Category Archives: Uncategorized

The string of Democrats winning special elections may be continuing, although Ballotpedia is not yet confirming, as the occupants of the mayor’s seat (and certain one council seats) of Leander, TX’s election of yesterday:

Kathryn Pantalion-Parker 16.92%
Na’Cole Thompson 57.01% (W)
Mike Sanders 25.88%

[Data extracted from here.]

I do have to take the word of bilboteach that Thompson is a Democrat.

H/T to @taniel.bsky.social and bilboteach@Daily Kos, the latter of whom adds

Leander, Texas is a moderate to conservative suburb in Williamson County. That’s in the orbit of Austin. Trump won 51% of the vote here in 2024.

Insert the usual boilerplate concerning special elections here. In other news, the Democrats retained Louisiana House of Representatives District 60 in a special election as Chasity [not misspelled] Martinez won with nearly 62% of the vote. The Downballot notes:

Donald Trump won the 60th by a 56-43 margin in 2024, according to calculations by The Downballot.

Martinez will be considered by some to have scaled the heights unexpectedly. However, given the state of the rural economy, treatment of standard civil rights, and even the anti-abortion stance of the GOP, I think then-candidate Trump’s carrying of the district to be the surprise. Still, congrats to Martinez. May you have a long and happy career.

A couple of days ago I commented on Bitcoin’s recent slide. Yesterday I went looking for explanatory incidents.

Bitcoin seems static, give or take, since Thursday. Nothing on the web really stood out for me, which in some ways is even more disturbing. This morning Molly White’s (no relation) Web3 is Going Just Great reported a $44 billion hiccup for Korea’s Bithumb exchange, but most of that was quickly recovered.

Still, smaller incidents (call it thievery) keep on occurring, and I’m thinking that current cryptocurrency users are beginning to transition to past tense, having tired of watching, or even experiencing, losses in their and others’ ‘virtual assets’.

And then there’s this:

Richard Farr, chief market strategist and partner at Pivotus Partners, has issued a stark prediction for Bitcoin (BTC-USD), setting a price target of zero for the cryptocurrency.

“Our BTC price target is 0.0. That’s not just for shock factor. It’s where the math takes us,” the strategist said, noting that Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has failed to function as a dollar hedge and instead operates as “a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq.” …

The strategist also criticized Bitcoin’s environmental impact, stating that miners “are bleeding cash” while the network remains “horribly inefficient as a transaction processor and wastes tremendous amounts of energy.”

Farr’s assessment aligns with warnings from Michael Burry, the investor known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, who cautioned that falling Bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices could trigger a self-reinforcing “death spiral.” [Seeking Alpha]

I have no idea who might be Pivotus Partners, but I cannot help but pay attention as the above remarks concerning cryptocurrency’s functionality, external costs, and volatility has a strong correlation with my own observations over the years.

In other words, I’m sure glad I’m not in cryptocurrency because the speculators, and if you use cryptocurrency, don’t kid yourself, you’re a speculator, may be riding a raft into a real maelstrom of disaster. Right now it appears they may have sprung a leak.

Here’s a summary provided by WaPo, itself perhaps swirling around in a vortex of doom.

Such a quick repetition of President Trump’s mental illness, too. Via Maddowblog:

The good news is that the president recently signaled a willingness to release the resources [for the Gateway tunnel construction project] that would allow work to continue. The bad news is the specific condition he has in mind. Punchbowl News reported:

President Donald Trump offered to release the funding for the massive Gateway infrastructure project if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agrees to support renaming both Washington-Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station after Trump.

The Trump administration directly made the request of Schumer, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

No doubt he sees it as dominance; I see it as rank foolishness and narcissism, the sort of man who consistently fails and manages to delude himself into thinking he’s a success.

Fortunately, names are easily reverted.

Dummymandering:

As MS NOW host Chris Hayes explained in November, “dummymandering” is the term for what happens when a gerrymandering scheme backfires, usually because the ruling party creates vulnerable districts for itself that it then loses. It’s a scenario that at least seems possible in a place like Florida, which is already gerrymandered heavily in Republicans’ favor. And the scenario seems even more possible in light of recent electoral wins for Democrats in Florida and beyond, as backlash toward the GOP’s agenda grows — even among some of Trump’s supporters. [MS NOW]

From the National Prayer Breakfast, itself a dubious institution:

“They rigged the second election,” said Trump. “I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego. Beating these lunatics was incredible, what a great feeling. Winning every swing state. Winning the popular vote. The first time they said I didn’t win the popular vote. I did.” [RawStory]

Putting his own needs over that of the nation – and then announcing the fact in public. Textbook example of pathological narcissism.

