MAGA working for you: Top notch security; Top notch service; Top notch honesty

The "best people", i.e., liars, idiots, arrogant, incompetent fools, thugs and/or crooks, that djt put in positions of serious power are starting to demonstrate their MAGA-style excellence and bestness. The NYT writes: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed war plans in an encrypted group chat that included a journalist two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, the White House said on Monday, confirming an account in the magazine The Atlantic. The editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in an article published on Monday that he was mistakenly added to the text chat on the commercial messaging app Signal by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.

What?? A high-level djt admin officials share US war plans in a group chat?? In my opinion, Hegseth is a grossly incompetent traitor, not just an incompetent moron. This breach of American national security intelligence is beyond outrageous. Not only was a journalist inadvertently included in the group, but the whole damned thing took place outside the secure government channels that are used for classified and highly sensitive war planning. WTF??

djt's blithe (cheerful indifference) response to the participation of djt's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, in the security breach? He stood by Waltz calling him a “good man” who had “learned a lesson.” Well, at least us Americans are learning a lesson, that's for sure. I'm not sure about djt, Hegseth, Waltz and other MAGA elites. They not only don't learn, they don't care. 

Folks, like it or not, this is just the beginning of the treasonous, kleptocratic and/or incompetence-driven sellout of America to the highest bidders. We are so screwed that calling it being screwed is an insult to screws.

Federal law criminalizes disclosure of classified information national security intelligence

Chances of this illegal disclosure being prosecuted by our MAGA DoJ? 

In my opinion, ~0.1% (~1 in 1000) in the next 4 years

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Our MAGA-level phone service sucks! 👍: In a sign of outrageous things to come, the WaPo writes (not paywalled) about the collapse of service the SSA (Social Security Administration) provides after Musk gutted SSA services operations and fired a slew of employees: Social Security is breaking down -- The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk. For now, the agency is run by a caretaker leader in his sixth week on the job who has raced to push out more than 12 percent of the staff of 57,000. He has conceded that the agency’s phone service “sucks” and acknowledged that Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is really in charge, pushing a single-minded mission to find benefits fraud despite vast evidence that the problem is overstated.

The WaPo article goes on to say that lots of people who need to access SSA services are getting pissed off. One can only wonder if people that MAGA pisses off is going to make any difference. Not so far. Time will tell.  

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Our top notch USSC (/s) unanimously (all three idiot Democrats agreed with this MAGA stink bomb) held that although it is still illegal to lie to federal financial institution regulators, it is perfectly legal to mislead federal regulators. A BlueSky post pointed this out:

18 U.S.C. §1014 prohibits making false statements to influence the actions of federal financial agencies. In this case, a scumbag, misled the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) by making a true statement that was completely misleading. Thompson's statement was intended to influence the FDIC's action on loans by misleading the FDIC. 

The slop in the law: As usual, sloppy language (Congress, thank you for your service /s) in laws made it easy for all 9 USSC judges to allow Thompson to get off the hook for what he failed to say to the FDIC. The law criminalizes "false statements" but does not use the word "misleading. The court said that false and misleading are two different things. A misleading statement can be true. And a true statement is obviously not false. So there we have it fans of financial institution honesty in dealing with the federal government. They do not have to be honest because they can mislead. As we all know, financial institutions hire the very best misleaders that lots of money can buy. Those people are even more competent than the MAGA morons djt has put in power.

Once again, special interests talk and the public interest gets a hard kick in the nuts. For clarity, the USSC could easily have held that congress intended to include misleading statements in the law but it just didn't put that language in by accident. That would then shift the onus onto congress to clarify, in just one sentence, whether the law includes or excludes "misleading statements." But no, that is rarely how our fucked up federal courts work. The courts almost always come down on the side of the special interests over the public interest. In my opinion, that is extremely insulting bullshit. 

Chances of congress fixing this law in the next ~4 years? In my opinion, about 0.1% (~1 in 1,000).

Q: Should all nine judges be impeached, just the rotten 6, or none of 'em?

I want all 9 gone -- but don't let Germaine bias you -- you didn't see this small print stuff . . . . . it's not here . . . . it's an illusion . . .)

