The Conversation -- March 9, 2025
~~~ Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump entered the White House having promised -- to finally end the practice of 'springing forward' and 'falling back.'... Today, roughly two-thirds of Americans want to end the clock changes, polls show. But even those Americans don't agree on what should come next.... 'I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don't want to take their kids to school in the dark,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'And it's very much, it's a little bit one way, but it's very much a 50-50 issue.'... Political leaders also say they are grappling with whether the nation should permanently move the clocks forward one hour, an idea championed by lawmakers on the coasts who say it would allow for more sunshine during the winter, or remain on year-round standard time, which is favored by neurologists who say it aligns with our circadian rhythms. That decision would rest with Congress, not the president." ~~~
~~~ Aaron Steckelberg & Lindsey Bever of the Washington Post: "In 2022, lawmakers in the Senate voted to make daylight saving time permanent, but the legislation provoked backlash and the effort has stalled. Sleep experts warn that a permanent change could chronically throw our bodies out of sync with the sun and lead to a variety of health problems." The article attempts to explain why that is.
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Canada. Matina Stevis-Gridneff of the New York Times: "Amid a generational crisis in Canada's relationship with the United States, the Liberal Party of Canada on Sunday chose an unelected technocrat with deep experience in financial markets to replace Justin Trudeau as party leader and the country's prime minister, and to take on ... [Donald] Trump. Mark Carney, 59, who steered the Bank of Canada through the 2008 global financial crisis and the Bank of England through Brexit, but who has never been elected to office, won a leadership race on Sunday against his friend and former finance minister, Chrystia Freeland. He won a stunning 85.9 percent of the votes cast by Liberal Party members. More than 150,000 people voted, according to the party's leaders. 'America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form,' Mr. Carney said in his acceptance speech on Sunday evening to an electric crowd of party faithful, directly addressing Mr. Trump's constant threat that he wants to make Canada the 51st state. 'We didn't ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.'... Because Mr. Carney does not hold a seat in Parliament, he is expected to call federal elections soon after being sworn in as prime minister."
Marie: Here's a border I can live with. Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
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Marie: Have you wondered if your worries that Trump would establish a fascist state were overblown and melodramatic? They were not: ~~~
~~~ Perry Stein & Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department has removed top national security officials as part of a widespread purge of senior career leaders across the law enforcement agency.... The transferring of at least three national security officials amounts to a complete gutting of leadership in the highly sensitive National Security Division, which is charged with working with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to protect the nation from threats. It is unclear if the national security officials were provided a reason for their removals. They were technically not fired, with at least some of them being transferred to other parts of the Justice Department in less desirable positions.... The removals -- which come after a multiple ousters of senior Justice officials on Friday -- reflect the Trump administration's effort to push out experienced career officials from nonpartisan roles at the Justice Department, likely paving the way for ... Donald Trump and his allies to install people in these traditionally nonpartisan positions who align ideologically with the president.... The national security officials had decades of experience across multiple Republican and Democratic administrations, leaving a vacuum of experience in the division.... (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: This suggests to me that Trump is planning to do things that will threaten national security in a manner that would cause these officials to try to hinder his efforts. Trump can't carry out his corrupt and treasonous plans without the aid of a fascistic infrastructure.
Josh Kovansky of TPM: "The Trump White House has taken its attempt to seize direct control over the entire executive branch to a new level and laid out a startling legal rationale for the move in a previously unreported email.... If successful, Trump would be making a dramatic end run around the Senate's advice and consent power for certain appointed positions.... The email ... contains the broadest assertion of presidential power over independent agencies [like the NLRB & the FEC] yet made by the second Trump administration. In it, Trent Morse, deputy assistant to the President and deputy director of presidential personnel at the White House, stakes out a legal position that would undercut the Senate's power to confirm new officers at agencies like USADF [U.S African Development Foundation], experts say. Trump, Morse asserted, would have the 'inherent authority under Article II' to appoint acting officials without going through the Senate's process of advice and consent." Moreover, it appears that, under Morse's rationale, the "acting" officials could continue to "act" throughout the president*'s term. Thanks to RAS for the lead.