And so pouty, too.

Erick Erickson has an appalling story concerning the Department of Homeland Security:

The Washington Post has a very interesting story about an American citizen who fired off a letter to Joseph Dernbach at the Department of Homeland Security. Dernbach’s contact information is easy to find on Google. Dernbach was the lead prosecutor on a DHS case against an Afghan citizen the Trump Administration was attempting to deport.

Jon, whose last name is not revealed by the Washington Post, is an American citizen who gave up his British citizenship for his love of America. Jon is very clearly a progressive.

Within hours of sending his letter to Joseph Dernbach, Google sent Jon notice that Google had “received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to [Jon’s] Google Account.” The Department of Homeland Security retaliated against an American citizen for sending a letter to a Department of Homeland Security lawyer …

And if you want to see this letter, which is basically a reprimand of DHS for attempting to deport a former ally, follow the above link. The story does get worse:

Google did not tell Jon what information the government wanted, but told Jon he’d have to file a motion in court to stop it. But Google provided no information for Jon to do that and did not send Jon a copy of the subpoena for Jon to fight because the Department of Homeland Security also instructed Google not to tell Jon anything about their subpoena.

My bold, and I’m bolding prime evidence of corruption, I think. It’s certainly deeply disturbing, and Google’s failure to ignore that specific instruction is indicative of a company that is submitting to the instructions of a power-mad xenophobe rather than the American Constitution and body of law.

Erickson, though, goes off on a tangent where he claims the Democrats will do the same thing when they’re in power, so the Republicans should curtail such activities. Certainly, there’ll be a lot of howling, but how this is adjudicated will be up to judges moreso than lawmakers. Although “Oh For Some Republican Sanity on This” is a good title, the article might have benefited from a direct condemnation of this un-American behavior.

As a postscript, Steve Benen suggests DHS’s existence may be limited:

Miles Taylor, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s chief of staff during Donald Trump’s first term, told MS NOW last week that he now believes the Republican president has done irreparable damage to the department. Taylor told Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” that he had resisted calling for the dismantling of DHS, but he’s recently “come around” to the idea that it’s necessary.

He’s not alone. The Atlantic recently published a good report on the debate over the department’s future. It quoted Seth Stodder, who worked for Customs and Border Protection under George W. Bush and the DHS under Barack Obama. After seeing Trump-era abuses, Stodder concluded, “It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea.”

Contrapposto:

The contrapposto definition is a relaxed and life-like standing pose [for a statue] in which the body’s weight is rested on one leg. The figure does not stand stiff and upright but distributes the weight of the body at ease. The classical contrapposto pose requires artists to understand the various counterposed components of the figure. [Art In Context]

Noted in this YouTube video, “Contrapposto Explained,”

Or see its home site at smarthistory.

Wondering about the costs of “deploying” troops to the States that didn’t vote for Trump?

The Trump administration’s controversial deployments of National Guard troops to six American cities since June cost about $496 million in 2025, and continuing the existing deployments as is would cost about $93 million per month, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

And for each additional Guard unit that is activated in the future, costs will increase by $18 million to $21 million per 1,000 soldiers, according to a CBO letter released Wednesday. [Roll Call]

Ouch. And the traditional lie from Trump:

Trump has said that the deployments are necessary to quell violence in Democrat-controlled cities, tamp down crime and support operations to deport undocumented immigrants.

Too bad Roll Call didn’t refute the lies through examination of crime statistics, as it’s been reported Minneapolis has lower crime, sometimes much lower, than other cities. I live in a suburb of St. Paul, across the Mississippi Rover from Minneapolis, and the streets have been peaceful for years.

I wonder if the troops were paid in cryptocurrency.

Resting due to a sore throat and traditional accompanying aches & pains, I happened to notice a headline on CNN:

No, but seriously: What’s going on with bitcoin?

(Here’s the thread pointer.) The content is hiding behind a paywall for which I have no ladder, so I checked WaPo, to which I do have a subscription, although WaPo owner Jeff Bezos destroyed the basics of such a news source with 30% layoff yesterday: “Jeff Bezos remains committed to Washington Post amid brutal layoffs, top editor says“^[1].

