

⁴ For an example of a theory that can’t negatively meet reality, think Sasquatch. There’s no dispositive falsification possible, just pointing out that no convincing evidence has ever been presented.

Conservatives, by ideological bent and temperament, believe in preserving what has worked well in the past. They are a useful brake on non-conservatives who tend to propose all sorts of odd things in response to issues of the moment, particularly those that are misperceived or misunderstood – accidentally or deliberately.

So I’m not quite sure why journalists and ideological opponents haven’t used this reasoning on the Republicans to point out they’re a bunch of hypocrites when it comes to the name of the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, it could have just as easily been renamed to a far more ancient name,

House of Chalchiuhtlicue

… at least according to Wikipedia. I suppose I could call up a cousin of mine who happens to have a doctorate in Central American history and see if he knows the issue, in case you don’t trust Wikipedia, which I can understand. The hot issue du jour does cause relevant Wikipedia pages to change content galvanically sometimes.

So I just needed to vent after reading this screed concerning Google (they get no bold as a punishment for their ruinous behavior) running around showing how obedient it is to the will of President Trump, rather than the somewhat cloudy traditions for naming bodies of water. They used to Do No Evil! These-a-days, it’s all about the money.

Steve Benen notes the imminent practical demise of the CFPB:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau probably isn’t the most well-known federal agency, but it’s one of the best examples of progressive governance in the 21st century. From taking on banks to the student loan industry, payday lenders to mortgage companies, the bureau — an idea first championed by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — has championed Americans’ interests since its inception.

Writing for MSNBC, Helaine Olen recently explained, “Over its almost 13 years, the agency has stopped numerous financial ripoffs and returned billions of dollars to the public. Its mere existence provides an ongoing demonstration of how the government can effectively stand up to big money interests and protect the American people.”

And so:

In theory, it would take congressional action to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. After all, Congress created the CFPB, and it would fall to Congress to kill the CFPB.

In practice, however, [Russell] Vought, one of the key authors of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint, has a different approach in mind: The White House’s budget director appears eager to effectively eliminate the watchdog agency by gutting it from within.

It appears that, until the Democrats – or their successors – regain control of the White House and Congress, the CFPB will be out of action. Why? I’m not sure. It could be a requirement of the business world that they not have to be monitored by the CFPB; or it could simply be a retroactive attempt by the Republicans to take away a victory from the Democrats in a bow to the Gingrichian principle of the same general nature.

Of course, this is about as effective as a retroactive abortion.

But what’s to be done in the meanwhile? For my readers, I recommend a full review of your service providers: bank, insurance, Internet, all that sort of thing. And then reconsider them.

For example, I’ve always felt that the most attractive targets to hackers in the banking sector are the big banks, so when it came time to pick out a bank after my first place, a Savings and Loan, became inconvenient (was bought out? didn’t have a convenient branch? I don’t recall), I ended up going with one of the smaller banks in the state. A little research indicated nothing of worry, so that made it easy, and I’ve not looked back.

A trite tale? My Arts Editor used to work for one of the biggest banks around, and each time they are sued for their little tricksy efforts to increase profits, I get to hear about it. “All about the money,” and not all about the community. I’ll not be using any bank in the super-heavyweight class if I can at all avoid it.

Some services you won’t have a lot of choice. My Internet provider does not have a good reputation, but I don’t have a lot of choice – oh well. But checking out your various service providers can pay off.

It strikes me that the MAGA crowd may be not only moving into a treacherous and unfamiliar political geography, but that their unflinching support for the President will leave them vulnerable. President Trump is not likely to be President in four years. I don’t know it for certain, and I don’t know the method of his exit, whether its resignation, 25th Amendment, or chased bodily from the country by angry citizens, an old-fashioned Greek tradition.

But it doesn’t matter. In the end, the MAGA crowd, which has been enjoying, if only in its own eyes, an enhanced social position with their leader in the President’s seat, may suddenly experience a roller-coaster drop in social position, as the President seems to be trying to destroy his reputation.

It’s something to keep in mind. Clinging madly to the President even as his reputation falls down a well will not preserve their social position, it’ll destroy it. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance, as the financial professionals’ saying goes. Don’t cling to your stocks in the buggy-whip company when the President goes over the edge, if I may mix my metaphors recklessly.

Think about your exit strategy from MAGA, and do it now. There may not be time when the bottom drops out. Figure out what it would take to declare that you’ve forsaken MAGA and the President. It’ll be hard, but despite the proclamations of the President’s supporters, it all rings hollow. They’re there to pick over the remnants.

FAFO:

The phrase is more commonly known as “(Eff) around, find out.” It’s long been used as a Gen X version of warning “actions have consequences, so choose your’s wisely.”

It more recently has been shortened to the slightly polite acronym FAFO, but with the same unapologetic caution to know what you’re getting into. [Asbury Park Press]

This one has exploded on the scene recently to such an extent it’s not worth quoting any particular source. It’s worth noting that every generation has some phrase of rough equivalence, such as Quit horsing around!, dating from a more patriarchal era. It’s no doubt reflective of the home era.

I don’t normally have consecutive WOTD posts, but since the previous post degenerated into a political observation, I figured I got a pass on this one.