Leslie Jones absolutely rips "goofy" MAGA elites in this vulgar but fully deserved 9-minute rant. If vulgarity is not what you're in the mood for, just ignore this. I thought it was hilarious.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
News bits: The rule of law commentary; Protecting white collar thieves; Regarding the 2020 election
Former federal US Court of Appeals judge Michael Luttig wrote a long essay about the rule of law for the Atlantic, The End of Rule of Law in America. Apparently, he sees the situation about the same as me. His main points are the same things I've been howling about at least since 2017. He says djt and MAGA elites are contemptuous of judicial authority, citing djt and his DoJ defying a direct USSC order and some other corrupt dictator stuff.
He also points to the weaponization and politization of government, citing djt targeting major law firms, e.g., Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, with executive orders barring them from federal contracts for representing his critics, and forcing large firms into free legal service agreements amounting to almost $1 billion. So far, federal courts have blocked these orders as unconstitutional, with one judge calling them a “shocking abuse of power.” Well, duh! He has also sent his corrupt MAGA DoJ on blatantly politically motivated bogus revenge cases, such as investigating former official Chris Krebs for correctly contradicting Trump’s false election fraud claims.
Luttig sees, like I do, clearly unconstitutional actions by djt and MAGA elites such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act. That act was intended to justify mass deportations without due process in wartime. Federal courts have rejected that dangerous authoritarian crackpottery, but djt and his MAGA DoJ are not backing down. Finally, Luttig points to djt’s pardoned of >1,200 January 6 rioters and escalated his revenge rhetoric against the judiciary, attacking and framing judges who rule against his criminality and law breaking as obstacles to his agenda.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
I’ve argued here about a gazillion times that djt and MAGA elites want to be free from the rule of law. They want to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power without much or any personal or corporate risk from committing what few crimes are left that restrain major white collar criminals. That includes most MAGA elites and djt himself. Welp folks, now djt has called off the dogs, telling federal law enforcement to stop going after white collar criminals like djt himself, and instead hunt down and prosecute or persecute immigrants. Medeiaite reports about this in an article, Trump Admin Orders FBI to Deprioritize White Collar Crime, Shift Focus to Immigration. The Trump administration told the FBI to significantly reduce its focus on white-collar crime investigations and instead prioritize immigration enforcement. This change constitutes a major policy shift for federal law enforcement agencies, which have historically not been primarily responsible for immigration enforcement.
djt’s order came with a memo from MAGA thug Matthew Galeotti, head of the DoJ’s criminal division. Galeotti’s memo told prosecutors to narrow the scope of white-collar cases, minimize the length and collateral impact of investigations, and avoid imposing unnecessary burdens on American businesses.
Narrow the scope of white-collar crime investigations and prosecutions? Avoid imposing unnecessary burdens on American businesses? WTF! Believe it or not, this is kleptocracy incarnate.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
PNAS published the results of a massive audit of the 2020 election, Audits of the 2020 American election show an accurate vote count. As we all expected, there was very little voter fraud or any other kind of election fraud. Authoritarian-kleptocrat djt and elite MAGA thugs are insulting, cynical liars and morally rotten thieves. The PNAS article comments:
This study quantifies the accuracy of vote counting in a collection of highly contested and consequential electoral contests. We compiled every available audit of votes cast in the 2020 United States elections at the county level or higher, and we used this election audit database to produce nation-scale numerical estimates of how accurately votes were counted. We find that the net error rate in counting presidential votes was on the order of thousandths of a percent, with similarly inconsequential errors for other state and federal contests.
The dataset includes all available postelection tabulation audits, spanning 856 regional governments across 27 states, with 71,702,471 individual votes and a further 1,210,528 ballots, including about 6.2% of all votes cast for Donald Trump and 6.9% of those cast for Joe Biden. We find that election audits shifted the net presidential vote count by only about 0.007%, with similarly minuscule errors across all major types of electoral contests.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Bad bits of MAGA
It’s all bad, all the time now. My list of posts chronicling the accelerating fall of democracy and rule of law and their replacement with kleptocratic MAGA tyranny and the rule of MAGA thugs is getting longer all the time. djt didn’t drain the swamp, he franchised it.