MAGA bit & chunk: Privatizing the post office; Killing off museums;

Newsweek reports about djt and Musk wanting to privatize everything in government that can be privatized: Protests Break Out Across US Over Plans to Change Postal Service -- It was reported in February that President Donald Trump was considering plans to transfer the USPS to the Commerce Department. Trump and his allies have also indicated they are willing to privatize the service. djt said on February 21: "We want to have a post office that works well and doesn't lose massive amounts of money. We're thinking about doing that. And it'll be a form of a merger, but it'll remain the Postal Service, and I think it'll operate a lot better." Elon Musk said at a conference earlier in March, according to Reuters: "I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized. I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example … We should privatize everything we possibly can."

This is kleptocratic plutocracy in action. As usual djt and Musk are both cynical lying liars. They could not care less about making postal operations better. They just want to make a lot of money out of every privatization step they can sink their greedy, morally rotted claws into. This is no different than how the morally rotted Putin steals from the Russian people and businesses.

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This started as a news bit, but it morphed into something bigger. What follows is a renewed focus on analyzing MAGA/djt lust for wealth and power as their primary motive for destroying the US federal government. I asked Pxy to do an in-depth analysis that includes (i) an explicit assessment of probability, and (ii) an explicit command to ferret out and get rid of errors from various sources of bias and error that can lead AI to give bad responses.

The Observer reports: Trump’s Latest Executive Order Eliminates the Institute of Museum and Library Services -- In a few short months, the Trump administration has dealt a series of blows to the American cultural and museum system, making clear from the outset that dismantling such infrastructure would be a priority on its governmental agenda. There was the reinstatement of the 2020 “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” memorandum. .... And most recently, the issuing of a new executive order calling for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—the only federal agency specifically tasked with supporting museums—”to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” According to the organization, the IMLS already operated at a bare minimum, accounting for just 0.0046 percent of the overall federal budget [estimated to be ~ $335.8 million for 2025]. Meanwhile, museums contribute $50 billion to the U.S. economy annually.

Assuming the data in that article is correct, it seems odd for MAGA to target the IMLS in the name of cutting costs unless there is solid evidence of corruption. Given how djt, Musk and other MAGA elites are destroying the fed. govt., my opinion is that a far more plausible motive is lust for wealth and power.  

The Pxy analysis (Reasoning mode)

If you don't want to go through the Pxy analysis, here's the conclusion, which is no surprise in view of all the evidence: Based on strong evidence a high confidence analysis indicates that wealth and power motives are most plausible for Trump and Musk, given Musk’s regulatory conflicts, privatization of critical services, and MAGA’s erosion of institutional checks. Traditional small-government conservatism is inconsistent with MAGA’s centralized power grabs and corporate favoritism. 

At least this time, I tried to force Pxy to reduce errors from various biases. This is the 1st time I've done the analysis in an explicitly anti-bias, anti-error, pro-accuracy way.

Q3: Conduct the same analysis, but this time include a fully neutral analysis that (i) tests alternative hypotheses (e.g., anti-bureaucrat ideology, states’-rights arguments), (ii) audits sources for partisan skew (e.g., comparing Observer claims to CBO reports), and (iii) flags speculative links. My interest is in determining with as much accuracy and confidence as possible how likely it is that Trump, Musk and MAGA elites generally are driven by a wealth and power motive more than other possible motives, e.g., religion, genuine belief in very small, weak government, and genuine belief (not just lip service) that free, barely regulated markets almost always do a better job than government can. In the analysis, consider the difference between old-fashioned conservatism and attendant policies and MAGA's ideological basis, using all available public information to help inform the analysis.

A3: To assess the likelihood that wealth/power motives drive Trump, Musk, and MAGA elites—compared to ideological or governance-related motives—a neutral analysis requires weighing evidence, auditing sources, and testing alternative hypotheses.

1. Key Evidence Supporting Wealth/Power Motives

Privatization and Corporate Interests
Musk’s DOGE Role: As head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has pushed to dismantle federal agencies (e.g., IMLS, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) while his companies (Tesla, SpaceX) hold $13B in federal contracts 1 2. This creates a direct conflict of interest, as deregulation could reduce oversight of his ventures 2 5.

Legal Incentives: Musk faces 11+ federal investigations into labor violations, fraud, and discrimination. His alignment with Trump coincides with efforts to weaken regulatory bodies probing his businesses 2 5.

Economic Impact: The IMLS represents 0.0046% of the federal budget ($335.8M) but generates $50B in economic activity. Eliminating it provides negligible fiscal savings, undermining claims of cost-cutting 4 8.

