Monday is tired and trudging along...
Mar. 31st, 2025 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSlept poorly again last night. And shoulder has been bugging me, icing it now.
I'm confused at work, but then so is Breaking Bad, so I'm in good company.
Life is surreal. All this horrible chaos is happening on the national and world stage, yet in my little piece of the planet - the sun comes up, the sun goes down, trees blossom, I go to work, take out the recycling, try to make public transportation safer and more accessible for thousands of commuters. Read when I can. Paint. Draw. Write. Breath. And hopefully sleep. Also make breakfast, lunch and dinner, and try not to eat too many sweets, while taking meds to curtail various health issues.
Life continues at its pity patter pace, regardless. Doesn't it? It's hard at times to have faith in god or people, I have more in God, the source of us all, the Universe that contains us, but I also realize it feels no need to intervene, and this life we lead is rather small in the scope of things.
I told that to some guy I was sitting next to in an airplane once. It was a small plane to Martha's Vineyard. He was on his first Martini. I looked out the window and said : "we're like ants, specks on the planet from up here, if you think about it." He responded, somewhat rudely, I thought: "That it's not polite to discuss politics on an airplane."
That still haunts me. That brief bit of conversation. I can still see him plainly in my head, grey headed with a goatee beard, and a thin face. Wearing a casual suite. I don't know his name. And doubt he'd recognize me or I him now. It was in 2019 or thereabouts. So long ago, yet close too.
***
Bits of news...such as it is, in regards to the push-back against the Evil Wannabee Dictatorship. I'm thinking of calling it the Great Mutant Zombie Apocalypse That Wasn't.
1. Voice of America: A federal judge issued a restraining order to stop further efforts to silence VOA journalists, pushing back on Trump’s attempts to control U.S.-funded international media.
2.Consumer Protection: A judge blocked the administration’s move to dismantle the CFPB, protecting the agency created after the 2008 crisis from being gutted. [I honestly don't understand why they want to dismantle the Consumer Protection Agency. ]
3.Migrant Deportations: The administration was barred from deporting migrants to deporting migrants to countries other than their home country without notice or a chance to seek protection, halting a fast-track deportation tactic. [ Basically they can't do the short-cut of sending migrants to El Salvador Prisons any longer. They have to deport them to the countries of their birth, not another country's prison. Their birth countries were also fighting back. Apparently Venzeula took exception to their former citizens being put in El Salvadoran Prisons.]
4. Law Firm Retaliation: Judges froze parts of Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms involved in the Mueller probe, calling the actions a threat to their existence.
5.Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has initiated legal action against Elon Musk for buying votes which violates Wisconsin’s election laws. [There were huge protests in Green Bay Wisconsin, a conservative district, against Musk trying to buy the Wisconsin Judge Election.]
6. As part of the TeslaTakedown movement, people around the world came together Sat for a Global Day of Action—with over 600 peaceful protests at Tesla facilities and public spaces in the US.
7.Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama), who lead the Senate and House Armed Services committees, respectively, pushed back firmly against the administration’s plans to restructure the military and retreat from Europe, saying they “will not accept” changes without congressional approval. Wicker has also said he is directing the administration to preserve documents in the Signal group chat matter, as his committee begins an inquiry into the fiasco.
8.Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) and others pushed back firmly against the administration in the Signal screwup, directing them to “own it and fix it,” as Thune put it.
9.A prominent GOP fundraiser and Republican Jewish Coalition board member called on Trump’s lead peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, to resign for his “utter incompetence” in dealing with Vladimir Putin and with Hamas.
10.Some in the MAGA echo chamber are likewise pushing back. Fox News host Laura Ingraham was skeptical of national security adviser Michael Waltz as he tried to explain how he added Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number to his group chat (“Somehow it gets sucked in”).