Laura Strickler, et al., of NBC News: "Health and Human Services employees were offered voluntary buyouts to resign from their jobs on Friday night, according to a person who received the email and an administration official. The agency's approximately 80,000 employees received an unsigned email Friday night offering them a 'voluntary separation incentive payment [of $25,000],' with a deadline to respond set for Friday, March 14."
One Way or Another, They're Gonna Find Ya. Jeff Stein & Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: "The Department of Health and Human Services has granted associates of the U.S. DOGE Service access to a sensitive child support database with troves of income data, overriding the objections of career employees.... The government database -- created to help enforce child support payments and overseen by the Administration for Children and Families..., contains substantial amounts of personal income data linked to nearly all U.S. workers.... An HHS official confirmed that DOGE received access to the system, saying that DOGE's agents sought 'read-only access' to the system and were required 'to take all necessary trainings' before being granted permission to use it.... The Internal Revenue Service's career staff has resisted DOGE's request for access to taxpayer records, which are protected by federal law, but the child support database could provide another way for DOGE to obtain similar information." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Then there's this. The Trumpies keep getting creepier. ~~~
~~~ Julia Ainsley & Jonathan Allen of NBC News: "The Department of Homeland Security has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to determine who might be leaking information to the media about immigration operations, according to four sources familiar with the practice.... Border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have blamed lower-than-expected ICE arrest numbers on recent leaks revealing the cities where it planned to conduct operations." According to the story, the Department has used polygraphs in the past; for instance, for screening job applicants.
Raymond Zhong, et al., of the New York Times: "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation's premier agency for weather and climate science, has been told by the Trump administration to prepare to lose another 1,000 workers, raising concerns that NOAA's lifesaving forecasts might be hindered as hurricane and disaster season approaches. The new dismissals would come in addition to the roughly 1,300 NOAA staff members who have already resigned or been laid off in recent weeks. The moves have alarmed scientists, meteorologists and others at the agency, which includes the National Weather Service. Some activities, including the launching of weather balloons, have already been suspended because of staffing shortages. Together, the reductions would represent nearly 20 percent of NOAA's approximately 13,000-member work force. The recent employee departures have already affected NOAA's operations in many realms: predicting hurricanes and tornadoes, overseeing fisheries and endangered species, monitoring the changes that humans are bringing about to Earth's climate and ecosystems." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Aw, c'mon. Who needs NOAA? Why, president* with a sharpie can forecast the weather. It's easy to see why Trump went bankrupt so many times: he has no idea how to plan for contingencies, no idea even what he needs to plan ahead. He's like those (apocryphal?) primitive people who have no concept of any timeframe except the present. Couple that with his narcissism, and disaster is inevitable.
Christine Fernando of the AP: "The country's preeminent federal fire training academy canceled classes, effective immediately, on Saturday amid the ongoing flurry of funding freezes and staffing cuts by ... Donald Trump's administration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that National Fire Academy courses were canceled amid a 'process of evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration priorities,' according to a notice sent to instructors, students and fire departments. Instructors were told to cancel all future travel until further notice. Firefighters, EMS providers and other first responders from across the country travel to the NFA's Maryland campus for the federally funded institution's free training programs. 'The NFA is a powerhouse for the fire service,' said Marc Bashoor, a former Maryland fire chief and West Virginia emergency services director....'It's not a "nice to have."... If we want to continue to have one of the premier fire services in the world, we need to have the National Fire Academy.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Wouldn't it be better to stop wildfires altogether by vacuuming the forest floor and turning on the big spigots?
