Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

There are a thousand election hot takes and post mortems floating around these days and I’m sure in due time we’ll come to some consensus about what drove the Trump victory, (now down to a whopping 1.48% margin and shrinking.) But if there’s one thing we do know it’s that he won both of his elections at least in part by shedding some Republican Party orthodoxy that had been bringing them down for ages. He knows a third rail when he sees one.

If there’s one issue that differentiated Trump from other Republicans from the minute he came down that golden escalator it was his promise to preserve the so-called entitlement programs. He made it clear:  “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” and it may have been the key to his success in that first campaign. By so boldly declaring those programs off limits he created an aura of post-ideological Republicanism, something that allowed people to buy into his fake persona as a self-made businessman who played by different rules to get things done.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/596338364187602944

He lied. His proposed budgets cut the programs every year he was in office. As Vox reported back in 2019:

Over the next 10 years, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal aims to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid — instead allocating $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states — $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare (some of that is reclassified to a different department). Their intentions are to cut benefits under Medicaid and Social Security.

Medicare was supposed to be cut as well, through a complicated mechanism that reallocated some of its funds. Obviously, the congress didn’t approve those cuts so it didn’t happen but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

That last budget was put together by the man Trump is bringing back as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and one of the principal authors of Project 2025, Russell Vought. It’s highly questionable whether Vought will be as circumspect about the plans to cut the programs this time or whether Trump will care because all of that was predicated on Trump’s need to run for office again. Without that hanging over their heads they have no need to hold back. Republicans have wanted to do away with those programs since they were first passed. This may be their chance to finally get it done.

As we know, Trump has pledged to create a sexy new government commission led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy called the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE (the acronym cutely chosen to evoke the crypto scheme by the same name in which Musk is heavily invested.) Vought has said that he plans to work closely with the commission to use executive action to accomplish the slashing and burning of government programs they’re promising.

Vought hasn’t openly called for cutting Social Security retiree benefits but has promoted cutting disability payments and Medicaid and fully privatising Medicare. His history suggests, however, that given the go-ahead he will gleefully take a meat ax to the program. Musk however, has been clear that he believes the government has to be cut to the bone immediately which he admits will cause “hardship” that we will just have to bear. After all, he did that with Tesla and Twitter, how is that different from the United States federal government? Well, except for the massive scale and complexity…

This week, the far right Senator from Utah, Mike Lee posted a thread on twitter/X in which he claims that Social Security is a scam that the government mismanages and must be reformed so that people can “invest” their money and avoid “dependence.” (Back when America was Great — the 1890s or the 1790s or whenever — that’s how it worked. Sure many elderly people lived in abject poverty because they forgot to become rich but at least they had their independence.)

Elon Musk found Lee’s fantasy history and disinformation “interesting” and amplified it on his X platform.

It’s the same old story. In fact, the last time they tried this after President George W. Bush declared he had a mandate from his re-election victory, it ushered in a massive Democratic congressional takeover in the midterms and a two term Democratic presidency. The financial crisis hit and everyone in America saw the wisdom of having at least a portion of their old age or disability safety net guaranteed by the government instead of Wall Street. I suppose it’s possible that it’s ancient history to a lot of people but I kind of doubt it is for anyone over 50.

But it’s possible they won’t even try to sell it that way. Musk expects people to suffer in order to save the country from bankruptcy which he has decided is imminent and Vought and his right wing Christian nationalist allies want to completely decimate the “administrative state” so they may just declare that the program is insolvent and cut the benefits across the board.

There are at least some members of congress ready for action. Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia on Fox said they have to “have the stomach” to make some “hard decisions.”

Rep. Richard McCormick: "We're gonna have to have some hard decisions. We're gonna have to bring in the Democrats to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There's hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, we just have to have the stomach to take those challenges on."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2024-12-03T15:37:40.527Z

With what will be a tiny majority in the House it’s very hard to see anything like that passing. Unlike Trump they have to face the voters again. But we do know that Vought is a big fan of “impoundment” which basically says that the president can spend money however he wants regardless of what the congress has intended. (He actually used this concept to justify the withholding of funds to Ukraine which led to Trump’s first impeachment.)

This practice was actually outlawed in the 1970s after the previous criminal president, Richard Nixon, refused to allow funds to be spent the way the Democratic congress allocated it but it hasn’t been fully tested in court. It is highly likely that the DOGE group and Vought at OMB are going to try to use this concept to sidestep the congress completely. Whether they have the nerve to attempt it with something as massive as Social Security or Medicare remains to be seen. But those programs are the right’s great white whale and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make another attempt to finally kill them.

Donald Trump certainly won’t care. He never has to face another voter and that is the only reason he ever promised to keep his hands off of the programs in the first place. He can do somersaults on the third rail now and it can’t hurt him at all. His party is another story but then, he doesn’t care about them either. 