Fox News’s chief national security correspondent said her sources told her “what was shared may have been FAR MORE sensitive” than the term “war plans” conveys.Broadcaster Piers Morgan pointed out that if “this had happened on [Joe] Biden’s watch, Republicans would have rightly gone berserk.”The (Murdoch-owned) New York Post branded the flap “OPERATION OVERSHARE,” and Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy wrote a piece for the paper arguing: “It is undeniable, or at least it should be, that ‘information providing advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack’ is to be classified as ‘top secret.’”
11.The courts have risen to the occasion in restraining Trump, from dozens of trial judges across the country to the chief justice. When an appeals court this week rejected the administration’s appeal of Judge James Boasberg’s order in the Venezuelan deportation case, Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote in her opinion that the administration was “incorrect” to claim that it was immune from judicial review and that the lower-court judge’s order was written “for a quintessentially valid purpose.”
12.A few on the right begin to resist the Trump terror: From the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board to Fox News, capitulation is on the way out. [That's nice, but you still can't pay me enough to subscribe to a Rupert Murdoch publication. I used to look at the Wall Street Journal from time to time - then Murdoch bought it, and I gave up.]
13. [Speaking of the Wall Street Journal - it's basically the Capitalism Newspaper, similar to the Economist and the Financial Times, but even more Capitalistic.] The Wall St Journal’s Editorial board is using that voice to defend its longtime motto — “free markets and free people” — by becoming a daily scold of the Trump administration for its constant violations of both. [Yes, while free market capitalism can go hand in hand with fascism, see China, free markets and free people - can't. I wish more people paid attention in school.] It is giving warnings like “America’s allies may conclude they can no longer trust the U.S. in a crisis.”, [Bit late, they already have - they kind of figured that out when the idiot threatened to take over Canada and Greenland, and refused to support the Ukraine.] They criticized Hegseth for trying to dismiss the flap as a hoax, it concluded that the administration “seems to think it can bully its way through anything by shouting Fake News and attacking the press” but should instead “take the loss”. On Republicans’ “shock” loss of a special election in a heavily Republican area of Pennsylvania: “Even voters who like the GOP’s policy agenda could be jolted by the impression of chaos in Washington, plus Trump’s recent focus on retribution,” it wrote, warning against following “out-of-touch leaders down ideological rabbit holes.” The day before, the Journal denounced the “dumb-and-dumber trade war” and Trump’s desire to “sabotage America with protectionism.”[I don't know if this is good news or not? But when the ultra conservative Wall Street Journal starts attacking the idiotic Republicans, you know things have gone off the rails.]
The Journal’s editorial board has been tough on Trump from the start of his term. But lately, it has run one editorial after the other excoriating his positions on trade, national security and the law. It blasted “the administration’s propensity to fall for Russian propaganda,” warning that it might be following in Neville Chamberlain’s footsteps when it comes to Ukraine. It admonished that “Taunting John Roberts is a lousy strategy,” that Trump “can’t defy court orders” and that Trump’s military reorganization “sounds more like an American retreat.” It said the calls to impeach “judges who rule against Trump are a corrosive stunt.” And it righteously declared, “Mr. Trump’s decision to use government power to punish [law] firms for representing clients breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the Founders.”
The WSJ editorials criticizing Trump keep coming. Politicizing the judiciary is a “disreputable racket.” Trump must act “within the bounds of American law.” The administration is pursuing the “Fool’s Gold of a Crypto Reserve.” Hegseth shut down the Pentagon’s internal think tank “for no good reason.” Trump’s “willy-nilly” tariffs “Whack Trump Voters” and “someone should sue” him for claiming emergency powers. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “dangerous to public health.” Ending Secret Service protection for former aides facing threats from Iran is a “vindictive whim” and a “new low.” The Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Vance instigated “only helps Russia’s dictator.” The administration’s “rehabilitation of Vladimir Putin is especially hard to take.” Witkoff “parroted one specious Russian talking point after another.” Vance promotes an “abandon Ukraine strategy”; Trump “won’t tell the truth about which country started the war”; and the president’s vision is “less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one.”