Centralization of Power

Unprecedented Authority: Trump’s delegation of executive power to Musk—allowing him to bypass Congress and terminate federal employees—has no historical precedent 1 10.

Anti-Democratic Shifts: Musk’s public statements frame democracy as incompatible with bureaucratic oversight, advocating for a "streamlined" government controlled by unelected officials1 12.

Partisan Source Bias

Left-leaning outlets (Observer, Common Dreams) emphasize corruption and profit motives. However, factual overlaps (e.g., Musk’s contracts, investigations) remain consistent across sources 1 2 5.

Neutral sources (Britannica, Sciences Po) confirm MAGA’s anti-establishment rhetoric coexists with elite alliances, noting a shift toward “pluto-populism” 11 12.

2. Testing Alternative Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: Anti-Bureaucrat Ideology
Evidence For: MAGA rhetoric criticizes “deep state” inefficiency. The IMLS employs only 75 workers, aligning with small-government optics 3 8.

Evidence Against: Traditional conservatism prioritizes state/local governance, yet the executive order targets IMLS’s statutory functions (e.g., Grants to States), contradicting states’-rights principles 3. Musk’s focus on privatizable sectors (libraries, USPS) over larger agencies suggests selective, profit-driven targeting 3 8.

Hypothesis 2: Genuine Belief in Free Markets
Evidence For: Trump’s tax cuts and Musk’s deregulation advocacy (e.g., opposing NLRB, FAA) align with libertarian ideals 2 5.

Evidence Against: MAGA’s tariffs, immigration restrictions, and industrial policies contradict free-market principles, prioritizing nationalist over economic goals 14. Musk’s reliance on federal contracts ($13B) and subsidies (e.g., SpaceX’s $1.8B NRO deal) undermines claims of opposing government intervention 5 12. 

Hypothesis 3: Religious/Cultural Conservatism
Evidence For: MAGA’s opposition to DEI initiatives and “woke” narratives could align with conservative cultural values 6 11.

Evidence Against: IMLS cuts harm rural, religious communities reliant on libraries for services 3 8. Trump/Musk prioritize corporate interests (e.g., crypto, AI) over traditional issues like abortion or religious liberty 10 14.

4. Confidence and Uncertainty

High Confidence: Wealth/power motives are primary drivers for Musk (regulatory avoidance, contract retention) and Trump (consolidating executive authority). The IMLS’s minimal cost and maximal ROI make fiscal arguments implausible 4 8.

Moderate Confidence: Anti-bureaucrat ideology is secondary, used to legitimize privatization benefiting elites. MAGA’s policy contradictions (e.g., tariffs vs. free markets) weaken ideological consistency 14.

Low Confidence: Claims of direct quid pro quo (e.g., Musk’s DOGE role ➔ profit) rely on circumstantial evidence. Partisan sources overstate coordination 1 2.

5. Speculative Links Flagged
Musk’s “Broligarchy”: Sciences Po’s “Muskoligarchy” theory posits a tech-industrial complex takeover. While Musk’s influence is unprecedented, no evidence confirms a coordinated elite cabal 12.

Bannon-Musk Feud: Conflicts over immigration (H-1B visas) suggest MAGA’s internal divisions, not unified ideology 13.

Conclusion
Wealth and power motives are most plausible for Trump and Musk, given Musk’s regulatory conflicts, privatization of critical services, and MAGA’s erosion of institutional checks. Traditional small-government conservatism is inconsistent with MAGA’s centralized power grabs and corporate favoritism. While anti-bureaucrat rhetoric exists, it primarily masks elite enrichment. Neutral analysis confirms:

Strength of Evidence: High for profit/power motives (direct financial ties, legal incentives).

Weakness of Alternatives: Anti-bureaucrat/states’-rights arguments lack consistency; cultural motives are peripheral.

This assessment acknowledges left-leaning source bias but finds convergent factual support across partisan and neutral reports.

Two bits: Trump family brilliance; DOGE's cruelty

People magazine writes: 

Donald Trump Asked Son Barron 'How'd You Do That?' 

When He Turned on a Laptop: “Unbelievable Aptitude in Technology”

“If you look at my kids, all of my kids, they’ve been very good, they've been very smart,” Donald marveled, noting that they have each attended prestigious schools and worked hard. “They love our country and they’re proud of their father.”

