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| THIS IS A DICTATOR THIS IS JUST A DICK |
Friday, February 21, 2025
US District Judge Amir Ali stops just short of holding Trump administration in contempt for failing to comply with court's order allowing disbursement of foreign aid
Trump administration hasn’t complied with order to halt foreign aid freeze, judge says
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali last week ordered the administration to allow the disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance after hearing claims from federal contractors challenging an executive order signed by President Donald Trump pausing nearly all foreign assistance.
Ali determined that a “blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid” had caused irreparable harm to the contractors and was likely not allowed under the Administrative Procedure Act. ...
“By enjoining Defendants and their agents from implementing any directives to undertake such blanket suspension, the Court was not inviting Defendants to continue the suspension while they reviewed contracts and legal authorities to come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension,” Ali wrote. ...
"to the extent Defendants have continued the blanket suspension, they are ordered to immediately cease it.”
The judge stopped short of holding the administration in contempt.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
AKA The Bay of New Spain . . . among the better educated
An English nautical chart dated 1775 labels it "the Bay of Mexico", now glossing "Mexico" as an alternative name for New Spain:
Mitch McConnell, hated by ungrateful MAGA, won't run in 2026 after 40 years in the US Senate
WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the longest-serving Senate leader in history, announced Thursday on his 83rd birthday that he won’t seek re-election next year, bringing an end to his four-decade career in the chamber.
McConnell, first elected in 1984, climbed his way up to the Senate Republican leader position in 2007 and remained there until early 2025, serving during four administrations in the majority and the minority. ...
McConnell supported Trump’s presidential bids in 2016 and 2020. He made a crucial decision in early 2021 to vote to acquit Trump on impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection, even as he blasted Trump as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” calling his actions a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.” Despite his misgivings, he went on to endorse Trump for president again 2024 after he clinched the Republican nomination for a third successive election. ...
McConnell oversaw Trump’s three Supreme Court confirmations during his first term, as part of a sweeping set of 234 judges inked over those four years — most of them young conservatives who will serve for generations — which he has regarded as his proudest achievement. ...
Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Tina Smith of Minnesota have also announced that they will not run in 2026.
Trump just now checking the gold inventory at Fort Knox for some reason
“We’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there,” Trump said Wednesday on Air Force One.
Not even ass-kisser Mark Levin can take the Ukraine BS from Trump
Levin almost never disagrees with Trump. It's very revealing of Mark's priorities, which include the absolute rectitude of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.
... I’m waiting for the first free election for Vladimir Putin. I mean, this
is almost comical in a sick way that Putin is demanding an election.
Why is he demanding an election in Ukraine when he doesn’t have free and
real elections in his own country? ... I don’t know why there are people that not only oppose Zelensky, but
seem to support Putin,” said Levin, attributing said position to a
handful of pseudo-intellectuals” pushing “policies that in many ways are
un-American in my view, and policies that if they had espoused these
policies not that long ago, people would have wondered if they were on
the take, or who they’re working for, something like that. Not that they
are, but they would wonder.” ...
Levin sounds like Democrats at the end there, getting uncomfortably close to their charge that Trump has always been on the take from Putin, working for Putin, "something like that" lol.
Somebody should check the audio though, because, holy smokes, this whopper was in there:
There is no peace without slavery.
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
It's a tag team of wacko birds at Real Clear Politics tonight: Donald Trump and his national security advisor Mike Waltz attack Ukraine, blame the victim of Russian aggression
The most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time.
Maybe Democrats in the US House and Senate need to sue Elon Musk because they are the injured party
Judge Tanya Chutkan correctly ruled that the Attorneys General who sued Musk demonstrated no harm to their states.
The interests of Congress are harmed, however, regardless of party, even if most Republicans are too stupid to realize it. Their constitutional prerogatives have been usurped. Being in the majority, however, and servile to Trump, Republicans don't care. Democrats, in the minority, have no other remedy.
Of course this is partly a political matter, in which the court might refuse to meddle, and that is arguably correct. The remedy is political in that it is to be settled at the ballot box in two years. But that seems like an awful long time to wait for the system to correct itself, and it might not.