Politico reports about some comments by chief justice John Roberts: “Rule of law is ‘endangered,’ chief justice says -- Chief Justice John Roberts described the rule of law as “endangered” and warned against “trashing the justices,” but speaking in Washington Monday he didn’t point fingers directly at President Donald Trump or his allies .... ‘The court has obviously made mistakes throughout its history, and those should be criticized, so long as it is in terms of the decision, really, and not ad hominem against the justices. I just think that doesn’t do any good.’ ”
Geez, really? Ad hominem doesn’t do any good? Mr Roberts, you numbskull, you truly are a completely clueless fracking idiot, or a cynical liar, or both. Oops, my bad. That was wee bit of ad hominem. ☹️
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Politico reports about the fine job that djt and his elite MAGA thugs are doing in foreign policy fantasy land: “US popularity collapses worldwide in wake of Trump’s return -- The 2025 Democracy Perception Index summarizes attitudes toward democracy, geopolitics and global power players, and canvassed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries.”
Oops, that can’t be right. China now more popular than the US? The US getting close to Russia? Welp, maybe that’s what happens when a country threatens and insults other countries. People don’t like it. What a surprise. /s
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
I had a recent kerfuffle over MAGA elite’s effort to get women to quit their jobs and stay home raising big piles of babies. The effort would be incentivized by a proposed $5,000 annual tax break. The median wage of women working full time is about $54,583/year. $5,000 seems like a feeble incentive, but I’m not a woman.
The MAPA utopia for women
(make America procreate again)
For my convenience, The Guardian reports about this exact issue: “Give birth? In this economy? US women scoff at Trump’s meager ‘baby bonuses’ -- Trump administration is considering pronatalist policies such as awarding $5,000 for every birth – but women say they want universal healthcare and cheaper childcare. Trump officials have made no secret of their desire to make America procreate again.”
Other MAGA ideas under consideration include awarding medals to women who have six or more children.
Attaboy, six kids!
The article also points out that these efforts come from the growing power of the pronatalist movement in US politics. This movement considers the falling US birthrate to be an existential threat to the country’s future. Those people want that the government to incentivize women to give birth.
Nobody can make this up 🤪
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Regarding the sparkly personalities that populate MAGAlandia
and their hilarious high jinks!
NBC News reports: “Ye song glorifying Hitler gets millions of views on X while other platforms struggle to remove it -- Spotify, SoundCloud and other platforms have pulled the song, but its spread underscores the challenges tech platforms face in removing content that violate their policies. .... Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has been able to share his latest song, titled “Heil Hitler,” along with its companion title, “WW3,” which similarly glorifies Hitler, the architect of the Holocaust.”
As we all fondly recall, Ye has been a high-profile supporter of Donald Trump for years. Only the best people are allowed in with the MAGA elite cadre. And, what about that X? What a fine institution doing fine public service by spreading Ye’s fine, patriotic music! /s /s /s
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
In a super-creepy power grab, djt has figured out that he has a way to at least try to poison and neuter the ability of congress to research anything it needs information about. Rolling Stone writes: “Trump Is Trying to Take Control of Congress Through Its Library -- Donald Trump’s administration is attempting a hostile takeover of the Library of Congress — an agency that is part of the legislative branch and functions as its research arm in addition to maintaining the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and recordings. [This] is the latest effort by the president and his team to subsume the role of Congress and ensure it cannot do its job. ”
The RS article interviewed an unnamed expert on the Library of Congress. “This is a takeover of a major component of the legislative branch. There’s no reason that they’re going to stop there.” The expert also noted that the Congressional Research Service (CRS), an agency in the Library of Congress, “provides confidential advice to Congress, including confidential legal advice, and there is a database that has all the questions that every member has asked for the last 50 years and the answers. That cannot be made available [to the executive branch].”