When asked which natural talent of Barron's stands out, the president praised his son's technological know-how.

“I turn off his laptop, I said, 'Oh good,' and I go back five minutes later, he's got his laptop. I said, 'How'd you do that?' " he recalled. “None of your business, Dad.”

“He’s got an unbelievable aptitude in technology,” the president added.

Is this for real??? Probably. After all, djt really does have an unbelievable aptitude for a stunning degree of ignorance. Or if he just made this drivel up, it reveals his unbelievable aptitude for a stunning degree of mendacity.  

🤪

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ProPublica reports: 

On Feb. 20, nearly 7,000 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service began receiving an unsigned letter telling them that they had been fired for poor performance.

But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned administration officials that the performance-related language in his agency’s termination letter was “a false statement” that amounted to “fraud” if the agency kept the language in the letter.

Joseph Rillotta, a senior IRS lawyer, wrote [in an email] that “no one” at the IRS had taken into account the performance of the probationary workers set to be fired. Rillotta urged that the language be struck from the draft termination letter.

No one appeared to respond to Rillotta’s first email. In a follow-up email, he said he was “pleading with you to remove the clause,” adding: “It is not an immaterial false statement, because it is designed to improve the government’s posture in litigation (to the detriment of the employees that we are terminating today).”

Because it was not true, he wrote, “That renders it, as I see it, an anticipatory fraud on tribunals of jurisdiction over these employment actions.”

How fracking cruel is that? Telling thousands of people they are fired for poor performance when there was no performance review at all. That is malicious cruelty by callous elite MAGA thugs.

The order to fire the IRS employees came from the Office of Personnel Management, which was staffed by djt appointees and members of DOGE, which is run by Elon Musk. Now Musk is whining about people not liking him and complaining he has never done anything wrong to anyone. “Tesla is a peaceful company. We’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve only done productive things.” 

I guess firing thousands of people and telling them for no reason they were poor performers does not amount to anything harmful. But much worse than that, (i) Musk is smearing all of the left and the entire Democratic Party, calling them a bunch of criminals with mental illness operating a giant conspiracy to kill him, and (ii) the people he fired were criminals fraudulently being paid: 

“It’s really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of, really, hatred and violence from the Left. I always thought that the left, that Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, they’re firebombing dealerships, they’re firing bullets into dealerships, they’re just, you know, smashing up Teslas. [There is a] mental illness thing going on here, because this doesn’t make any sense. .... I think there are larger forces at work as well. Because, I mean, who’s funding and who’s coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this. .... It turns out when you take away people’s, you know, the money that they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset. And they basically wanna kill me because I’m stopping their fraud and they wanna hurt Tesla, because we’re stopping the terrible waste and corruption in the government. And, well, I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.” 

I do not recall this shocking degree of arrogant malice, viciousness and cruelty so obviously asserted by someone with so much power. To top off this amazingly ghastly story, Musk is enraged and planning to file a lawsuit because a former former U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman called him a Nazi and a thief in a recent CNN appearance. 

Q: Should all of those thousands of illegally fired employees (and every Democrat) sue Musk because he called all of them corrupt frauds or accused them of a criminal conspiracy to harm or kill him?

Bring on the lawyers!

MAGA bits: Resegregation & killing DEI; Weaponizing the IRS; Teaching the world's dictators

The NYT writes about resegregating America again: The Trump administration has removed a longstanding directive from the civil rights era that explicitly prohibited federal contractors from allowing segregated facilities, the latest move to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion policies from government operations that has drawn fierce rebuke. The removal of the segregated-facilities policy was included in a memo last month from the General Services Administration, which manages federal property and oversees procurement for the federal government.

Crushing the life out of DEI: djt and MAGA elites call DEI “harmful” and “wasteful” diversity policies, and “gender ideology extremism.” Well, that source of harm, waste and gender extremism will soon be fully eradicated from the federal govt. MAGA is also attacking DEI and woke just about everywhere outside of the federal government, including public schools and universities (Columbia U, U Penn, etc.), law firms, woke tech firms (Google, Cisco, Meta, etc.), woke retail firms (Target, Walmart, etc.), beer companies, woke churches, woke M&Ms candy, the LGBQT community, women, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, Democrats, liberals, the mainstream media (NYT, NBC, MSNBC, etc.), woke law enforcement agencies, non-profit groups that promote DEI initiatives, entertainment companies (Disney, ViacomCBS, etc.), health care organizations, the American Medical Association, financial institutions (JP Morgan, Citigroup), pharmaceutical companies (Merck), airplane companies (Delta), sports conglomerates (NFL, MLB, NBA), Human Rights Watch, NAACP, large philanthropic organizations with assets over $500 million, . . . . . . you get the point. MAGA attacks use various tactics including boycotts, regulatory threats, federal investigations, public condemnation, demagoguery, lies, slanders, etc. So far, a lot organizations have responded by scaling back or completely dismantling their diversity initiatives. So killing DEI and obliterating its existence is well underway.

