Peace in Our Time

Trump says Putin wants peace.

He can have it.

Are you listening?

Stop killing Ukrainians,

Go home,

Mind your own business,

Tend your own fire.

there is no king here

 

altogether untrustworthy

Changing sides in the middle of a struggle we entered to protect an ally's national sovereignty seems like an abandonment of every feckin' thing the United States ever said it stood for.

Heather Cox Richardson's brief history last night — February 19, 2025 — is about as concise a rundown as we're likely to get.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-19-2025

Who will save us [all of us] from the madness of this man who would be king? 

Only us, reviving the spirit and practices of democracy that, for 249 years, have sustained this nation's slo-ow Constitutional progress toward fulfilling the aspirations of our Declaration of Independence

This is all on us.

We must stiffen the spines of members of Congress (and governors, attorneys general, and legislators) to join the Courts, acting in fidelity to the law, to check and balance these people — the man and the courtiers — who show daily that they are altogether unworthy of our nation's trust. 

If we abandon the spirit of democracy, that spirit will abandon us. And the history of the last century, tells us we won't like what happens next.

DOGE waste and inefficiency

FWIW: I sent a message to the US House DOGE caucus at DOGE@mail.house.gov.

Here’s their autoreply, followed by the mesage I sent:

Thank you for contacting the House DOGE Caucus. The Bipartisan House DOGE Caucus works in partnership with Congress and President Trump’s United States DOGE Service to streamline government operations and save taxpayer money. The nation expects sweeping common-sense reform, and the House DOGE Caucus will work to ensure that every dollar spent in Washington delivers a direct benefit to the people it serves while prioritizing transparency, accountability, and efficiency.

We value your input and ideas on ways to help DOGE do its job. No amount of waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, or administrative bloat is too small or too large to fix. Please continue to submit your ideas at any time. We appreciate hearing from you.

Here’s the message I sent:

Subject: DOGE waste and inefficiency

DOGE could start by aiming before they fire.

Reports of slapdash pseudodecisions by DOGE are staggering … reflecting poor impulse control and shoddy judgment at the expense of US farmers, truckers, shipping companies, military personnel and contractors, faithbased relief and development agencies, churches, state governments, law enforcement, consumers, veterans, sick people, and working people whom the leaders apparently know nothing about.

All that while still on US soil and without touching on the cavalier cruelty in how the operation has rolled out, and the assault on decency toward the most vulnerable among us and around us.

It will take longer to calcuate waste and inefficiencies that will be borne by foreign policy relationships and US national security.

A bad idea poorly executed is not, I think, what the American people had in mind. Fortunately, the US House of Representatives is in a position to reassert its moral, fiduciary, and Constitutional responsibilities and form the necessary alliances to put a stop to this madness, before DOGE does a hundred years of damage to US fortunes, all to benefit one (1) percent of US citizens.

Respectfully,

Jim Hancock

Is there a word for that?

Noun . A government claiming to be a constitutional democracy that attempts to operate like a dictatorship

Ex. “The U.S. had never fully embodied the aspirations of its Declaration of Independence but, in 2025, became a hypocracy when Donald J. Trump set out to learn if, indeed, ‘You can do anything’.”

"[T]he Senate has lost its mind.”

Here is Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, speaking to his colleagues in the United States Senate before the Republicans narrowly consented to the nomination of Robert F Kennedy, Jr to lead the US health services . February 13, 2025.