But nothing, yet. Nothing at Molly White’s site, Web3 is Going Just Great, either.

So here’s the CoinMarketCap trailing month chart for Bitcoin from a few minutes ago:

While I was watching it was down more than 30% for the trailing month; down more than 7% for the trailing 24 hours.

This is so not what you want in a currency, although the month drop of 30% is more worrying than the day. I’m not sure if Bitcoin and its cousins are considered representative of the United States, or independent thereof, but whatever everyone’s working model may be, this must have shaken things up.

Or is some grifter harvesting from the sheep?

¹ I wonder if he was told to destroy it, or is just unskilled when it comes to the news sector. Amazon makes money, dude, WaPo wins Pulitzer Prizes – or at least that’s the goals.

The Republicans are entering the frantic thrashing phase of their amateur hour moment, as Erick Erickson explains:

That is why Republican leaders in Washington really need to shut the hell up on gun issues right now. Here is the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia on Fox News yesterday.

[X post omitted, but here’s the text as transcribed by, or for, Aaron Rupar]

Pirro: “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back. And that makes all the difference.”

This comes a week after Alex Pretti’s death, when the President and others in his Administration also attacked Second Amendment rights.

I cannot think of a strategy better able to alienate Second Amendment voters from showing up in the midterms.

On top of that, the Trump Administration has been alienating pro-life voters. They have refused to roll back the expansion of the abortion drug. The President has sought to gut the Hyde Amendment.

This is all just bad politics.

But he won’t take the next step, and that would be recognizing Trump, Pirro, and all these invaders as know-it-all amateurs; or even painting them with the next air-brush in the rack.

Grifters.

Erickson isn’t discussing, and maybe doesn’t understand, that the prioritization of ideological stances, such as abortion, gun rights, etc, over such considerations as experience, merit, ability to compromise has made the Republican Party unacceptably vulnerable to the depredations of the grifters. If this doesn’t make sense, consider these:

• If experience is required, a grifter, whose essential nature is dedicated to collecting the wealth and power of others with minimal investment on their part, will not consider it an opportunity.
• The same reasoning applies to merit, as applicable merit requires experience.
• Compromise dilutes profit and prestige, and discourages the grifter.
• But ideological positions that require little more than shouting support for them on stage? Even a little lying? This is when the grifter, discovering an opportunity, shines. The investment is minimal and the opportunity is magnificent.

I do not claim the grifters set this up; I blame it on that fool Gingrich.

Both Parties are out of focus, I see.

But grifters are also amateurs, as they have no experience. So the head grifter himself has demanded control over the operations of elections, and, failing that, is trying to control the voter rolls, hoping to short-circuit the damage his inexperience, his lack of merit, and his minimal understanding of politics is causing. President Trump is little more than a showman, like any grifter. He bedazzled the voters twice, but when it comes to the daily grind of governance and politics, he has no knowledge, no experience.

And the voters are learning this on topics as diverse as the economy and civil rights. At this point, if Trump starts spewing claims based on the recent FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, GA, where Trump lost in 2020, will anyone outside of his current base even entertain them to be true?

Probably not.

Still, the Republicans are no worse than the Democrats in one way: Neither side is willing to admit to error and promise to correct. It’s the whole package or none of it.

Time for new Parties and wide spread use of ranked-choice voting.

Border czar Tom Homan thinks he’s making progress:

The Trump administration will immediately remove 700 federal law enforcement officers from Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday, leaving about 2,000 officers in the state. [MS NOW]

But an important questions is Who?

Are they sending away, to borrow a phrase, the worst of the worst? That is, those officers most likely to engage in criminal mischief under the cover of Trump’s free-wheeling use of his pardon power? Leaving behind those most likely to be professionals, dedicated to doing their jobs?

Or are those latter the most likely to be leaving, giving Minnesota a more pure sort of problem?