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The NYT reports: IRS Prepares to Help Find Immigrants Targeted for Deportation -- The tax agency is nearing an agreement to verify whether ICE officials have the right address for people they are trying to deport. Many undocumented immigrants file tax returns with the I.R.S., giving the agency information about where they live, their families, their employers and their earnings. The I.R.S. has long encouraged undocumented immigrants to pay their taxes, giving people without Social Security numbers a separate nine-digit code called an individual taxpayer identification number to file their returns.

Well, at least MAGA is trying to deport the people it targets as opposed to randomly grabbing people off the streets. But once the IRS has been coerced into working with djt and other MAGA elites in power, all of us are potential targets for IRS harassment. 

Places that djt has deported people to

Flights are not a perfect measure of deportations. Many immigrants are deported by land to Mexico, and others on regular commercial airline travel. But because the federal government has not released data on whom it is deporting, tracking deportation flights is a way to assess which people and countries are affected by djt’s immigration policy

Safety tip: Either (1) do not make any mistakes on you tax filings and get ready for an audit by Dr. Proctoscope, or (2) don't publicly criticize djt or MAGA generally. 

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A WaPo article reports (not paywalled) about the spread of racist, bigoted, authoritarian MAGA demagoguery and tactics to other authoritarians: Autocrats roll back rights and rule of law — and cite Trump’s example -- Trump’s statements, policies and actions are providing cover for attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law around the world. Under Hungary’s antigay “propaganda” law, bookstores were fined for selling LGBTQ+ themed tomes without sealed plastic wrappers and a museum director was fired for allowing minors into an exhibit with images of same-sex couples. But the autocratic government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban stopped short of targeting the community’s premier event: the annual Pride parade. Until now. Parliament voted overwhelmingly this month to ban the event — and threatened to use facial recognition technology to identify violators. What changed? According to Orban, it was the return to the White House of President Donald Trump.

So, MAGA-style racism, bigotry, sexism, and hate of the LGBQT community and the rule of law is popular with dictators, authoritarian politicians and maybe lots of average people too. Once can only wonder how much of the ocean of hate and malicious ill-will has been fomented and amplified by decades of far right authoritarian demagoguery, lies and slanders. Most of it, I suspect. Maybe ~80%? 

Will the GAO actually investigate DOGE?

Very official-looking

The bird with the pointed stick represents

accountants and their reports to congress

The GAO (Government Accountability Office) is a congressional agency. It is not an executive branch agency under djt's or Musk's control. The GAO is an investigative agency that finds and reports annually on fraud, waste and abuse in government spending and operations. Being under the control of congress, it is not subject to direct attack by DOGE and MAGA thugs. Will the GAO investigate DOGE for waste, fraud and abuse committed by DOGE? That is an interesting question. Wall Street On Parade reports:

There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor 

Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE

For more than a century [the GAO] has been doing the work that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been pretending to do, that is, competently root out fraud, waste and abuse in federal government programs without leaving a dangerous trail of chaos that threatens national security, personal privacy and the U.S. Constitution.

If Elon Musk is sincerely interested in efficiency and government savings, why is he duplicating the work of the non-partisan GAO – while doing it in a grossly subpar and deeply conflicted manner?** 

**Grossly subpar? That’s an understatement. Deeply conflicted? That’s a statement! 

On February 12, the GAO confirmed by written letter that it will pursue the request for an investigation made by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, into how and why DOGE accessed the Treasury’s payment system.

According to the outstanding research and reporting on DOGE at Wired, Musk seems to be more interested in using the DOGE.gov website to generate traffic to his X social medium platform, than he is in conducting himself in a non-conflicted, professional manner.