As usual, djt and his authoritarian MAGA thug enablers claim the library is too woke and needs to be de-DEI-ified. That argument is a bald-faced lie. This is about djt wanting to neuter and disempower congress as much as possible. Blinding congress would tip this source of congressional power strongly in favor of djt. But that’s the whole point.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Lest we forget, the NYT reports about Israel's ongoing annexation of the West Bank: “In Israel’s Demolition Path, West Bank Residents Pack Up Their Lives -- A monthslong Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank has displaced tens of thousands of people. Some are now learning they may not return. Since January, the Israeli military has conducted a large-scale military operation in three camps in the northern West Bank, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing widespread destruction. Israeli officials, who say the purpose of the campaign is to target militants and their weapons, have said the military should be prepared to remain in the camps for a year. .... Roads in the camps have been ripped up by the Israeli military, a practice that Israeli officials have said was meant to counter the threat of improvised explosive devices that they say militants bury underground.”
Remain for a year? How remain about for a century? We all know how this will play out. I attribute this human disaster mostly to djt and MAGA authoritarianism. djt has given implicit or explicit support for Israel to continue starving Palestinians and annex just about everything that is still in Palestinian control.[1]
Roads bulldozed into dirt
More bulldozed roads
Kicking 'em all out!
Raus! Raus! Schnell, schnell!!
Footnote:
1. Some examples of djt’s support for the expansion of Israel. In 2019, the Trump administration had declared that the United States no longer considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law, reversing four decades of established U.S. policy. In March 2019, djt officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967. This move was condemned by Syria as "a blatant attack on its sovereignty" but was hailed as "historic" by Netanyahu. In 2018, djt recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there. That effectively endorsed Israel’s claim to the unified city, including East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hopelessly envision as the capital of their future state. After the collapse of a ceasefire deal in March 2025, Trump gave Israel a green light to renew military operations against Hamas in Gaza.
In 2020, djt nominally endorsed a “two-state solution,” but it defined Palestinian statehood in such restrictive terms that most experts considered it unviable. For example, his vision of a “Palestinian state” is one where (i) it would lack control over its own borders, (ii) it would be subject to continuous Israeli military presence, (iii) it would be territorially fragmented into disconnected enclaves, and (iv) it could not maintain a standing military.
Hence reasonable beliefs that (1) no reasonable independent Palestinian state is possible, and (2) djt encourages Israel to take essentially full control of what is left of shrinking Palestinian lands.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Regarding our weaponized MAGA DoJ & MAGA’s anti-democracy impact
The NYT reports about the DoJ (Department of Justice) being a key player in protecting elite MAGA corruption and criminality, while attacking political opposition and federal judges who decide cases the “wrong” way: “As White House Steers Justice Dept., Bondi Embraces Role of TV Messenger -- Attorney General Pam Bondi has adopted a conspicuously performative approach, willing to execute White House directives with little fuss. That Ms. Bondi, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would prioritize a case of importance primarily to conspiracy theorists [the Jeffrey Epstein situation] was telling. .... Ms. Bondi is still finding her footing, as evidenced by her setback with the Epstein files. But she sees her role as that of a surrogate, a faithful executor and high-volume messenger, compelled to cede ground to empowered players in the West Wing, and in her own building, who exercise significant authority that rivals her own, according to interviews with 20 current and former officials. .... If there is a script, it has come in the form of prescriptive executive orders and memos from the White House.”