Roni Rabin & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "While Trump administration officials have promised to preserve core patient services, initial cuts at the V.A. have nonetheless spawned chaotic ripple effects. They have disrupted studies involving patients awaiting experimental treatments, forced some facilities to fire support staff and created uncertainty amid the mass cancellation, and partial reinstatement, of hundreds of contracts targeted by Mr. Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.... [The V.A.] is in many ways a natural target for reform -- a bureaucratic behemoth with roughly 480,000 employees, some 90,000 contracts and a documented history of scandals and waste. But it also treats 9.1 million veterans, provides critical medical research and, according to some studies, offers care that is comparable to or better than many private health systems. Even Project 2025 ... said the V.A. had transformed into 'one of the most respected U.S. agencies.' The V.A. is also one of the most politically sensitive departments in the government, serving a constituency courted heavily by Republicans...."
Kevin Freking of the AP: "House Republicans unveiled a spending bill Saturday that would keep federal agencies funded through Sept. 30, pushing ahead with a go-it-alone strategy that seems certain to spark a major confrontation with Democrats over the contours of government spending. The 99-page bill would provide a slight boost to defense programs while trimming nondefense programs below 2024 budget year levels. That approach is likely to be a nonstarter for most Democrats who have long insisted that defense and nondefense spending move in the same direction. Congress must act by midnight Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is teeing up the bill for a vote on Tuesday despite the lack of buy-in from Democrats, essentially daring them to vote against it and risk a shutdown. He also is betting that Republicans can muscle the legislation through the House largely by themselves." (Also linked yesterday.)
Pranshu Verma & Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post: "Since ... Donald Trump's inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities.... The incidents come as Elon Musk has rocketed to prominence as Trump's best-known backer and as a conservative provocateur in his own right. The ire directed at the tech billionaire online has increasingly spilled into real life, with vandalism directed at Tesla storefronts, charging stations and vehicles.... The destruction adds to the woes of a carmaker already in turmoil. Its stock has fallen by more than 35 percent since Trump's inauguration, and last year, the company suffered its first annual sales drop in more than a decade." The report outlines several incidents. (Also linked yesterday.) A CBS News report is here. ~~~
~~~ Trump properties are getting a share, too. In yesterday's Comments, RAS linked to images of the defacement of the entrance sign to a Trump gulf club in Virginia and to the Trump club in Turnberry, Scotland. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Peter Stubley of the Sunday Times: "Pro-Palestinian protesters have vandalised one of Donald Trump's golf courses in Scotland by digging up the greens and spray painting the club house. The Palestine Action group said that they had targeted the iconic Turnberry resort ... in response to the US president's plan to turn Gaza into the 'riviera of the Middle East'."
Maegan Vazquez & Jada Yuan of the Washington Post: "Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has some thoughts about how last year's election played out for his party: Democrats did not take enough risks, didn't engage enough with undecided voters, were too cautious with the press and didn't produce a message that resonated with voters." ~~~
~~~ Elena Schneider of Politico interviewed Walz about the campaign.
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Reader Comments (13)
Weather forecasting, fire academy training, scientific experimenting stuff…we don’t need any of that. Look at Fat Hitler. He’s an expert in everything without knowing anything about anything.
People should be more like him. If a patient shows up and thinks they might have cancer, doctors should just say, like Trump, “Who knows more about cancer than me? No one.” Then send that person home to die, cuz what do they know? Hurricane strikes without warning killing thousands who weren’t prepared? Weather guys can just say “I know more about hurricanes than you’ll ever know.” Then walk away. They did their job.
Just like Trump, you should just say you know it all. Then do exactly the wrong thing. People die?
Blame Biden.
Isaac Stanley-Becker, in The Atlantic, describes what the deep cuts and interference by the white house ultracrepidarians have done to the FAA.
downsizing is drastically reducing the number of aeronautical-information specialists and other workers in critical safety roles
"As hundreds of career officials depart, the FAA has a fresh face in its midst: Ted Malaska, a SpaceX engineer who arrived at the agency last month with instructions from SpaceX’s owner, Elon Musk, to deploy equipment from the SpaceX subsidiary Starlink across the FAA’s communications network. The directive promises to make the nation’s air-traffic-control system dependent on the billionaire Trump ally, using equipment that experts say has not gone through strict U.S.-government security and risk-management review.
....
