Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office has received “many, many” calls about trans people’s struggles to update their passports in the last two weeks, a source familiar with the issue told The Standard Friday.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes. The order also bars people from changing their gender on federal documents.

Nevada Nubes, a trans person who lives in the Mission, said the passport agency denied their request to update their name and issue a new passport showing their gender as X, citing the executive order.

Nubes said they mailed in their passport Jan. 24 to update their name, which they recently legally changed.

“They said they could only give me my passport with my updated name, and then my gender that was assigned to me at birth,” Nubes said. But the office later said it couldn’t even do that. “They’re holding my documents, and I’m not able to travel.”

When Nubes asked for the old passport back, the office was unable to produce it. As a result, they had to cancel a Friday flight to Mexico to visit a friend who is dying of AIDS.

https://sfstandard.com/2025/01/31/trans-passport-gender-donald-trump-executive-order/

The entire system for applying/renewing/replacing passports appears to be down since yesterday: "Passport Application System is undergoing maintenance".

I'm sure its fine

F.A.A.’s Main Warning System for Pilots Is Down, U.S. Official Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/notam-outage-faa-alerts.html

probably nothing....

My mom's supposed to be leaving for her annual two-week trip to Mexico on Tuesday. I'm wondering if a) her flight will leave at all (will travel to Mexico still be legal by then?); b) it will arrive safely; c) if they'll let her back into the USA afterwards (her last name is Guevara).

Elon Musk says he's going to be shutting down federal grants (which he called "illegal payments") to Lutheran Services providers. https://bsky.app/profile/bubbaprog.lol/post/3lh77ekgdas2h

Similar to Catholic Charities, this is a network of 300 health and human service nonprofits that claims to reach 1 in 50 Americans each year. It "advances equitable outcomes for children, youth and families, improves independence and choice for older adults, champions meaningful services and support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and strengthens stability and purpose for veterans, refugees, new Americans and more."

It also has a 100% rating on Charity Navigator.

I guess it’s a good thing for them that nothing this administration does is considered illegal, what with these stupid motherfuckers advertising their crimes on X.

i mean, last time i was often criticized for freaking out too much about blatantly ridiculous, short-sighted, and idiotic decisions made by the trump administration.

this time things seem way more extreme but is it? these decisions --- the tarriffs and the cuts to grants --- seem like the kind of thing that will cause very blatant and obvious catastrophes that can clearly be traced back to them. is this what is going to happen?

the tariffs are interesting to me because capital mobility seems very important to people like jeff bezos. and yet these are the people standing behind him now.

there is something i am not seeing.

My take is that Trump is using the tariffs to distract the media while Elon loots the Treasury. I’ve seen plenty of articles about the tariffs, but not nearly enough about Musk’s fuckery.

why does trump want elon to loot the treasury

the whole situation is bizarre. a firehose of radical policy changes, many unconstitutional and quickly struck down by judges

yeah this is kind of what pisses me off the most, every single Trump voter I know calls us hysterical for even suggesting he would do half the shit he did in his first 2 weeks. like how much were they crying over the Project 2025 stuff, or saying "you call everyone Hitler", fucking cowards all of them. whatever happens, they own all this shit

so, take the tariffs. if it causes a major crash, this will be blamed on biden.

if they somehow do not --- if the tariffs work out and helps spur a renaissance of domestic manufacturing --- then that means i do not understand how things work.

it seems ridiculous to be antagonizing canada and mexico for no reason. this doesn't seem like a targeted plan to encourage onshoring through tariffs, it's just chaotic.

call me naive but I think Trump actually will take the blame for this

The thing that sucks is it’s a deliberate goal of these fucks to force a reaction through protests and then declare the Insurrection Act and crush them with violence.

so trump and elon are both deeply disturbed mentally. elon apparently is a heavy user of ketamine and you can sort of tell he is "off" in recent appearances.

Xxxp to Frogbs even those supposed hard nosed capitalists at JP Morgan were like “he’s not going to do tariffs don’t worry” and now they are “whoa we weren’t expecting that!!!”

I just want these peoples’ lifestyles to catch up with them if you catch my drift

this is sort of a point i would make a lot on ilx in 2016 and perhaps annoyingly so. but i guess then there were some brakes on him? so he would say crazy stuff but much of the government sort of chugged along normally?

xp to myself

The North American automobile manufacturing sector, which is highly integrated with Canada, was predicted by an industry representative to crash within the week. Whether that's an exaggeration is to be seen. Watch the markets on opening tomorrow to see the degree of nervousness.

but both trump and musk are mentally ill. they need treatment. but instead they are just shooting from the hip, ripping up the US government. seemingly! i can't tell if this is just some sort of show

Xxxp to Frogbs even those supposed hard nosed capitalists at JP Morgan were like “he’s not going to do tariffs don’t worry” and now they are “whoa we weren’t expecting that!!!”

its been the most frustrating part of all this honestly like yes the Dems are bad at messaging but they were pretty clear on how tariffs were gonna fuck everyone over and that Trump 100% was gonna do them because he's just that stupid and careless and the electorate was just like, "nah, Trump's gonna be good for the economy actually"

like is trump going to do a "deal" with canada and mexico to get pledges to stop drug trafficking and then call off the dogs?

