Words of Wisdom

For those who are stressed out and depressed by reading about politics, but don't want to completely block it out and risk being uninformed, here's a tip: Focus your reading on solutions, not problems. Read only articles and posts about what is being done to solve the problems we face, or about what should be done about them — about those who are fighting back against Trump's depredations in various ways, how you can help do so, how the Democrats need to change in order to win elections in the future, and suchlike. Skip the ones that are basically just "here are all the latest terrible things that are happening" or "here's yet another example of how bad and awful and terrible Trump is". You already know bad things are happening and you already know Trump is awful. Wallow­ing in more of that will just depress you further while providing nothing positive. Reading exclusively about resistance and positive action will keep you still informed but a lot less stressed out. – Infidel753

[Thanks Rick]

Relaying A Message

Mark Elias: An Open Letter to Elon Musk

(via http://ishouldbelaughing.blogspot.com/)

Elon Musk attacked democracy defender and superstar court lawyer Marc Elias as "undermining civilization," taunting him by asking if he suffered "generational trauma" and Elias's response was brilliant and worth amplifying:

Mr. Musk,

You recently criticized me and another prominent lawyer fighting for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. I am used to being attacked for my work, particularly on the platform you own and dominate.

I used to be a regular on Twitter, where I amassed over 900,000 followers—all organic except for the right-wing bots who seemed to grow in number. Like many others, I stopped regularly posting on the site because, under your stewardship, it became a hellscape of hate and misinformation.

I also used to buy your cars—first a Model X and then a Model S—back when you spoke optimistically about solving the climate crisis. My family no longer owns any of your cars and never will.

But this is not the reason I am writing. You don't know me. You have no idea whether I have suffered trauma and if I have, how it has manifested. And it's none of your business.

However, I will address your last point about generational trauma. I am Jewish, though many on your site simply call me "a jew." Honestly, it's often worse than that, but I'm sure you get the point. There was a time when Twitter would remove antisemitic posts, but under your leadership, tolerating the world's oldest hatred now seems to be a permissible part of your "free speech" agenda.

Like many Jewish families, mine came to America because of trauma. They were fleeing persecution in the Pale of Settlement—the only area in the Russian Empire where Jews were legally allowed to reside. Even there, life was difficult—often traumatic. My family, like others, lived in a shtetl and was poor. Worse, pogroms were common—violent riots in which Jews were beaten, killed and expelled from their villages.

By the time my family fled, life in the Pale had become all but impossible for Jews. Tsar Nicholas II's government spread anti-Jewish propaganda that encouraged Russians to attack and steal from Jews in their communities. My great-grandfather was fortunate to leave when he did. Those who stayed faced even worse circumstances when Hitler's army later invaded.

That is the generational trauma I carry. The trauma of being treated as "other" by countrymen you once thought were your friends. The trauma of being scapegoated by authoritarian leaders. The trauma of fleeing while millions of others were systematically murdered. The trauma of watching powerful men treat it all as a joke—or worse.

As an immigrant yourself, you can no doubt sympathize with what it means to leave behind your country, extended family, friends and neighbors to come to the United States. Of course, you probably had more than 86 rubles in your pocket. You probably didn't ride for nine days in the bottom of a ship or have your surname changed by immigration officials.

As new immigrants, life wasn't easy. My family lived in cramped housing without hot water. They worked menial jobs—the kind immigrants still perform today.

Some may look down on those immigrants—the ones without fancy degrees—but my family was proud to work and grateful that the United States took them in. They found support within their Jewish community and a political home in the Democratic Party.

I became a lawyer to give back to the country that gave my family a chance. I specialize in representing Democratic campaigns because I believe in the party. I litigate voting rights cases because the right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. I speak out about free and fair elections because they are under threat.

Now let me address the real crux of your post.

You are very rich and very powerful. You have thrown in with [The Felon]. Whether it is because you think you can control him or because you share his authoritarian vision, I do not know. I do not care.

Together, you and he are dismantling our government, undermining the rule of law and harming the most vulnerable in our society. I am just a lawyer. I do not have your wealth or your platform. I do not control the vast power of the federal government, nor do I have millions of adherents at my disposal to harass and intimidate my opponents. I may even carry generational trauma.

But you need to know this about me. I am the great-grandson of a man who led his family out of the shtetl to a strange land in search of a better life. I am the grandson of the three-year-old boy on that journey. As you know, my English name is Marc, but my Hebrew name is Elhanan (אֶלְחָנָן)—after the great warrior in David's army who slew a powerful giant.

I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from [The Felon]. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath.

I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey.

Defiantly,

Marc Elias

Road Trip

We needed to get out of the house, out of the city, out of our heads for a bit, so this morning we headed south to Organ Pipe National Monument—because who knows how long any of our National Parks will be around at this point.

Lots of sahuaro and cholla cactus; not so much organ pipe.

And then we came upon this…

You've read about it. You've seen it on videos. But nothing prepares you for the horrific, ugly in-person reality of the orange felon's border fence separating the United States and Mexico:

I don't understand the gates. Why are there (admittedly welded shut) gates? What is their purpose?

I wonder how MAGA would react if Canada erected a similar fence on their southern border to keep us out…

And my final thought was are these fences being built to keep them out or to ultimately keep us in?