[Interesting - the Washington Post caved, but the Wall Street Journal, of all things, has gone into attack mode.]
When Trump pardoned the Jan. 6 offenders, the Journal denounced this “rotten message from a president about political violence done on his behalf. ... What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the president adds another.”
"If the Journal’s editorialists can keep saying all this while neither fearing the wrath of Trump nor feeling the hammer of Murdoch, there might yet be hope for us all."
[Also, it's worth noting that the nitwits who supported and voted for Trump, read the Wall Street Journal, the Post, and watch Fox News.]
14.The law firm Perkins Coie, represented by Williams & Connolly, is fighting back against Trump’s vindictiveness.
15.The Associated Press took the administration to court on Thursday over Trump’s banishment of the news organization from the Oval Office and Air Force One. [ I wonder if this is still over the Gulf of Mexico issue?]
16. Fox News - "Trump attacked the “absolutely terrible” work of Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, apparently because she asked on air about the propriety of Trump hosting a Tesla marketing event at the White House. Brit Hume and others at the network came to her defense."
17.Vance’s wife, Usha, had to abandon plans to make a public visit to Greenland with Waltz, after furious reaction from Greenlanders over the Americans’ “highly aggressive” effort to “demonstrate power over us.” The Vances will instead visit a U.S. military base on the island. Danish media reports that shopkeepers and residents refused when “Americans” over the last week “knocked on doors and rang doorbells” to ask whether Greenlanders would meet with Usha Vance: “They have been told no, no, no, no, no, every time they [the Americans] have asked if they would like the vice president’s wife to visit.” With all the backlash, they had to cancel her trip to Greenland, and instead she nd her husband (the VP) visited a US bas in Denmark, where there are no people for hundreds of miles to protest them.
Sigh
I'm confused at work, but then so is Breaking Bad, so I'm in good company.
Life is surreal. All this horrible chaos is happening on the national and world stage, yet in my little piece of the planet - the sun comes up, the sun goes down, trees blossom, I go to work, take out the recycling, try to make public transportation safer and more accessible for thousands of commuters. Read when I can. Paint. Draw. Write. Breath. And hopefully sleep. Also make breakfast, lunch and dinner, and try not to eat too many sweets, while taking meds to curtail various health issues.
Life continues at its pity patter pace, regardless. Doesn't it? It's hard at times to have faith in god or people, I have more in God, the source of us all, the Universe that contains us, but I also realize it feels no need to intervene, and this life we lead is rather small in the scope of things.
I told that to some guy I was sitting next to in an airplane once. It was a small plane to Martha's Vineyard. He was on his first Martini. I looked out the window and said : "we're like ants, specks on the planet from up here, if you think about it." He responded, somewhat rudely, I thought: "That it's not polite to discuss politics on an airplane."
That still haunts me. That brief bit of conversation. I can still see him plainly in my head, grey headed with a goatee beard, and a thin face. Wearing a casual suite. I don't know his name. And doubt he'd recognize me or I him now. It was in 2019 or thereabouts. So long ago, yet close too.
***
Bits of news...such as it is, in regards to the push-back against the Evil Wannabee Dictatorship. I'm thinking of calling it the Great Mutant Zombie Apocalypse That Wasn't.
1. Voice of America: A federal judge issued a restraining order to stop further efforts to silence VOA journalists, pushing back on Trump’s attempts to control U.S.-funded international media.
2.Consumer Protection: A judge blocked the administration’s move to dismantle the CFPB, protecting the agency created after the 2008 crisis from being gutted. [I honestly don't understand why they want to dismantle the Consumer Protection Agency. ]
3.Migrant Deportations: The administration was barred from deporting migrants to deporting migrants to countries other than their home country without notice or a chance to seek protection, halting a fast-track deportation tactic. [ Basically they can't do the short-cut of sending migrants to El Salvador Prisons any longer. They have to deport them to the countries of their birth, not another country's prison. Their birth countries were also fighting back. Apparently Venzeula took exception to their former citizens being put in El Salvadoran Prisons.]