but yeah it's wild like the media pretty much forced Biden out of the race after that debate, they hammered on his mental fitness nonstop and it became the *only* story for nearly 2 whole months, now here we have President Trump dumping millions of gallons of water into the ocean for no reason and there's barely been a peep about it, in case it's somehow still unclear whose side they're on

is musk just building some budget presentation for congress? did they know they could only delay these grants, not stop them? they just want to make a point? are they rational actors? or is this some kind of k hole

i mean, frogbs, in 2016 - 2020 and beyond, there was a lot of coverage of trump being crazy, dangerous, and even a foreign asset. it seemed to make him more popular and people thought libs were chicken little. but idk. maybe we are.

i sense in myself a restraint. like, am i really seeing what i seem to be seeing?

like is trump going to do a "deal" with canada and mexico to get pledges to stop drug trafficking and then call off the dogs?

― treeship., Sunday, February 2, 2025 11:40 AM (thirty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

in his first term he might've done this just to get some small concession so the media can fawn over his hardnosed approach to politics and call him a winner but now I honestly have no clue, I think the simplest/best explanation is that his brain has been completely hollowed out

he seemed like that before though

i mean, frogbs, in 2016 - 2020 and beyond, there was a lot of coverage of trump being crazy, dangerous, and even a foreign asset. it seemed to make him more popular and people thought libs were chicken little. but idk. maybe we are.

― treeship., Sunday, February 2, 2025 11:42 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

none of that really affected their day to day lives though, if the prices of groceries go up 25% and airlines start having major issues and Medicaid becomes nonfunctional I think they might start making some noise. Trump voters may be total dipshits but they're also very selfish, I don't think they're really okay with their quality of life going down just so Elon can pocket another 10 billion dollars

seeing how the tariffs are essentially self imposed sanctions, the message will be the same as it was internally for the russian sanctions: any failures will be blamed on other countries, and any changes that had to be made because of the tariffs will be touted as major victories. there will be blame laid on the orange idiot, but none from the people who voted for him. we all know how this will unfold.

How much lumber comes from Canada percentage-wise? I feel like it’s a significant amount? On top of the deportations, this could be another huge increase in the cost of constructing new housing.

i think it's around 25%

My fear: when the United States begins to recoil from the effects of its own economic folly, the Trump administration will ask Americans to regard the pain as a sacrifice in a way that George W. Bush after 9-11 never did. It'll convert no one on our side, of course, but it'll harden the MAGA voters' unbearableness.

Trump voters love him because he sticks it to the people they don't like, I dont think they're willing to actually sacrifice what little they actually have

all the talk of whether Trump and his cabal will be "blamed" for this or that inevitable catastrophe, whether supporters will begin to have second thoughts, etc... one possibility is that Trump et al are behaving in a way that suggest they dont expect public opinion or electoral politics to be a significant check on their future power

Not only people that they don't like, but the people that didn't already know they didn't like.

They all became aware of and started despising Canada this week.

Musk openly talked about how tough this was gonna be economically for Americans.

trump voters already sacrificed many things because of the idiot and his gang's policies. it doesn't matter if they will lose much more (and they will, together with the people who will suffer because of these idiots), they will never blame it on trump, unless the whole propaganda machine that feeds them turns on trump.

George W. Bush after 9-11 never did. It'll convert no one on our side, of course, but it'll harden the MAGA voters' unbearableness.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, February 2, 2025 1:36 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Unlike 9/11, the tariffs are self-imposed and serve no purpose

the pointlessness is the real issue here. i have no idea what could possibly be gained by imposing tariffs in this manner. it does not seem to be part of a larger strategy to increase domestic manufacturing

Unlike 9/11, the tariffs are self-imposed and serve no purpose

now we export our bullshit

Trump has likely convinced MAGA that he’s helping the American lumber industry with tariffs, and MAGA that he’s stopping the import of fetanyl. He probably wants to open currently protected US forests to logging.

Do Schumer and Jeffries have a qualified media communications staff that can counter the Trump take on podcasts, social media, mainstream media, and also getting on Fox News to try to make those in the right wing bubble at least be aware of contrary arguments?

Do you even own a suit?

There's a whole administration's worth of thread titles in that press conference.

Before we close up this one, I just want to say that 29 days ago when I merged two Trumpisms* for this thread title I really had no idea how fully and completely apt it would be.

*The California water thing and him describing Mayor Pete's "Great line of bullshit" during the post-DC plane crash presser.

Putting this here even though it's March. The backlash is real.

Senator Marshall (R-KS) RUNS AWAY, fleeing his own town hall after being asked about DOGE firing Veterans. MAKE HIM GO VIRAL.

https://bsky.app/profile/muellershewrote.bsky.social/post/3ljdjznddic2m

note that the second line in my post is taken from the bsky post, it's not mine

I bet most of the people in that room voted for Trump. Now they are shocked to discover that the face-eating leopards they voted for are going to eat people's faces indiscriminately!!

Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing, Adventurous: US Politics March 2025