 

Finally Some Good News… Or At Least A Break In The Shitstorm

From Palmer Report:

Elon Musk's DOGE agency was in trouble from the start when its co-head Vivek Ramaswamy resigned on literally day one of the Trump administration, and then the agency's top lawyer also resigned in the first week. Since that time Musk has made one harmful, incompetent, and bizarre move after another.

Over the weekend he swung for the fences by demanding that every federal employee immediately respond to his email or be fired. When five Trump-appointed agency heads told Musk to shove it, Musk then claimed the email was merely "voluntary." I wrote that this marked a major inflection point, because Musk had just forfeited all the leverage he had. Who would take his threats seriously after he backed down like that?

Sure enough, Musk is now fully on the defensive. Twenty-one DOGE staffers resigned today in protest of Musk's agenda. These people all recently took jobs with DOGE, meaning they were on board with what DOGE initially said it was going to do. Yet just a month in, they're now so disgusted with what DOGE has turned into that they're quitting very loudly, announcing their disgust to the Associated Press.

Elon Musk responded to the mass resignations by calling them "fake news" on Twitter, which is how you know the resignations are a blow to him. At this point Musk is now stuck playing defense against the courts which keep ruling against him, the Trump-appointed agency heads who keep defying him, and his DOGE staffers who have already turned against him. How much longer before Trump decides Musk is more trouble than he's worth and cuts him loose?

This Is Putting A Huge Crimp In Donald Trump's Evil Agenda

From Palmer Report:

Donald Trump and his henchmen have a clear strategy for now: do as many outrageous and/or illegal things as possible all at once, in the hope of wearing everyone down. They've certainly proven to be good at creating chaos. But one thing they're not any good at is figuring out how to get away with their dirty work cleanly.

There are two ways to get away with corruption. One is to simply do it in secret and try to keep anyone from finding out. But Trump henchman Elon Musk is unhinged enough to go on Twitter and brag about his every illegal move. The other way to get away with corruption is to frame your criminal intent within something that sounds legally reasonable. But Trump's people don't appear capable of this either.

Of all the court rulings that have come down over the past three weeks with regard to the Trump administration, every single one of them has gone against Trump. It's almost difficult to lose that consistently. It means Trump's people haven't figured out how to manufacture even a pseudo-reasonable argument for any of their actions. That's a special combination of arrogance and incompetence.

In the short term, this spate of court rulings against Trump is huge. There's a reason every new President manages to achieve most of their accomplishments in the first hundred days. It's when the new administration has a head start, momentum, and a temporary free pass from the media which doesn't want to be seen as stepping on the (supposed) mandate from the voters. But after those first few months, the forces opposing the new President have seen the game plan and figured out how to rally against it. That's when a President's initially aggressive agenda devolves into a slow-crawl trench war.

Accordingly, Trump and his people are trying to move as quickly as they possibly can with their corrupt agenda. They're not behaving like they have four years of open road ahead of them. They're behaving as if they fear their momentum could run out at any moment. That's why it's so important that these court rulings are slowing down Trump and his people and forcing them to play defense. It's an unmistakable victory for us in the short term.

Of course this kind of victory for us merely leads to the next round of the battle. Musk and even JD Vance are already publicly floating the idea that the Trump regime can just ignore these court rulings and do whatever it wants. There's a reason they're saying this so loudly: they want you to believe it. They want you to think "Oh no, they're going to get away with whatever they want, no point in continuing to fight them." And they really want you to go around saying that the fight is hopeless, because that demotivates everyone else on our side who wants to keep fighting.

But in reality, Trump and his people do not have a magic wand. If Musk truly is unhinged enough to defy a federal court order, the courts will hold him in contempt and ultimately haul him in to answer for it. And while this is being billed as a "constitutional crisis" that'll doom us all, what it would really do is further stall the Trump regime's momentum. It's much harder to keep trying to take over government agencies if you're tied up in court fighting for your own freedom. If Musk wants to go that route, fine.

The more likely outcome is that the Trump regime tries appealing all of these rulings, only to be shot down in most instances by the appeals court, before trying its luck with the Supreme Court. There's a prevailing narrative that this Supreme Court will, of course, side with Trump no matter what. But that's an overly simplistic take.

In reality this Supreme Court keeps showing us that it cares far more about establishing its own all-powerful position than it does about an interloper like Donald Trump. Even when the Supreme Court ruled that a President can't be prosecuted for official actions, the Supreme Court retained its own ability to determine what is or isn't an official action. Trump will likely be deceased from dementia in a year. This Supreme Court wants to carve out its position of power for a generation.

That's why Musk and Vance are being so foolish by publicly declaring that the President doesn't have to obey the courts. It would be one thing for this Supreme Court to side with Trump on policy issues. But if the argument is that the President is immune from the courts, the Supreme Court almost has to rule against him in order to retain its own power. Then again, this Supreme Court is as inconsistent as it is corrupt, so who knows?

The point is that we're winning an important battle right now by using the courts to slow down Trump and his henchmen. It keeps them from being able to race through their agenda. It slows them down enough for us to catch up, see what they're trying to do, and game plan against it. Winning this battle merely leads us to the next battle we have to fight and win, but so be it. It's better than the alternative.