It continues to be a slow-motion avalanche of political miscalculations, multiplied by frantic demands. I shan’t attempt a full enumeration, but the unexpected victory – a romp, actually – of Taylor Rehmet in Texas over the Trump-endorsed and GOP powerhouse Leigh Wambsganss, the back and forth over his Minneapolis debacle where he sometimes likes Mayor Frey and Governor Walz and sometimes doesn’t, and a number of others, multiplied by his demand concerning … election management:

President Donald Trump called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting” in an interview that aired Monday, as his administration pushes to overhaul election ground rules ahead of the pivotal midterm races this year. [CNN/Politics]

At this point, I hope the number of readers who don’t understand that Trump plans to emplace his own stooges to ensure he gets enough votes, instead of suffering through the embarrassment of actually losing the proud reddish state of Georgia and be accused of corruption to boot, again, along with others, is small. Really small.

For worried readers, I read the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, which says

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

While the clause concerning Congress is perhaps concerning, I read this as placing the responsibility of running elections squarely in the hands of the States. Now, perhaps SCOTUS would find a way, much like that of immunizing the President from being charged with crimes, to “nationalize” vote counting, but I think that would cause an uproar.

Senate Majority leader Senator Thune (R-SD) may not allow it to happen in any case:

“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday, pointing to Constitutional requirements that states conduct their own elections. …

“I’m a big believer in decentralizing and distributing power,” Thune added. [PBS News]

Recall that Thune is probably closer to the old-line, responsible Republicans than the latest bunch who see a Senate seat as just another trophy to hang on the wall.

I see this demand from Trump as a frantic reaction to Trump’s aforementioned and unbelievable loss in Texas over the weekend. Not only does that loss challenge his (imagined) reputation for dominance, it threatens to relegate Trump to being a footnote in history and not some figure of overwhelming importance^[1]. Mid-term elections are coming, and the 2018 mid-terms were an emotional disaster for Trump. By controlling the elections, he figures he can avoid that damage to his reputation ever again.

It is so childish that it’s embarrassing even for his rivals and adversaries.

¹ In fact, much like Emperor Marcus Didius Julianus, who bought the Roman empire at auction and was assassinated a few weeks later for failure, someone who promised so much and delivered so little.

An important feature of the upset victory of Democrat Taylor Rehmet in a special election for the Texas State Senate escaped my attention, and is supplied by the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, TX:

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wasn’t involved in the Texas Senate District 9 race, where a Democrat flipped a historically Republican seat in the Fort Worth-area, despite endorsing the candidate and urging voters to get out to the polls.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s defeat of Republican Leigh Wambsganss in the longtime GOP district has garnered national attention, as some look to the race as an indicator of what could be to come in the November midterm elections.

Another Trump endorsee loses a special election. This remains important because it signals left-leaning voters that Trump is not dominant, and right voters who are wavering that a Trump-endorsed candidate isn’t always going to win.

And so it’s worth getting out to the polls.

Losses like this one should be a huge red flag for the GOP, not only as a political warning, but, in fact, a Divine warning. Hey, I’m an agnostic, folks, so some will say I don’t know how to read the Christian tea-leaves, but, taking into account Senator Goldwater’s numerous remarks^[1] on the increasingly Christian GOP of his day, losses such as this one, that the GOP is suffering in most special elections, or winning by smaller-tha-expected margins, suggests that either the Divine does not approve of the GOP, or that the Divine doesn’t exist. Oh, sure, maybe there’s a Plan, or the particular GOP candidates were not acceptable to a rather picky Divine, but in the end that’s just pussy-footing around their real problem: there’s no proof of a Divine. Acting as if there is, and that absolves you of responsibility for self-examination, will lead to, well, Ken Paxton and his ilk.

​¹ Here’s one now:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them. [AZ Quotes]

In the interests of completeness, my proposal for compromise over Minneapolis requires a slight modification. From the January 24th entry into this thread, the modification is in brackets.

4. Acknowledgement that the protest in Cities Church was wrong, and an apology from those arrested (see link). Sure, pastor David Easterwood may work for ICE as well, and maybe Cities Church doesn’t seem the most Christian of churches, but that doesn’t pardon the intrusion. It used to be that homes and employers were sacrosanct, but now we get doxxing and swatting and protests at the homes of officials we don’t like. Should we smile at a neo-Nazi protest at Temple Israel next? At Catholic protests in a local Baptist church? Down this path lies violence, with bitter death at the end. Stop it with the endless harassment. [This clause does not apply to Don Lemon or Georgia Fort, journalists present to cover the incident, although I am making as assumption as regards Fort. They had every right to be there. Additionally, there should be apologies from others for their presence.]

Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman reviews Trump’s nominee for Fed Board chair Kevin Warsh’s qualifications, and, unlike myself, sees them as wanting:

Absent a crisis, my prediction is that the majority of Warsh’s colleagues will largely ignore him, albeit without expressing their contempt openly. Even a coalition among the Trump appointees to the Board of Governors – Warsh, Bowman and Miran – won’t be enough to overturn the responsible monetary policy stewardship of the other governors.

But that’s a low bar, and it may be lower than is generally appreciated. For while I don’t think Warsh will do too much damage to monetary policy, he, along with his fellow Trumper Michelle Bowman, the vice chair for financial supervision, may well eviscerate the Fed’s role as a financial regulator. …

Oh, lovely. Is Warsh another hack who thinks the system is self-regulating?

What lies behind this contempt? Warsh’s most notable role in policy debate came in the years immediately following the global financial crisis, when he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board who argued strenuously against the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy. As I noted at the time, his arguments were confused and incoherent, but he implied (without saying so in clear language) that the Fed’s actions would be inflationary despite the depressed state of the economy.

He was completely wrong about that. Now, everyone makes bad predictions. But when you do, you’re supposed to admit your mistakes and learn from them. Warsh never did that. Instead, he kept inventing new reasons to call for higher interest rates — notably a bizarre claim that low rates were hurting business investment — as long as a Democrat was president.

Oh, a partisan ‘expert’. That’s always a problem.

This is why I generally like experts like Krugman. They know the dirt, they know the details. So Warsh may not be an appropriate nominee. Krugman is resigned to Warsh winning Senate approval, but Trump’s influence is sinking fast. Warsh, despite his superficial qualifications, may still fail.

As much as Border Patrol officer Greg Bovino misread the American public while working as lead of the ICE agents in Minnesota, his resultant suspension of social media privileges may have been misassigned in view of this insult and cry of fading triumph on the White House Twitter account.

I shan’t embed it in this post due to its offensive nature, but it’s a poster of award-winning journalist Don Lemon, a black man, captioned that he was arrested for involvement in “the St. Paul Church riots,” with the commentary

When life gives you lemons…

and an icon meant to represent chains. It’s repulsive. Offensive.

And a bit pathetic.

Clearly written by a white nationalist, probably White House aide Stephen Miller or at his direction, it’s the sort of misguided chortling of someone who thinks the nation is plum-full of people who think like him and have been repressed ever since the Civil War; she or he is infuriated that racism has been successfully transformed into a socially unacceptable attitude, much like infanticide. After all, look at all my fellow racists I found on the Internet!… never thinking they may be robots designed to sow disorder.

At some point, such people can’t restrain their urge to crow, a signal to all that they’ve won! And so they identify themselves as racists, as folks who let hatred and xenophobia run their lives.

Of course, such a post doesn’t reveal relevant information that mitigates the impact of such a post, here helpfully summarized by Professor Richardson:

Jarrett Ley and Samuel Oakford of the Washington Post reviewed the video Lemon filmed at the church protest. They wrote that the video shows that Lemon identified himself as a journalist and followed protesters into the church. Inside for about 45 minutes, he interviewed four parishioners and five protesters. Eight of those nine exchanges appeared calm. The video does not show Lemon participating in the chants with which the protesters disrupted the service. A pastor asked Lemon to leave, and seven minutes later he exited the church.

Federal prosecutors tried to charge Lemon, his producer, and six others shortly after the protest, but a magistrate judge refused a warrant for Lemon and his producer, saying prosecutors had not shown evidence that would justify the arrests. The administration then asked a federal judge to overturn the magistrate judge’s decision. When he, too, refused, calling the request “unprecedented,” the administration rushed the case to the Eighth Circuit. It, too, refused.

At that point, it appears the administration went to a federal grand jury to indict Lemon.

I should think readers who become aware of this information will consider whoever wrote the White House social media post to be, well, I don’t think I know another word than pathetic, although I might add such modifiers as ‘hate-soaked,’ ‘un-Christian,’^[1] ‘hypocritical,’ and other such terms which, when applied, lower the social standing of their targets.

But, if the Administration seeks to survive and pursue its goals, whatever they may be, they should probably suspend the governmental social media privileges of White House aide Stephen Miller and his minions. That’s the sort of post that gives otherwise disparate people reason to bond together and chase the murderous idiots out.