4. Law Firm Retaliation: Judges froze parts of Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms involved in the Mueller probe, calling the actions a threat to their existence.
5.Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has initiated legal action against Elon Musk for buying votes which violates Wisconsin’s election laws. [There were huge protests in Green Bay Wisconsin, a conservative district, against Musk trying to buy the Wisconsin Judge Election.]
6. As part of the TeslaTakedown movement, people around the world came together Sat for a Global Day of Action—with over 600 peaceful protests at Tesla facilities and public spaces in the US.
7.Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama), who lead the Senate and House Armed Services committees, respectively, pushed back firmly against the administration’s plans to restructure the military and retreat from Europe, saying they “will not accept” changes without congressional approval. Wicker has also said he is directing the administration to preserve documents in the Signal group chat matter, as his committee begins an inquiry into the fiasco.
8.Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) and others pushed back firmly against the administration in the Signal screwup, directing them to “own it and fix it,” as Thune put it.
9.A prominent GOP fundraiser and Republican Jewish Coalition board member called on Trump’s lead peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, to resign for his “utter incompetence” in dealing with Vladimir Putin and with Hamas.
10.Some in the MAGA echo chamber are likewise pushing back. Fox News host Laura Ingraham was skeptical of national security adviser Michael Waltz as he tried to explain how he added Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number to his group chat (“Somehow it gets sucked in”).
Fox News’s chief national security correspondent said her sources told her “what was shared may have been FAR MORE sensitive” than the term “war plans” conveys.Broadcaster Piers Morgan pointed out that if “this had happened on [Joe] Biden’s watch, Republicans would have rightly gone berserk.”The (Murdoch-owned) New York Post branded the flap “OPERATION OVERSHARE,” and Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy wrote a piece for the paper arguing: “It is undeniable, or at least it should be, that ‘information providing advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack’ is to be classified as ‘top secret.’”
11.The courts have risen to the occasion in restraining Trump, from dozens of trial judges across the country to the chief justice. When an appeals court this week rejected the administration’s appeal of Judge James Boasberg’s order in the Venezuelan deportation case, Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote in her opinion that the administration was “incorrect” to claim that it was immune from judicial review and that the lower-court judge’s order was written “for a quintessentially valid purpose.”
12.A few on the right begin to resist the Trump terror: From the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board to Fox News, capitulation is on the way out. [That's nice, but you still can't pay me enough to subscribe to a Rupert Murdoch publication. I used to look at the Wall Street Journal from time to time - then Murdoch bought it, and I gave up.]
13. [Speaking of the Wall Street Journal - it's basically the Capitalism Newspaper, similar to the Economist and the Financial Times, but even more Capitalistic.] The Wall St Journal’s Editorial board is using that voice to defend its longtime motto — “free markets and free people” — by becoming a daily scold of the Trump administration for its constant violations of both. [Yes, while free market capitalism can go hand in hand with fascism, see China, free markets and free people - can't. I wish more people paid attention in school.] It is giving warnings like “America’s allies may conclude they can no longer trust the U.S. in a crisis.”, [Bit late, they already have - they kind of figured that out when the idiot threatened to take over Canada and Greenland, and refused to support the Ukraine.] They criticized Hegseth for trying to dismiss the flap as a hoax, it concluded that the administration “seems to think it can bully its way through anything by shouting Fake News and attacking the press” but should instead “take the loss”. On Republicans’ “shock” loss of a special election in a heavily Republican area of Pennsylvania: “Even voters who like the GOP’s policy agenda could be jolted by the impression of chaos in Washington, plus Trump’s recent focus on retribution,” it wrote, warning against following “out-of-touch leaders down ideological rabbit holes.” The day before, the Journal denounced the “dumb-and-dumber trade war” and Trump’s desire to “sabotage America with protectionism.”[I don't know if this is good news or not? But when the ultra conservative Wall Street Journal starts attacking the idiotic Republicans, you know things have gone off the rails.]