Salon

Compared to whom?

Gen Zers have grown up amidst endless economic and political crises — fallout from September 11, the financial collapse of 2008, the Great Recession, the Covid-9 pandemic, January 6, etc. — that led to a grimmer view of their futures. Axios reports that their struggles have pushed them right while setting impossibly high expectations for financial security:

Catch up quick: Financial services company Empower surveyed more than 2,200 Americans in September and the Gen Z respondents — born between 1997 and 2012 — said they would need to make more than $587,000 a year to be “financially successful.”

That’s three to six times the amount reported by other age groups surveyed, and almost nine times the average U.S. salary tracked by the Social Security Administration.

So what’s going on here?

• Angst: “Many people feel they’re coming up short — with half believing they’re less financially successful compared to others around them,” Rebecca Rickert, head of communications at Empower, tells Axios. “The majority think prosperity is harder to achieve for their generation, which factors into the magic number people attach to success.”
• Persistently high costs: “Sure, groceries, student loan payments, the cost of going out to restaurants and bars all matter — but ‘feeling successful’ when you have to have a roommate to afford rent undermines all capacity for consumption,” David Bahnsen, whose California-based Bahnsen Group manages $6.5 billion in assets, tells Axios.
• The influence of influencers: “These macro trends are exacerbated by social trends. Influencers portray false versions of reality that suggest wealth building being easy and hard work being outdated,” says David Laut, CIO of Abound Financial in California. “It is widely known that comparison is the thief of joy, and this leads the next generation to feel discouraged, setting higher and higher bars as a prerequisite for happiness.”
• Mismatched expectations: “They’re concerned about increased costs of living, hyper-aware that their money isn’t going as far as it used to even few years ago. Our hypothesis is this is having a major impact on what they think it takes to be ‘financially successful’ in our current climate,” Julia Peterson, director of consumer marketing at youth marketing agency Archrival, tells Axios.

Costs are certainly up, especially housing costs. People living with their parents into their late 20s or needing rommates just to get by certainly influences one’s sense of economic stability.

But the statement above about “influencers” stands out. Is their presence on social media leaving the impression that fame and fortune are just one TikTok away? Or is that just generational prejudice by us oldsters? Or is it another edition of that familiar, old American fantasy that everyone is just one lottery tickey or NBA contract from being fabulously wealthy and a life of leisure? I don’t know. Nor do I know how representative is the Gen Z cohort in Empower’s survey of 2,200 Americans.

Cara Michelle Smith writes at Salon citing Eric Arzubi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center:

More than 90% of Gen Zers regularly use social media. And as anybody with even one social media account knows, apps like TikTok and Instagram offer glimpses into the (often meticulously curated) lives of individuals who, frankly, seem like they’re living our fantasy. A perfectly innocent, five-minute scroll sesh can bombard you with irrefutable evidence that there are people living in nicer apartments than you rent, buying pricier skincare products than you can afford and wearing clothes you couldn’t dream of splurging on — making you, by comparison, feel a little less satisfied with your weekend road trip now that you’re comparing it to another couple’s two-week retreat in the Maldives. This can redefine what success looks like. 

“That’s what people naturally do, right? You index yourself against other people. That’s just kind of human nature,” Arzubi said. “We all know that the level of happiness doesn’t necessarily correlate with what people are seeing online, but that doesn’t matter.”

There’s a name for this phenomenon: upward comparison. It’s the flipside of downward comparison, in which individuals compare themselves to those with fewer resources. Downward comparisons can translate to feelings of gratitude, while upward comparisons can leave individuals feeling dissatisfied with their lives, though research also suggests upward comparison can motivate individuals to create positive changes.

My Gen Z friends are doing better, I suspect. But their cohort’s right lean won’t help any of us in the end.

(h/t DJ)

A Trumpist feature, not a bug

It is no secret by now that patriarchy will not go quietly, as Digby noted on Tuesday, calling it “the oldest organizing principle in human history.”

There are some very deep forces at work in our changing world, many of which refuse to change. Vigorously. People I’ve called rump royalists never bought into the Declaration’s flowery prose about people being “created equal.” It’s surprising that more don’t do spit-takes at its very mention. They would just as soon see the return of feudalism if they could craft a more consumer-friendly version consistent with global consumer capitalism. (They’re working on it.) Misogyny, promimently on display in Trump 2.0 cabinet picks, is one facet of that patriarchal organizing principle.

Consistent with both is the elevation to the cabinet of what Greg Sargent dubs “a Murderer’s Row of Billionaires.” By one count, there are eight among Trump’s picks so far. Sargent discusses the takeover of the White House by the ultra-wealthy with Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

It’s not as if some wealthy leaders have not been good stewards worthy of the public’s trust, Bookbinder begins, “But the idea that you would have a government where such a high proportion of the top ranks are filled by the wealthiest people in American society is not something we’ve seen in modern times.”