As far as I can tell there are three main sources of MAGA’s authoritarian and kleptocratic power. One is djt and his often illegal EOs (executive orders), another is the MAGAfied USSC which has protected djt against crimes he commits while in office. The third is the DoJ under Bondi. Bondi openly defies court orders that djt dislikes, and she also stops DoJ investigations and prosecutions of crimes by MAGA elites and supporters, prominently including Elon Musk and some of the 1/6 coup attempt traitors who were subject to prosecution for crimes they committed after djt’s 1/6 coup attempt.
Assessing impacts on democracy so far:
Authoritarian consolidate is well underway
Overwhelming expert consensus (91%) says that the U.S. now meets criteria for an anocracy, i.e., a mixed authoritarian-democracy government. According to an electoral integrity index, the US score fell from 76/100 (2016) to 58/100 (2024), putting it below Romania and Panama. The Freedom House rating downgraded the US from 86/100 (2016) to 72/100 (2025). Anti-democracy problems like obstruction of justice and political prisoners dragged the US down. The V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index ranked the US below Argentina and Croatia, with warnings of “severe executive aggrandizement (dictatorship).” Monday, May 12, 2025
MAGA’s arrogant ignorance; MAGA’s gigantic legal war machine
Along with a slew of other bad things, a dominant trait of morally rotted djt and his also rotted wealth and power movement is aggressive arrogance. It is typically grounded in ignorance or cynical denial of inconvenient facts and truths, arguably a perverted form of ignorance. The NYT writes (not paywalled) about why arrogant, ignorant MAGA elites want to get rid of federal support for child care: “Not Just More Babies: These Republicans Want More Parents at Home -- A few months before he began his 2022 Senate campaign, JD Vance reached out to a conservative family policy group with an idea for an opinion essay. He wanted to write about why government-subsidized day care was bad — and why most young children do better when one parent stays home. Mr. Vance’s article was published less than two weeks later in The Wall Street Journal, declaring, ‘Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.’”
Is there evidence to overwhelmingly support what the elite MAGA ignoranti Vance so arrogantly claims? No, there isn’t.** Social science evidence is clear. Young children in bad homes with bad parents or bad child care tend to be less happy and healthy than young children in good homes with good parents or good child care. JD Vance just dreamed up an idea of how MAGA elites want reality to be for us (not necessarily themselves), mommy stays home with a boatload of kids and daddy brings home the bacon. Vance just made shit up to support his fake reality and the morally rotted, MAGA Wall Street Journal opinion page happily published his bullshit and lies.
Mom happily living the MAGA dream
One other point needs to be mentioned here. Elite MAGA ignoranti want to give parents a $5,000 annual tax break to incentivize mommies staying home. $5,000 doesn't buy squat. Recent analyses show that the average annual cost of raising a young child in the United States is now about $29,400 to $30,000 per year. This reflects a sharp increase of roughly 36% since 2023, driven largely by rising childcare, food, and health insurance costs. What full-time job pays $5,000/year? None that I am aware of. Also, assume that mommy’s job paid her about $52,850–$56,316 as of 2024-2025. That is the median annual income for an American woman working full time (link 6, link 7, link 8). What companies are going to increase daddy’s pay by about $54,583/year to compensate for loss of mommy’s income? None that I am aware of.
Q: Are elite MAGA ignoranti arrogant, aggressive pricks, mostly reality-detached, rich white men, or are they well-informed, nice people doing a good job in good faith?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
In a terrifying bit of very bad news, some sources report about free legal service pledges from big law firms. The firms caved in to djt’s threats via his corrupt, morally rotted authoritarian EOs. So far, 9 major law firms have collectively pledged almost $1 billion in free legal services to get djt off their backs. The law firms pledged free legal services to preserve their federal government contracts and security clearances for their attorneys. This is pure authoritarian corruption.