But, no doubt, these chuckleheads won’t figure that out.

¹ Yes, yes, I am agnostic, no need to yell at the screen. Given the white Christian nationalist nature of the current Administration, it should be clear the comparison is to the supposed, if false, Christian nature of the Administration, not my own religious status, whatever it might be.

In the continuing story of special elections we add this one for those readers who prefer entrails over tea leaves:

A huge backlash to Trump (probably due to economic and ICE-related issues) has propelled a Democrat, Taylor Rehmet (veteran and machinist union leader), into a Texas State Senate seat held by Republicans for the last 48 years. [Paul in Austin @ Daily Kos]

H/T to Paul in Austin.

Nor was this contest close, with preliminary numbers indicating a victory of just short of 15 points. The previous election for this seat, held in 2022, gave the Republican candidate, Kelly Hancock, who has moved on to a new job as Texas Comptroller, a 20 point victory in a 277,883 vote contest, while this special election ran to 118,912 votes, or well less than half of the general election.

It appears Democrats were far more likely to bring their voters to the polls than the Republicans, suggesting widespread disgust with Republicans, IF we disregard the usual caveats concerning politics being local, local, and local. Neither candidate seems to have held elective office prior to this contest, so exposure to the candidates would seem to be limited.

Did Anthropic collapse in the face of Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s demand that Anthropic’s guardrails on their AI “Claude” be deactivated?

The Trump administration placed AI firm Anthropic on a far-reaching national security blacklist Friday, directing federal agencies to stop using its technology and banning any other company that does business with the military from working with it, effective immediately. …

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social, using the administration’s preferred name for the Defense Department. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.” [WaPo]

Such guardrails include … protections against its technology being used to power fully autonomous weapons or wide-scale domestic surveillance. I’m a little surprised Anthropic refused.

Note the Trumpian response of invoking fear and being lefty. Its presence means it’s a boilerplate response and has little meaning beyond Trump is frustrated.

Hegseth’s pompous statement on the matter is here, but isn’t worth quoting. This topic has stirred emotions for years, and this is no different as this rather shrill and, I think, dubious post on Daily Kos demonstrates.

How will this finish? Someone will claim to have a higher performance AI than Anthropic’s Claude and will sell out to the blustery Federal Government. However, that may take a while as higher performance will require proof, and Trump may no longer be President at that point. He’ll be too busy defending himself from a number of charges to pay attention to this, which he may not even remember.

You may have heard that Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was ordered to fly into Minneapolis and explain to the chief judge of the Federal District, Judge Schiltz, why he shouldn’t be held in contempt:

The subject of the last Administrative Note was Flannery O’Connor and her posthumous, and perhaps unintentional collection Mystery and Manners. I finished said volume a couple of weeks ago, and, needless to say, there’s been little improvement in my prose, which continues to be straightahead, if abraided with semi-colons and other detritus, vulnerable to digressions, with little of O’Connor’s inclination towards bringing opposites to the discussions, in some picturesque way, in a paragraph. Her tendency to do so sometimes seems just a trifle repetitious, see The King of the Birds.

I am reminded that she regards as sardonically fortunate the loss suffered by the South in the American Civil War, the South’s ‘Fall’ as it were, and a gift to the ‘Southern Writer’. How that affects the undercurrents of the writing of O’Connor and her Southern colleagues is a fascinating question that I haven’t the time to research.

Oh, stop going about how our Vampire Master likes your sun dress!

I Capture the Castle (2003) is the story of a British literary family, the Mortmains, who, years ago – it seems to be set around the gap between the Wars, based on the cars – rented and moved into a castle in an attempt to break the writer’s block afflicting the father of the family, James, who wrote one novel and came to an abrupt halt.

The tactic is a flop, a result James keeps to himself, and the family soldiers on, buoyed by a collection of literary tropes, such as the novel will be done soon and save us all, or the romantic notion of marrying money to save the family from the appalling notion of real poverty, while James struggles to piece together a single sentence. He’s married to an artist, and has two daughters and a son.

As their financial walls close in around them, their landlord changes as an American, Simon, appears, having inherited wealth and title from his English father, along with a buddy. The two Mortmain daughters do their best to attract the attention of money, err, men, and it’s off to the slightly farcical races.

