Friday’s Forum
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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
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No, Musk didn’t fail.
Trump administration knew most Venezuelans deported from Texas to a Salvadoran prison had no U.S. convictions
Will there be consequences for lying to the courts? Any consequences at all from any source? I have my doubts given the state this country is in.
A point that falls on deaf ears over in Wingnuttia is that “it’s not WHAT Trump is doing, it’s HOW he is doing it.” The formula is pretext +unconstitutional or illegal, then let the courts sort it out and, if necessary, defy the courts until the damage cannot be undone. The astounding corruption is thrown in for free, as evidenced by the lack of GOP reaction to Trump saying he’d be stupid not to take a bribe (i.e., QatarForce 1).
But, do tell us more.
So, are we Sodom or Gomorrah? Or both rolled into one? Is that a hint of sulfur in the air?
More eye opening stats within the article.
Rick Wilson says Susie Wiles is gunning for Pete Hegseth.
@Rob1: The more I read about crypto, the more I find it indistinguishable from a standard Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme. Its Amway without the soap.
@CSK: Root for injuries on both sides.
Fake babies, fake currency, fake intelligence, fake presidents. The art of artifice comes full bloom.
@Rob1: “Fake presidents”?
I’m reposting the proof of El Taco, direct from the White House, as many might have missed yesterday’s late post.
@Kingdaddy: This needs to be underscored.
Bernie Kerik has died.
I told Prof. Taylor I’d post this today:
Damn Mike Duncan! He linked to this Star Wars book, and now I want to read it.
It’s The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, written by an actual historian.
Considering how many historians are doing real history, it’s okay to have a few write fictional histories. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a formal history book on Star Trek.
Per the NYT, Elon Musk took so much ketamine it damaged his bladder. He also ingested copious amounts of magic mushrooms, Adderall, and Ecstasy.
@CSK:
Shades of Bob Fosse.
@Fortune:
Here and elsewhere.
@Rob1: Neat. Voting machines again, or something about Florida recounts?
“Independent”
“Twitter”
@Fortune:
In 2000, after SCOTUS handed down their 5-4 ruling ending the Florida recount in the middle and forcing the state to accept the incomplete counting of the votes as the official tally, Al Gore officially conceded the election; advised everyone to accept Bush as the new president; publicly told all the Bush electors not to switch their votes; and, as the sitting vp, certified his own defeat on Jan. 6, 2001.
In 2020, after all the recounts were completed, Trump refused to accept the results; berated state officials to change the vote count in his favor; filed dozens of lawsuits, nearly all of which were shot down (apart from a few minor technical issues that made no difference to the outcome); pressured his vp not to certify Biden as the winner; encouraged a mob of protesters to arrive at the Capitol on Jan. 6; and when that mob breached the Capitol entrance and injured or killed several police officers as well as doing a ton of property damage, Trump waited hours before doing anything about it, and when being told parts of the mob were literally calling for Pence’s execution, he said “So what?”
Yeah–the two situations are exactly the same, not one quark of difference.
@Kylopod: I wasn’t comparing them. Trump’s actions were worse. I didn’t accuse Rob1 of being identical to the Trumpers, just the earlier election deniers. But it’s a pathetic thing to be.
@Fortune:
Interesting, I wasn’t taking Rob1’s comment as fake as in “not fairly elected” but rather fake as in “not doing his job upholding the constitution”
http://www.npr.org/2025/05/04/g-s1-64239/does-a-president-need-to-uphold-the-constitution-trump-says-i-dont-know
He then says some sop about his lawyers obeying the Supreme Court, but he apparently doesn’t think he needs to follow the Constitution. Which, to me, means he’s not a real President.
Krugman’s substack column today is worth reading. It’s on crypto and stable coins. No paywall.
It answers one question for me: crypto is useful for payment of illegal activities carried out anonymously (though the latter is questionable).
It holds its value as long as people keep pumping real money into it. Largely people not involved in illicit activities.
@charontwo: I find myself wondering who creates Trump’s memes or tropes or whatever we want to call them. They strike me as too creative for him do be even participating in the design much. Including Pepe is an example of what I’m talking about. I don’t think Trump would object to that inclusion, but I doubt that it originated with him or that he even understands the symbolism.
When he was approving this piece, assuming he does such, it’s possible that he never even noticed the frog’s presence. (Not that I think it’s exculpatory, only interesting.)
Idle question:
The top law schools in the country (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.) can’t use their expertise to crush the lawyers in the federal government? Maybe their reputations are overblown?
White House convenes meeting to brainstorm new Harvard measures
@CSK: I’m sorry but how does he keep a security clearance? I know mine would’ve been pulled within an hour. Oh yes, these are special people. Rules are for the little people.
@Kathy: While I’m still here today, your comment reminded me that I’d wanted to comment on another post earlier.
I think that the thing that most surprises/amuses me about that heading is that it’s even a question.
@Scott:
I think you answered your own question.
@restless: You’re a real president from when you’re elected until you’re removed or replaced. You can be a good or bad real one – or even a really good or really bad real one – but if you’re not president and claim you are, you’re a fake one. I guess Trump technically was a fake president from 2021-2025.
@CSK:
Be reasonable. If you chose for some unfathomable reason to deal with El Taco frequently, and in person, you’d want to be stoned out of your mind while doing so.
Trump just fired Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, on the grounds that she’s “highly partisan”and too DEI-oriented.
@charontwo: Poor Pepe. There’s a great documentary about Mark Fury and his quest to take back his comic character from right wing grifters and their incel audience.