This horrifying news is stupidly focused on one of the law firms losing employees who refuse to work for MAGA corruption and dictatorship. However, employee loss is of minor importance compared to the $1 billion war chest of free legal services that 9 top notch law firms have now pledged to djt. That corrupt money will be used in both legal war offense and defense to support pro-authoritarian, pro-kleptocracy causes and lawsuits that djt wants to put money into. In addition, djt’s plan of authoritarian attack has been used by other tyrants in power to consolidate their position. They weaponize bureaucracy against critics, erode institutional checks, and create a climate of fear. That is why the 9 law firms caved in and are now on the side the dictator-kleptocrat.
After a very long series of questions and analysis about the legality of what djt has done here, Pxy comes up with the same conclusions I came up with before asking the questions. First, what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal, as lower courts are now holding. Lower courts find violations of free speech and/or illegal violations of the Administrative Procedure Act. Second, despite the clear unconstitutionality and illegality of what he has done, the recent track record of our morally rotted MAGA USSC indicates that it probably will find that what djt has done is constitutional and legal.
After a long analysis, Pxy concludes this about how the USSC will probably deal with this catastrophe:
Conclusion
The Supreme Court’s current trajectory indicates a strong likelihood that it would find President Trump’s actions targeting law firms constitutional and within the scope of his powers, provided those actions are presented as exercises of official executive authority. [Of course that is how they will be presented] This outcome would mark a significant expansion of presidential power, with profound implications for the separation of powers, the independence of the legal profession, and the resilience of American democracy. The Court’s decisions in recent years have laid the groundwork for such a result, and unless there is a dramatic shift in doctrine or personnel, the trend toward unchecked executive authority is likely to continue. (emphases added)
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Analyzing wealth and power struggles among elites in a kleptocratic authoritarian state
My post earlier today raised the possibility of a 4th authoritarian power center among kleptocratic American authoritarians, namely single-party rule by our deeply corrupt Republican Party. I asked Pxy about scenarios when four different wealth and power centers are fighting for more wealth and power.
Q: Would a 4-way split in power by America's authoritarian radical right, Trump dictatorship, plutocracy for wealthy people and corporations, Christian nationalist theocrats and a Republican Party in single-party rule state be stable or would those 4 power centers collapse into internal warfare over the wealth and power spoils that comes with American kleptocratic authoritarianism, with one or maybe two of the four coming out on top? Analyze the most likely 2 or 3 scenarios or outcomes.
A: Drawing on comparative authoritarianism scholarship, kleptocratic regime dynamics, and ideological factionalism (Meng et al. 2023, Paine 2024, PRRI 2024), this analysis identifies three plausible trajectories for this hypothetical authoritarian coalition in the United States.
Scenario 1: Cyclical Purges and Personalized Dictatorship
Mechanism: Trump’s inner circle would exploit the inherent instability of multi-factional rule through the "threat-enhancing effect" of power sharing (Paine 2024). By appointing rival faction leaders to key positions-such as a tech billionaire as Treasury Secretary or a Christian nationalist leader as Attorney General-the regime could initially co-opt challengers while systematically purging them through legal persecution or manufactured scandals 2 16. This mirrors Putin’s consolidation strategy against oligarchs post-2014, where selective enforcement of laws and loyalty tests neutralized rivals.
Mechanism: Trump’s inner circle would exploit the inherent instability of multi-factional rule through the "threat-enhancing effect" of power sharing (Paine 2024). By appointing rival faction leaders to key positions-such as a tech billionaire as Treasury Secretary or a Christian nationalist leader as Attorney General-the regime could initially co-opt challengers while systematically purging them through legal persecution or manufactured scandals 2 16. This mirrors Putin’s consolidation strategy against oligarchs post-2014, where selective enforcement of laws and loyalty tests neutralized rivals.
Scenario 2: Plutocrat-Theocratic Alliance Marginalizes Populists
Mechanism: Wealthy elites and Christian nationalists could form a durable pact by aligning economic deregulation with culture war agendas. This mirrors Orbán’s Hungary, where oligarchs fund evangelical projects in exchange for state contracts 4 8. Key enablers: Legal Architecture: The Supreme Court’s Citizens United framework allows corporate funding of church-led voter mobilization drives 15 16. Policy Tradeoffs: Tech giants gain regulatory leniency in exchange for platforming Christian nationalist content; fossil fuel firms secure drilling rights by bankrolling anti-LGBTQ+ legislation 7 14.