It might take a Democrat White House lording it over congressional Republicans in the minority in the future to demonstrate to them what they seem incapable of grasping now, but of course if this stands that will be too late for them to do anything about it.
What goes around comes around, in politics as in life.
What this really is is a constitutional matter. It is about the executive branch using a novel scheme to infringe on the powers specifically reserved to the Congress. Democrats should make that their case. The court system is the traditional place to adjudicate such things.
But given outright Democrat hostility to the constitution, e.g. to the Electoral College among other things, they may just not have the heart for it.
Sad!
... But Chutkan said that the states hadn’t shown “that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.”
“The court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for Plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents,” she wrote in the 10-page ruling. “It remains ‘uncertain’ when and how the catalog of state programs that Plaintiffs identify will suffer.”
Chutkan went on to say that even though the states’ larger case against Musk is “strong,” their arguments at this stage in the litigation were not good enough to satisfy the standard that must be met to warrant emergency action by the court.
“Plaintiffs raise a colorable Appointments Clause claim with serious implications. Musk has not been nominated by the President nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as constitutionally required for officers who exercise ‘significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States,’” she wrote. “But even a strong merits argument cannot secure a temporary restraining order at this juncture.”...
Congressional Republicans are unhappy with imprecise and rash spending cuts and personnel reductions, resulting in violations of the law, mistakes, and human carnage in their districts and states
Trump faces growing DOGE revolt from GOP lawmakers
... "We all want efficiencies, there is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful." ... some are quietly fuming that their Constitutional role in controlling federal funds could be steamrolled in the process. The House Republican who spoke anonymously warned that many conservatives are "very constitutionalist" and may be inclined to protect Congress' power if forced to do so. "Even though it's our guy in the White House, if there's a lot of executive overreach, we want to protect the institution of Congress," they said. ...
Victim blaming: Trump says Ukraine's Zelenskyy, attacked by 25-year dictator Vladimir Putin, is the dictator
When you've lost Sent Defender, you've lost.
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Victim blaming: Trump says Ukraine started the war with Russia
Didn't he do this to women who accused him?
Democrat Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) is correct: Elon Musk is an unelected interloper, with no authority and no legitimacy who makes a mockery of the appropriations process
Musk exercises nonexistent dictatorial line-item-veto powers over spending and personnel as a "super cabinet" official who was never confirmed by the US Senate like the other cabinet members he now tells what's what.
The whole scheme is illegal and unconstitutional, which is why Trump is now all of a sudden denying that Musk is head of the so-called DOGE, just like Trump hastily made Musk a special government employee after lawsuits were filed on February 3 questioning Musk's authority.
It's an end run around the constitution no less serious than the National Popular Vote Compact, which seeks to neuter the Electoral College.
Trump has been making this bullshit up as he goes and has been since Musk endorsed Trump after the July assassination attempt and then became part of Trump's circle of intimates in August.
The tech oligarchy got front row seats at the inauguration for a reason.
Congress closing in on shutdown deadline with no clear plan
“We cannot come to a deal where you hammer out gains, losses, but you come to a conclusion and you come to a meeting of the minds,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters. “That should not be subject to some third party deciding that that’s not what they want.”
“We had a deal last year, all of us and so forth, and then there was an interloper with no authority, no legitimacy, nonelected, who said, ‘Don’t vote for it,’” DeLauro said, as Democrats have continued to zero in on tech billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump's MO is to cut people out of negotiations: He's cutting out Ukraine just like he cut out the Afghans and negotiated directly with the Taliban
"Watch me hand over Ukraine to Putin like I handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban."
Monday, February 17, 2025
Ukraine should just surrender to Putin and join the East, given Trump's immoral treatment of Ukraine
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for The UK Telegraph:
Panic in Kyiv as US president demands higher share of GDP than Germany’s First World War reparations
Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.
The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.
The Telegraph has obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, marked “Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025. ...
Sunday, February 16, 2025
If you think Trump is a nutball with this Napoleon stuff, Luigi Mangione announces that in himself we have now finally achieved the classless society of which red diaper doper babies everywhere have long dreamed
The mental illness problem in America is much worse than I thought.
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