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/feels-good-man/
Good insight on the cultivation of grievances and encouraging social alienation of young men for alt-right political purposes.
@CSK:
I wish I had some psilocybin, that worked great for my depression and PTSD.
All of those things are great, in moderation. Musk vast wealth seems to have rotted his brain the most. I don’t have any problems, in general, with people using those substances. But they’re potent and over-use causes damage. A lot of them can be mitigated to an extent, but that requires actual healthy living and, importantly, actual moderation. Musk isn’t doing any of that.
Well, this is pretty badass.
@Beth:
Moderation is the key. Elon was apparently consuming fistfuls of this stuff: ketamine every day. ETA: Trump said today that Musk really isn’t leaving.
@Beth:
Brava.
@Rob1:
On this meme coin stuff: That the US government is supporting an alternative legal tender to its own is bizarre. Everybody is concentrating on the issue of Trump making money off it but, to me, the government undermining its own currency is more meaningful and probably the right way to address the MAGAs on this issue.
Loretta Swit, 87, has died. RIP, Hotlips.
@CSK: I suspect he’s undiagnosed bipolar (he’s openly admitted to depression), and a super-rich guy surrounded by sycophants won’t have a hard time finding the drugs to self-medicate.
@Kylopod:
Indeed. I have read that he also has Asperger’s.
@CSK:
@Kylopod:
The other bit about that is he’s not getting dirty street drugs. He’s got the money and White House connections to get the real stuff. In moderation, it’s probably better for you, but if he’s guzzling it, that’s gonna be way worse.
@CSK:
No to mention foot in mouth disease.
Seen on Facebook:
@CSK:
He mentioned it during his SNL appearance a few years ago, claiming to be the first Aspie on the show. Dan Aykroyd, who also has it, promptly corrected him.
I’ve heard people question his self-diagnosis, but in this case I kind of believe him; when you see him in interviews and other public appearances, he displays a lot of the classic features, including monotonous speech, avoiding eye contact, and odd, repetitive hand and body movements, known as stimming (and no, that isn’t a good explanation for that, um, Roman salute). Many people on the spectrum (especially women, who are heavily underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed) mask these features, but when they appear they’re a dead giveaway.
The mental-health field dropped the term “Asperger’s” a while ago, in part because Asperger the person was a Nazi eugenicist, but also because they decided there wasn’t any good reason to consider it a distinct category within the autism spectrum. But the term has so percolated our culture that many people who were once diagnosed with it have been reluctant to give up the term, especially since there’s a stereotypical idea that it’s the “smart” variety of autism, and somewhat paradoxically, autism itself is often incorrectly conflated with intellectual disabilities. (That’s presumably what led Michelle Bachmann to claim vaccines cause “mental retardation”–she was parroting the old Andrew Wakefield claim without understanding the difference between autism and retardation.) For someone who wants to be seen as a whiz-kid visionary, I understand why Elon would stick to the old term.
@Beth:
Excellent point.
The news that the Taco Dome won’t be completed before El Taco’s term, is as surprising as the news that water is wet.
Don’t anyone let El Taco know there’s dry water.
@Kylopod:
I once had a student with Asperger’s, who described himself as “a high-functioning autistic.” He was socially awkward and somewhat disruptive in class, but once I figured out how to deal with that, things were fine.
@Kathy: Having spent my AF career involved in these systems, I will be not be surprised if they don’t have the requirements sufficiently defined before it collapses of its own weight.
@Scott:
I don’t think a missile defense system is a bad idea. Right now, with existing technology, a shield that will stop all the ICBMs and cruise missiles Russia and/or China can lob at the US, is impossible. At best one might destroy some enroute.
This may be worth doing, even if the possibility of all out nuclear war is remote. As long as the expectations and cost estimates are realistic.
A price tag of $175 billion that can stop a full scale Russian attack frankly is a bargain, a steal even. Which tells me the estimate is nowhere near the same galaxy as realistic.
It may be worth to do intensive R&D and deploy systems as they become available. But El Taco does not exist in the same universe as reality.
On other breaking, Earth-shattering news, Taylor Swift purchased something.
@CSK: In the 1988 movie Rain Man, which introduced much of the public to the concept of autism, the Dustin Hoffman character is described as “high-functioning” even though he’s someone who lives in a group home and is apparently incapable of living independently. The explanation in the film is that most autistic people are nonverbal.
It’s that picture of autism that Sir Worm-Brain is stuck in; he doesn’t seem to realize how much the understanding of the condition has changed since the 1980s, and that the primary reason for the explosion in cases is the numerous people being diagnosed who are not impaired like the Hoffman character and would not have been diagnosed as autistic at the time the movie came out.
In typical Taco fashion, El Taco put himself in a difficult position. He raised tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50%, saying they will take effect on Jun 4th.
That will be bad (and won’t magically increase domestic steel or aluminum production). Normally he’d walk it back in a few days at most. This time, though, if he does then the Taco attacks will hound him for the rest of his term, or his life (whichever comes first). If he doesn’t, he’ll wreck the economy some more.
Will no one rid us of this troublesome Taco?
@CSK: “Loretta Swit, 87, has died. RIP, Hotlips.”
Cast her in an episode of Diagnosis Murder along with a lot of other MASH vets. (Wayne Rogers, Elliott Gould. Sally Kellerman and others including my former neighbor William Christopher.)
She was incredibly dedicated and did a great job, but spent the whole week insisting that we give her a regular role on the show. We had to keep telling her “We’d love to — but you’re the murderer!”