Outcome: A stable duopoly emerges, combining Saudi-style religious policing with Singaporean state capitalism. The military-industrial complex becomes the arbiter, using Section 702 surveillance powers to suppress dissident factions 7 16. This scenario depends on maintaining 3%+ GDP growth to fund both corporate tax cuts ($2T over a decade) and theocratic social programs 2 4.
Scenario 3: Military-Bureaucratic Coup Restores "Managed Autocracy"
Mechanism: As factional warfare paralyzes governance (e.g., debt ceiling standoffs, states nullifying federal laws), the "deep state" remnant stages a Pinochet-style corrective coup. This aligns with Geddes’ (1999) finding that military regimes often emerge from single-party collapse 8 12. Key drivers: Economic Crisis: Concurrent inflation and unemployment trigger food riots in urban centers, overwhelming DHS and National Guard forces 7 15. Institutional Self-Preservation: Federal judges and three-star generals invoke the Insurrection Act to "restore order," sidelining both Trumpists and theocrats 5 16.
Outcome: A 5-7 year junta transitions to Erdoğan-style "illiberal democracy," with the GOP rebranded as a nationalist-developmentalist party. The FBI and Treasury’s FinCEN would purge extremist networks using existing anti-money laundering statutes, while retaining core MAGA voters through nationalist rhetoric 8 12. Stability would hinge on avoiding Iraq-style de-Baathification overreach 5 7.
Mechanism: Wealthy elites and Christian nationalists could form a durable pact by aligning economic deregulation with culture war agendas. This mirrors Orbán’s Hungary, where oligarchs fund evangelical projects in exchange for state contracts 4 8. Key enablers: Legal Architecture: The Supreme Court’s Citizens United framework allows corporate funding of church-led voter mobilization drives 15 16. Policy Tradeoffs: Tech giants gain regulatory leniency in exchange for platforming Christian nationalist content; fossil fuel firms secure drilling rights by bankrolling anti-LGBTQ+ legislation 7 14.
Scenario 3: Military-Bureaucratic Coup Restores "Managed Autocracy"
Mechanism: As factional warfare paralyzes governance (e.g., debt ceiling standoffs, states nullifying federal laws), the "deep state" remnant stages a Pinochet-style corrective coup. This aligns with Geddes’ (1999) finding that military regimes often emerge from single-party collapse 8 12. Key drivers: Economic Crisis: Concurrent inflation and unemployment trigger food riots in urban centers, overwhelming DHS and National Guard forces 7 15. Institutional Self-Preservation: Federal judges and three-star generals invoke the Insurrection Act to "restore order," sidelining both Trumpists and theocrats 5 16.
Conclusion:
The most probable path combines Scenario 1’s initial purges with Scenario 3’s military-bureaucratic intervention, producing a hybrid regime resembling modern Egypt: personalized rule tempered by institutional veto players, sustained through $500B+ annual security spending and selective welfare payouts 4 8. This outcome would require continuous external threats, real or manufactured, to justify internal repression-a precarious equilibrium vulnerable to leader health crises or commodity price shocks 7 16.
The most probable path combines Scenario 1’s initial purges with Scenario 3’s military-bureaucratic intervention, producing a hybrid regime resembling modern Egypt: personalized rule tempered by institutional veto players, sustained through $500B+ annual security spending and selective welfare payouts 4 8. This outcome would require continuous external threats, real or manufactured, to justify internal repression-a precarious equilibrium vulnerable to leader health crises or commodity price shocks 7 16.
Dang, a military junta! That didn’t seem plausible. Maybe it is.
This is a topic that deserves more thought and discussion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)