Is it good? Maybe. I enjoyed it, and at its core the story is simple, but there are undercurrents that I sensed but couldn’t isolate. What of Stephen, the nephew of a former maid to the family? Is he nothing more than a throwaway, or is he symbolic of the family’s disillusionment?

Your call.

I knew something was calling for my attention in this interview transcript fragment, and I finally figured it out.

Trump: "Bovino is very good, but he's a pretty out there kind of a guy. It some cases that's good, maybe it wasn't good here. But when I watch some of the people I've been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren't normal."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-27T21:27:55.089Z

In case the above disappears, shaved to the part that caught my attention:

But when I watch some of the people I’ve been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren’t normal.”

He’s talking about the Minneapolis community members protesting the sloppy actions of ICE agents, such as this one. But what is he really saying?

He’s saying they’re weird. Sound familiar?

“These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” Walz said in a TV interview last month.

The message started with news interviews and eventually spread like wildfire across social media with the help of young Americans. The simple terminology of labeling the other side as “weird” or “odd” is not revolutionary or sophisticated in American politics but represents a new framing for Democrats who have spent the last eight years trying to defeat Trump and Trumpism by personifying him as the greatest threat to democracy. [AP]

This is Trump for you. Not a whit of originality, whether he’s building a glorified bathroom with his name and a lot of gold, or insulting a rival. Remember the debate between Clinton and Trump? “No! You’re the thumb-puppet!” was the best he could do when accused of being Russian President Putin’s thumb-puppet, an accusation he’s never effectively rebutted.

So he and the Republicans are insulted when they’re called weird, because

Trump has spent a lot of time being friends with his base, and labeling him and his Party as weird is perceived as an attempt to drive a wedge between them.

So Trump is trying to alienate independents and Republicans with a sense of decency from the protesters in Minneapolis through the same technique. However, Walz describing the GOP as weird is not nearly the same as Trump casting aspersions on protesters defending their collective homes and persons from ICE agents who are tangibly abusing their positions and killing, and doing it on video. The latter will be far more effective in binding independents and some Republicans to the anti-Trump cause.

And now new Epstein Files are out. What will the right-wing pundits and influencers find? Clear evidence of Trump’s innocence or guilt? Or just lots of redactions? And, just for grins, will the redactions be competent this time, or easily removed once again?

News outlets are reporting the nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace current Fed Chair chair Jerome Powell, whose second term expires in May. President Trump had nominated him in 2018, but has come to hate him as he’s an independent force in monetary policy. There was some concern that Trump would nominate a complete loon, and the CNN headline mentions Trump saying Warsh is … right out of Central Casting … Warsh actually had a term as a Fed Governor, 2006 – 2011, and while he may have more confidence in forecasting the future than I’m comfortable with, as CBS News reports…

In recent years, Warsh has grown increasingly critical of the Fed, arguing that the institution has become excessively focused on backward-looking economic data rather than anticipating changes, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a December 15 report.

… at least he doesn’t seem to be an out and out loon, as so many of Trump’s associates and nominees tend to be.

Why not? I’m guessing Trump, or whoever is manipulating him, looked at the Senate, which is showing signs of breaking free from Trump’s grip, and realized nominating a loon would run the risk of rejection, a political loss adding to the weight of the view that Trump is not invincible, not dominant. The background of the tragic debacle in Minneapolis, the nomination of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize, a string of failures in various courts, the probability of even more failures in the courts, including SCOTUS, if observers read the tea leaves rightly, the mass exodus of competent lawyers from the DoJ, the evident insufficiency of his approach of hiring folks out of central casting, rather than on competency and merit, the economy stumbling as tariffs fail, an Administration very poorly stewarded, and there’s so much more and so I’ll spare the reader.

Selecting a palatable candidate should avoid a politically damaging failure at a critical moment.

Just as importantly, it’ll serve to hold the attention of a less politically savvy audience as more of the Epstein Files are being released today. As to the efficacy of distraction using this technique, in the day of the Web I have to wonder if it’s not effective at all; but old political hacks will cling to their ways.

So this appears, on first glance, to be safe for the nation.

Continuing news about Minneapolis, according to family and nominator The Nation, Minneapolis has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Congratulations!

And I do admire all these people coming together to defend the community, from front lines to supporting logistics. While there are plenty of nits to pick, there’s also plenty of good being done here.