Last Thursday, Wired reported this:

“A WIRED review of the [DOGE.gov] page’s source code shows that the promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags direct search engines to x.com rather than DOGE.gov.

“A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted.

“In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not show those pages in search results, but should instead display the posts on X.”

After Musk promised for days to put DOGE’s “receipts” of savings on the DOGE.gov website, today that page shows $55 billion in savings thus far. The bulk of that appears to be from firing federal workers and canceling building leases, not fraud detection.

That there is fraud, waste and abuse in federal government programs is not some epiphany handed down from the heavens to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. GAO has been reporting that fact every year for decades.

As recently as April of last year, GAO reported that “annual federal losses due to fraud are estimated to be between $233 billion and $521 billion based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022….”

The GAO report also notes, however, that “The estimated losses represent about 3 to 7 percent of average federal obligations for fiscal years 2018 through 2022” and these fraud losses “are generally in line with fraud estimates” by foreign governments, including studies from the United Kingdom’s Public Sector Fraud Authority. (emphasis added)

The degree of criminality that both djt and Musk routinely operate with is staggering. And it is blatant. Repubs in congress are silent and therefore complicit in the criminality and needless, vast waste that djt, Musk and MAGA elites are causing. djt has immunity for his crimes and he can and probably will pardon Musk and all other MAGA elites that get caught in lawbreaking. The Constitution and rule of law are almost completely irrelevant in terms of being a source of accountability for large-scale MAGA criminality. 

A huge partisan fight is coming real soon, 

assuming it hasn't already started! 

Obviously, Repubs do not want the GAO to investigate DOGE. There is going to be a gigantic partisan fight this year over who and what the next Comptroller General (CG) of the GAO will be. The current CG's 15 year term in office expires in 2025. The CG has to be someone who the Dem and Repub leadership in the House and Senate approve of. Since the GAO was created in 1921, congress gave increasing responsibility on the agency to serve as a watchdog and a check on executive power. Initially, the GAO's principal goal was to get control of wasteful tax dollar spending after World War I. Congress directed the agency to find “efficiency in public expenditures” and gave it broad statutory investigative powers. Improved efficiency in public expenditures and evidence of corruption are the absolute last things congressional Repubs want to see made public. All or nearly all of them are authoritarian, kleptocratic, complicit and up to their eyeballs in MAGA's kleptocratic sleazefest. 

So, the Repubs will very likely pick a thoroughly corrupt MAGA zealot, while the Dems will probably pick someone reasonably competent, comparatively honest and mostly independent. Given the vast Dem and Repub mindset differences, a reasonable democratic compromise looks to be extremely unlikely. One side or the other will probably have to cave in.  

Until the war over the next CG starts in earnest, the Repubs could take steps to neuter the GAO, which is what they want to do. Since congress controls the GAO's funding, significant budget reductions could neuter it. The Repubs could also try to limit the GAO's access to certain agencies or information, i.e., DOGE and other MAGA operations in the executive branch that need to be protected from their secret criminality. Of course, the MAGA propaganda Leviathan will probably work hard to undermine public trust in the GAO's actual findings and recommendations, as opposed to the faux findings, lies and bullshit gushing out of DOGE. We can expect Faux News and other fine MAGA demagoguery sources to light a huge fire of outrageous lies, slanders, crackpottery and etc. under the GAO to help djt and MAGA burn it to ashes.

2025 is definitely going to be a very interesting year for politics. Heck, it already has been.

Properly defining/describing antisemitism: Possible or not?

Politics is loaded with contested concepts, which based on my AI searches appears to be most of the basis for at least ~70% of all political disagreements. The remaining grounds for disagreement arise from factors such as greed, tribalism, the joy of trolling, and defense of self-identity and self-esteem. In the title of this blog post, the word "properly" is contested in the context of defining antisemitism. A "proper" definition or description to one person will be seen by at least a significant minority of people as not proper. This gigantic Wikipedia article more than hints at how bitterly contested the "antisemitism" concept is.

Given my understanding of the high importance of contested concepts and the origins of political disagreement grounded in human cognitive biology and social behavior, I thought I'd take a stab at either finding a proper definition or coming up with with one of my own. Note, I don't consciously believe that I am an antisemite, seeing Jews as another group of people with a religion they (i) believe in to widely varying extents, and (ii) practice in widely varying ways. That's about the same as most any other religious group, like Christians, Hindus and Muslims. I'm not sure about where or how the Buddhists fit in, but that's OT.