The FAA’s turn to Starlink as a solution for its aging communications network poses a challenge to a $2.4 billion contract awarded to Verizon in 2023 to upgrade the agency’s network. FAA lawyers have been working 80-hour weeks to figure out what to do—"
Kristi Noem (and everyone else in Trump world) sucks at her job? It can’t possibly be because she’s spectacularly unqualified and an abysmally incompetent boob who only got the job because she kissed Fat Hitler’s flabby ass. Some sneaky sumbitch is making her look bad. Get the polygraph! Test everyone!
If you’re a lying sack of shit who tries to finagle everything and know you’re a fraud and a crook, everyone else must be as well. Incompetent fakers and sneaky, thieving bastards are always paranoid and suspicious of everyone else, so they need to lower the boom on everyone. That’s how authoritarian states work. Incompetence, systematic failure and ubiquitous idiocy must be someone else’s fault. So investigate! Hold show trials! Fire people! Throw them in jail. Point fingers! Go on state TV and denounce! CYA!
That’s what Trump does.
Mihir A. Desai, in The New York Times, on Musk’s Cultish Business Empire May Be Starting to Crack
"It is tempting to compare Mr. Musk to the true business titans of the past quarter century such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But those individuals created genuinely huge businesses that eclipse anything Mr. Musk has built by any possible metric. While Mr. Musk has built a car company from the ground up — no easy feat — his wealth is largely thanks to a financial cult, one in which legions of dazzled investor-followers have enabled him to launch an ever-growing list of disparate initiatives and provided immunity from critics who question his operational decision-making, his corporate governance, his obscene pay packages, and now his migration into the political sphere."
Seattle Time piece on WA ST's. Trump country woes:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-empathy-struggle-when-cuts-hit-was-trump-country/?
"These Words No Longer Exist"
Canadian Border
Being awful pays.
"CNN Pundit Scott Jennings, Who Regularly Defends Trump, Gets Raise Amid Staff Cuts
Sources told former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy that Jennings is in the final stages of negotiating a significant pay bump as the network is laying off some 200 staffers."
If they were really trying to save money they could pay these cultists nothing and they would still come on to praise dear leader with the hope that Fat Hitler may see how slavishly loyal they are to his version of reality.
The Party of Family Values
"Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing
The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Trump and carried out by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste.
“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin."
Some of this reminds me of stories I heard at the beginning of Russia's war in Ukraine where mothers in Russia had so bought into the lies that they wouldn't believe their children in Ukraine telling them they were getting bombed by Putin's thugs. Don't believe your lying eyes, only dear leader has the truths. The dissonance is crazy. Even personal experience is not enough to break most of these morons out of their fevered dreams. And those outside the cult deserve all the pain that comes their way, even family.
What's the worry?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/us/politics/russia-spies-diplomats.html
Occam would suggest Russia will no longer need spies. They have the Pretender.
We need a new government department. I've named it
Department Of Presidential Efficiency, or DOPE.
Since he's one of the biggest dopes in the country, he needs some
efficiency training.
Tell us something useful you did every day last week............waiting,
waiting, waiting.
OK, you're fired.
I heard a story the other day about a friend's niece and family. The woman works in HR for whatever agency handles Indian affairs-- can't remember the name. She works from home, moved to NC because it was easier there to do full time. They have been there a while. Their daughter just got accepted at UNC, with in-state tuition. If the mother's job dissolves or changes, they will have to leave NC and move back to DC. Now the daughter can't go to UNC: out-of-state tuition is prohibitively expensive. That is simply one angle of how these moronic cuts affect people way down the line, not just the person employed by the feds. Or no longer employed...Everyone is in an impossible position and the idiots trying to change the world so the Heritage Foundation stays relevant are causing mayhem, for which they simply don't care. If they do, as it is commonly believed, dump on the so-called entitlements, we are all screwed on one level or another. Can't wait for the bread lines.
Jeanne,
There won’t be any bread lines. Musk’s Hitler Youth will determine that feeding the poor and unemployed (people they fired!) is not efficient. That money is better spent on giving themselves a fat raise. By the way, Big Balls and the other Doggie douchebags all make six figure salaries.