If you prefer to read, here's the first two-and-a-half minutes:

“It’s truly astounding that the Senate stands on the brink of confirming Mr. Kennedy to lead America’s public health agencies. And if the Senate weren’t gripped in this soon-to-be infamous period of total capitulation, I don’t think this nominee would have made it as far as a hearing…. If I’d told you a couple of years ago, ‘There’s a guy who’s been nominated to run public health nationwide. His job will be to protect American families from death and disease. He’s going to run the whole public health system: Medicare, Medicaid, the C[enters] for D[isease] C[ontrol and Prevention], the N[ational] I[nstitutes of] H[ealth]—all of it. He’ll decide how we protect the country from infectious disease, he’ll set the rules for every hospital in the country, he’ll decide what healthcare and medicines get covered by Medicare, he’ll manage our response in the event of a pandemic.’ And then I told you,… ‘Well,... there are a few concerns about this nominee. First of all, zero relevant experience. He’s a trial lawyer, a politician from a famous family. No medical or scientific background, he’s never run a hospital or a health system or anything like that. Second of all… he’s said some pretty wild stuff about public health, over and over and over again, like: he proposed that Covid-19 might be ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews. Ethnically targeted to spare Jews. He said Lyme disease was a military bioweapon. For years he’s been persuading American families against routine childhood immunizations. He’s compared the work of the CDC to ‘Nazi death camps.’... If a couple of years ago I told you all that, and I told you that the Senate was about to put America’s health in this man’s hands, you’d probably tell me the Senate has lost its mind.”

Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) . The United States Senate . February 13, 2025

h/t Heather Cox Richardson 

Source:

https://youtu.be/SvA1dKbZzXA

“Far better it is to dare mighty things…."

This week is a setback for the Wolverines.

It appears that Donald Trump — with a healthy assist from the razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate — has capitulated to Russia's second-rate power in exchange for — as far as I can tell — *nothing* that benefits the longterm interests of the United States, our allies, or the cause of human liberty and flourishing. 

So….

separation of powers

 

"[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others." Federalist No. 51 . Friday, February 8, 1788

A Bad Day in Court for Trump/Musk

Have you read Trump-appointed federal judge Carl Nichols' seven-page order enjoining the government from having its way with USAID this week?

Government lawyers had their opportunity to make the case before him. Judge Nichols seems to have been underwhelmed.

Here it is: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277213/gov.uscourts.dcd.277213.15.0_3.pdf

Smash and Grab Under Color of Law

It's a smash and grab at Treasury, Labor, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and USAID, isn’t it … arrogant kids breaking into public buildings with impunity, stealing god knows what, fully confident their dad will pay to get them off if they get caught….

Well their dad is behaving like a fascist A$$#⌀£€.

We must stiffen the spines of our Members of Congress, judges, governors, officers of the courts, police, civil servants, and journalists... We must stiffen out own spines.

This is not the struggle we chose but it is the struggle before us. What we do will prove who we are.

No way to run a bank....

Last night — 02.03.25 — Lawrence O'Donnell talked on his program, "The Last Word", about the new Treasury Secretary giving unfettered access to the Treasury payment system — what amounts to the nation's six trillion dollar checkbook — to Elon Musk and his team, who as far as we know, have not been vetted for security clearances or conflicts of interest, have not been confirmed by the US Senate, are subject to no formal oversight mechanism, and have not made the oath required by law.

Here is the text of that law, 5 U.S. Code § 3331: 

“An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: 'I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.'”

Tim Reid of Reuters reports that agency officials say that proper federal employees — who have met the legal criteria, and are charged with operating and protecting the integrity of the systems — have been locked out.

Lawrence O'Donnell said "It would be like having the richest customer of a bank telling the bank president 'Hey I want to see everyone else’s accounts at the bank' - and the bank president just opens the books to let the richest customer of the band see and do whatever he wants."

This is no way to run a bank ... or the day-to-day operations of the US government.

Do your Members of Congress know what you want them to do in this moment? https://www.congress.gov/ [find Contact Your Member and click through].

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbb1bJDZjTk&list=PLDIVi-vBsOEyZy0adHN2CFRpuTcI43Tdq&index=1

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2019/10/the-oath-of-office-and-what-it-means/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/02/03/what-is-elon-musks-role-exactly-white-house-calls-him-special-government-employee-heres-what-that-means/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/politics/musk-government-employee/index.html

The Logic of Destruction This Time

"Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them."

Historian Timothy Synder . February 02, 2025 .  Read the rest...