The Journal’s editorial board has been tough on Trump from the start of his term. But lately, it has run one editorial after the other excoriating his positions on trade, national security and the law. It blasted “the administration’s propensity to fall for Russian propaganda,” warning that it might be following in Neville Chamberlain’s footsteps when it comes to Ukraine. It admonished that “Taunting John Roberts is a lousy strategy,” that Trump “can’t defy court orders” and that Trump’s military reorganization “sounds more like an American retreat.” It said the calls to impeach “judges who rule against Trump are a corrosive stunt.” And it righteously declared, “Mr. Trump’s decision to use government power to punish [law] firms for representing clients breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the Founders.”
The WSJ editorials criticizing Trump keep coming. Politicizing the judiciary is a “disreputable racket.” Trump must act “within the bounds of American law.” The administration is pursuing the “Fool’s Gold of a Crypto Reserve.” Hegseth shut down the Pentagon’s internal think tank “for no good reason.” Trump’s “willy-nilly” tariffs “Whack Trump Voters” and “someone should sue” him for claiming emergency powers. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “dangerous to public health.” Ending Secret Service protection for former aides facing threats from Iran is a “vindictive whim” and a “new low.” The Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Vance instigated “only helps Russia’s dictator.” The administration’s “rehabilitation of Vladimir Putin is especially hard to take.” Witkoff “parroted one specious Russian talking point after another.” Vance promotes an “abandon Ukraine strategy”; Trump “won’t tell the truth about which country started the war”; and the president’s vision is “less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one.”
[Interesting - the Washington Post caved, but the Wall Street Journal, of all things, has gone into attack mode.]
When Trump pardoned the Jan. 6 offenders, the Journal denounced this “rotten message from a president about political violence done on his behalf. ... What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the president adds another.”
"If the Journal’s editorialists can keep saying all this while neither fearing the wrath of Trump nor feeling the hammer of Murdoch, there might yet be hope for us all."
[Also, it's worth noting that the nitwits who supported and voted for Trump, read the Wall Street Journal, the Post, and watch Fox News.]
14.The law firm Perkins Coie, represented by Williams & Connolly, is fighting back against Trump’s vindictiveness.
15.The Associated Press took the administration to court on Thursday over Trump’s banishment of the news organization from the Oval Office and Air Force One. [ I wonder if this is still over the Gulf of Mexico issue?]
16. Fox News - "Trump attacked the “absolutely terrible” work of Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, apparently because she asked on air about the propriety of Trump hosting a Tesla marketing event at the White House. Brit Hume and others at the network came to her defense."
17.Vance’s wife, Usha, had to abandon plans to make a public visit to Greenland with Waltz, after furious reaction from Greenlanders over the Americans’ “highly aggressive” effort to “demonstrate power over us.” The Vances will instead visit a U.S. military base on the island. Danish media reports that shopkeepers and residents refused when “Americans” over the last week “knocked on doors and rang doorbells” to ask whether Greenlanders would meet with Usha Vance: “They have been told no, no, no, no, no, every time they [the Americans] have asked if they would like the vice president’s wife to visit.” With all the backlash, they had to cancel her trip to Greenland, and instead she nd her husband (the VP) visited a US bas in Denmark, where there are no people for hundreds of miles to protest them.
Sigh
no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 03:44 am (UTC)[I honestly don't understand why they want to dismantle the Consumer Protection Agency.]
I haven't heard any particulars, but the natural answer is "so the consumers won't have any protection" from the ongoing scams.
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Date: 2025-04-01 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-03 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 12:08 pm (UTC)[ETA: Sorry I got confused. I thought you were commenting on the political links and Trump. Not the conversation on the plane. LOL!
Yes, I agree - I thought is was odd too and decided, okay...this is quick plane ride, I won't see him again.]
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Date: 2025-04-03 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-03 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-03 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-03 02:06 pm (UTC)I thought all three comments were about the political links, not the conversation on the plane, when it was the opposite.