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

let the right wing provide a home for those who love the material 21st century capitalist life

but it seems that this current batch want something more - to reshape the country into a very weird, dark form of christianity that jettisons all the forgiveness stuff (actual jesus) and goes back to the old testament full of smiting and prepping for the end times. And they don't just want it for themselves, they want it codified into law... Not the Trump family, obviously, they're just the useful idiots that are helping us move in the direction that they want: a few rich white men at the top, with a bible in their hands - and the rest of us cowed and quiet

speaking as a Jew, callous cruelty and prepping for the apocalypse is as much a misread of the old testament as it is of the new.

there's no true spiritual basis in any of this depravity

for some reason this article just broke me

https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/yosemite-national-park-in-chaos-20163260.php

I'm a bit suspicous of that Alt National Parks social media account but they have been a three alarm fire of bad news for weeks now.

holy shit

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/danielle-sassoon-quit-eric-adams.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wk4.vldS.Q-_P2I2o4v-L

i read an article this morning stating what a bad ass right winger she was--Heritage Foundation and everything

ha ha this one!

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/nyregion/adams-prosecutor-danielle-sassoon-profile.html

good for her

I remember that Alt National Parks account from 2017-era Twitter. There were a few accounts like it that purported to have inside information about what was going on in the federal government, and some of them shaded too far into Resistance grifting. I don't recall what Alt National Parks was like, exactly, but I'm looking at its Facebook page now and I'm put off by the fact that it's posting news items -- not original reporting, but publicly available information -- without links. I wouldn't be able to trust any of it without confirming elsewhere.

the traditional third places are gone

I'm in a bar with my friends about weekly, and I stopped drinking.

Glad to see some coalescing around some big (hopefully) protests coming up soon - this Saturday protests at Tesla dealers, Monday protests at the White House and state capitols and February 28th trying to get an economic blackout for big corporations.

How much of a difference they'll make? Who knows. But these are good things to see and help out with.

when the grift is naked as a jaybird, better to cover it up a bit

State department removes word ‘Tesla’ from $400m US armoured vehicles list

The US Department of State has removed the name “Tesla” from a list of planned purchases, after an earlier version of the list said it would spend $400m buying new electric armoured vehicles, even as the carmaker’s boss, Elon Musk, leads efforts to slash government spending under Donald Trump.

A procurement forecast produced by the department showed the $400m (£320m) proposed spending on “armoured Tesla (production units)” in December. The most likely Tesla model was the Cybertruck, the company’s electric pickup, given Musk’s claims that the vehicle is bulletproof.

However, a spokesperson for the department said the document was incorrect, and should have been a generic entry reading “electric vehicle manufacturer”. The department said the order was on hold.

yeah that alt national parks account does things like post "Three" ... then follow up with "this is an internal message that only people in the government get" uh yeah, ok. it hasn't posted anything false though.

i read an article this morning stating what a bad ass right winger she was--Heritage Foundation and everything

maybe they're mad that he's pushing to exonerate a democrat. in which case, surprise MAGA people: Trump and Musk are pro-corruption. They don't fucking care what party people belong to, this is like the Joker letting Arkham free.

(also why the fuck does the State Department need armored electric trucks?)

U.S. diplomats are not exactly popular worldwide, Andy (and the forecast is for their popularity to decline rapidly)

it might be that the Dept of Defense would have to put the procurement up for an open bid (with caterpillar, GM, etc.) whereas the State Dept can just purchase shoddy Tesla trucks outright, to drive Marco Rubio around El Salvador

On second thought I'd be okay with Marco Rubio dying in an exploding Tesla while working for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That would be kinda fuckin poetic

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for members of this administration being driven around in those notoriously terrible vehicles, but I don't wanna get fleeced for them.

It might be a 'bridge to nowhere' pork purchase for Musck, and the cybertrucks just end up rotting in a garage in Alexandria

I mean, be paid $200+ million to help get Trump elected, he deserves a little sugar for that

i read an explainer on bsky where it was clear the dude understood how the DOD and the state department procurement worked and the Tesla thing he said was just like the agency saying "this is how we might spend our money" versus actually allocating $ to buy Teslas.

https://gizmodo.com/the-400-million-armored-tesla-story-is-a-fake-scandal-in-a-sea-of-real-graft-and-horror-2000563641

NIH network down

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to keep federal funding in place for hospitals that offer gender-transition treatments for people under the age of 19.