A good definition or description will balance specificity with inclusivity. Too narrow a definition risks missing changing manifestations of antisemitism. But too broad a definition risks encompassing legitimate political speech, which in the US includes a heck of a lot of bad or dishonest speech, e.g., lies, slanders, crackpot conspiracies, bullshit, etc. 

My searching indicates that the most widely adopted formal definition of antisemitism is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition, approved in May 2016 [1]. Its definition is this: 

"Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

That definition is surprisingly vague to me. So vague that in my opinion it's worse than not helpful. It's harmful because it is so easy to abuse the definition by rejecting legitimate criticism of Israel and Israeli policy as antisemitic. What the IHRA came up with is loaded with contested concepts, namely "a certain perception", "may be expressed as hatred", "manifestations of antisemitism" and "directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property" are all baffling to me. What does that all mean?

Another definition is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. It defines antisemitism more concisely: 

"Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)." 

That definition was specifically developed to better distinguish between hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel. That is a lot less vague. It's harder to abuse. 

A 2025 description by the Universities Australia: 

Antisemitism is "discrimination, prejudice, harassment, exclusion, vilification, intimidation or violence that impedes Jews’ ability to participate as equals in educational, political, religious, cultural, economic or social life. It can manifest in a range of ways including negative, dehumanizing, or stereotypical narratives about Jews. Further, it includes hate speech, epithets, caricatures, stereotypes, tropes, Holocaust denial, and antisemitic symbols. Targeting Jews based on their Jewish identities alone is discriminatory and antisemitic."

That's interesting. But it's somewhat overbroad. For example, hate speech, epithets, caricatures, stereotypes, tropes, Holocaust denial, antisemitic symbols, and dehumanizing, or stereotypical narratives are all protected free speech in the US. Different parts MAGA routinely practices at least some of those bad behaviors, e.g., Holocaust denial, but mostly directs them at Democrats, liberals, the LGBQT community, ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants, etc. The USSC has consistently held that there is no "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment, meaning that hateful or offensive speech cannot be censored or punished solely because of its content or viewpoint.

The bottom line: This is too complicated for me. A "proper" definition or description is probably impossible. I'll stick with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.

Q: Should Jews everywhere and the state Israel be treated differently from other people, groups and nations? In what way(s)?

Footnote:

1. The IHRA set out 11 examples to clarify what antisemitism was in the view of the authors. My comments to each are appended.

1. Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion. (That seems reasonable, but arguably too limited. My improved version: Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical any ideology or an extremist view of religion.)

2. Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions. (That is desirable on its face. But in the US in the name of protected free speech, MAGA routinely makes mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about liberals, Democrats, and/or the LGBQT community, falsely alleging massive damage they have caused such as stealing or rigging elections, massive voter fraud, being criminals, pedophiles, child sex-traffickers, communists and/or enemies of the state or democracy. Viewed in that light, this complaint seems thin-skinned and overly broad.) 

3. Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews. (Fair enough - limit blame to the blameworthy. That makes sense for Jews and everyone else.)

4. Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust). (That makes sense.)

5. Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust. (That makes sense.)

6. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations. (True loyalty to Israel or Jewry in general appears to be very rare in the diaspora, so this is OK.)

7. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor. (I don't buy this. Why can't the State of Israel be at least partly a racist endeavor? Why are Jews immune to racism that is exists to varying extents among all races all over the world? The question is, how much racism or at least bigotry is there in the overall enterprise?)

8. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation. (That's pure nonsense. Politics is loaded with double standards. Get over it.)

9. Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism, e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel, to characterize Israel or Israelis. (That seems reasonable, but as we all know and despicable (DEPLORABLE!) as it is, free speech in America includes antisemitism, along with racism, bigotry and dehumanization.)

10. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. (This is bitterly contested. Comparisons by commentator and experts, including some Jews, have been made. Critics of comparisons argue that fundamental differences in scale, intent, and outcome make comparisons historically questionable. I'm not so sure about this one.)

11. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel. (Can one reasonably hold citizens in a democracy collectively responsible for actions of the state? Why not? Does one have to refer to Israeli citizens being responsible instead of Israeli Jews being responsible? That sounds like political correctness maybe running amok. But OK, let's hold Israeli citizens responsible, not Israeli Jews. No need to unduly agitate anyone.)