The temporary restraining order issued by Judge Brendan A. Hurson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, came in a case brought by six transgender individuals between the ages of 12 and 18, along with parents and advocacy groups. They sued to block President Trump’s executive orders targeting medical treatments for trans youths.

The order is not a final decision on the legal issues but is a setback for the Trump administration. It creates a second legal roadblock to Mr. Trump’s broad effort to prohibit the government and taxpayer-funded institutions from recognizing transgender Americans according to their gender identities. Earlier this month, another federal judge blocked Mr. Trump’s directive to withhold gender-transition medical treatment for federal prisoners, and to house transgender women inmates with men.

Judge Hurson was appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Since 18 year olds are legally adults idg how Trump can claim the ability to interfere with their medical care decisions.

a core tenet of this administration is to interfere with everyone's medical care decisions

Because the whole world has been running around insisting that everyone under 25 is a child?

well, you can stay on your parents' health care until 26

https://gizmodo.com/the-400-million-armored-tesla-story-is-a-fake-scandal-in-a-sea-of-real-graft-and-horror-2000563641

― a (waterface), Thursday, February 13, 2025 2:51 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the kind of thing that is making me tear my hair out. There is obviously a lot of genuinely awful and scary shit happening. There are also things that look bad but may not be (or at least not as bad as they look), but the context in which they are happening makes it hard to tell the difference, and it's hard to blame people for freaking out about them. The information environment right now just feels really messy.

Some things are all too clear.

US president Donald Trump insisted he believed Putin “wants peace”. “I think he would tell me if he didn’t,”

The phrase "dangerously stupid" has never been more perfectly exemplified.

The information environment right now just feels really messy.

Almost as if it has been tampered with.

On purpose, and for reasons.

Who might have done a thing like that?

US president Donald Trump insisted he believed Putin “wants peace”. “I think he would tell me if he didn’t,”

Sorry, I’m sitting in a brewpub reading this and just laughed so loud that surrounding tables are looking at me.

Because the whole world has been running around insisting that everyone under 25 is a child?

El Presidente is demanding a Make America Healthy Again Commission, to figure out why all our kids are fat and autistic. It's probably the vaccines and looking at their phones all the time, he thinks. But don't worry — doing mandatory calisthenics and taking long hikes through the woods as part of the Trump Jugend will make America's youth healthy and strong, and ready for military service under Drunken Pete!

forgive the reference, but these dumbass EOs are giving me real Dolores Umbridge vibes

Because the whole world has been running around insisting that everyone under 25 is a child?

In the future the children will all work for DOGE

The New York Times, once again, gets right to the heart of the heart of the matter:

Without Pennies, What Becomes of Penny Loafers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/style/penny-production-penny-loafers.html

Just use Krugerrands, duh

DOGE digging through IRS now too.

Maybe they'll find the tax returns

I better get my refund or I'm gonna go all sovereign citizen

^^^

More on the administration carving out exceptions that might make their otherwise draconian measures unpopular with the red hat brigade

https://wapo.st/4jYF0qq (gift link)

Military spouses are exempted from the RTO push

It would be way faster and way easier to just say registered Republicans will be exempt from any negative consequences of the New Order.

Or heck just bar Democrats from being in Federal service or receiving Federal assistance, boom, done. Do that thing like Musk pretending there is no such Department as Education

we should all register Republican anyway just to accelerate the rot

So what up with the Make American Healthy order? Are they really talking about attacking antidepressants?

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/477042697_927351506270840_6349719170108534085_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_tt6&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=zalSpmx-5REQ7kNvgFwWls3&_nc_oc=AdiHOlgeYqms-0F12pphFG7Cmm-rG1yunlcoR-_jExY6kJEB281sf1BoyZTidqJbYYbhgU_lt8P3gLodMwMKwN48&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&_nc_gid=AV4ifE3oHkkrHhcij_64chB&oh=00_AYCz9Lu54EyPuj0ydffAFNiu0UxJ7ZjNMSV64usidUTyIw&oe=67B485F1

going after weight loss drugs, antidepressants is crazy, it's not like there is some insignficant number of Republicans who rely on these drugs.

oh wait i thought that was that dumb crenshaw guy. nevermind. i don't know who that is. committee on children just sounded so dumb. sorry. i'm all over the place today.