Not since the Gilded Age have we seen the level of corruption and kleptocracy in government that Trumpism brings to Washington. Ethical standards that Trump pushed aside in his first administration Trump is torching heading into his second:

Bookbinder: One thing that we saw again and again in the first Trump administration were people coming into cabinet positions or deputy positions, and immediately making decisions that benefited former clients, former companies, companies to which they had ties. Now, you see a little bit of that in every administration—as you said, the revolving door is a really unfortunate D.C. tradition. But it was taken up a notch in Donald Trump’s administration to what seems to be happening here, which is you increase the number of billionaires and investors and people who potentially stand to profit.

Trump in his first term found areas of govenance controlled more by tradition than by law and exploited them for profit, Bookbinder notes. He at least attempted the pretense of adhering to ethical rules. (At least financial ones, I’d interject.)

Bookbinder: It now looks like he’s got no particular interest in doing that. I’m hopeful that he’ll see the light in the next month or two and divest from his companies and commit to ethics, but we certainly haven’t seen anything to date that gives us a lot of confidence. When you have a president who has chipped away at ethical safeguards coming in without any stated regard for those safeguards and surrounding himself by very, very wealthy people who stand to benefit from their government posts unless they adhere to the strictest ethical standards, there’s a lot of cause for concern here.

Coming after the Jeffrey Epstein conviction for child prostitution and a civil judgment against Trump for sexual assault, many Trump 2.0 picks come with their own history of misogyny and sexual misconduct. Just a coincidence, no doubt.

“Donald Trump is most likely not trying to intentionally assemble a Cabinet chock-full of people accused either of sexual assault or of enabling it, but if he were, he’d be killing it,” writes Adam Serwer in The Atlantic. Sewer provides a rundown of Trump picks you can read there or just catch on the evening news.

What’s notable is how prominently sex crimes feature in the imaginations of Republican politicians. Sex crimes committed by “whichever group they want to demonize,” that is. When it’s a Republican, well, “I don’t care,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham in dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nomineee for secretary of defense, and Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first nominee for attorney general.

Sophie Gilbert adds (also in The Atlantic) that she harbored little hope about seeing attitudes change among emotionally stunted men:

I simply wished for voters to reject the idea, pushed so fervently by those on Trump’s side, that women should be subservient incubators, passively raising the next generation of men who disdain them. This wish did not pan out. “Your body, my choice. Forever,” the white-supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes, who has dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, posted on X on Election Night. “Women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say,” the right-wing troll Jon Miller wrote on the same site.

The misogynist backlash is here:

The old analytical terms we use to describe sexism in politics aren’t sufficient to deal with this onslaught of repugnant hatred. Michelle Obama was right, in her closing argument of the 2024 campaign, to note that Harris had faced an astonishing double standard: Both the media and Americans more broadly had picked apart her arguments, bearing, and policy details while skating over Trump’s “erratic behavior; his obvious mental decline; his history as a convicted felon, a known slumlord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse.” She also captured the stakes of the election when she said that voters were fundamentally making a choice in 2024 about “our value as women in this world.” On that front, the people have spoken. But women don’t have to play along.

All his life, Trump has ruined people who get close to him. He won’t ruin women, but he will absolutely destroy a generation of men who take his vile messaging to heart. And, to some extent, the damage has already been done.

This old union will not be perfected anytime soon. Don’t let the bastards walk away with an easy win.

Trump is certainly the most vindictive of all people in political life but he is not alone. Most of Trump’s picks have expressed a thirst for vengeance as well, including the failed AG nominee and Kash Patel, (I wrote about him here.)

[T]here are at least eight other Trump choices for senior government posts who have made clear their desire to get rid of, target and even prosecute the undesirables, from attorney general to secretary of state to staffers set to work in the White House.

[…]

Gaetz’s replacement as the pick for attorney general, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi (R), made similar if less-pitched comments last year on Fox News.

She said that when Trump reclaimed office, “you know what’s going to happen: The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated. Because the deep state, last — first term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows.

“But now, they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated, and the House needs to be cleaned out. Because now we know who most of them are; there’s a record of it, and we can clean house next turn. And that’s what has to happen.”

Trump’s choice for deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has called for prosecuting President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, subpoenaing Vice President Kamala Harris (for allegedly covering up Biden’s infirmities) and subpoenaing elite universities and stripping them “of every privilege” for allegedly promoting hate and bigotry.

After Trump’s criminal conviction this summer, Miller called for Republican lawmakers and prosecutors to mobilize en masse to hit back with subpoenas and investigations.

“Every facet of Republican Party politics and power has to be used right now to go toe to toe with Marxism and beat these communists,” Miller said.

Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has spoken about making civil servants want to quit their jobs and to “put them in trauma,” as well as making the attorney general and White House counsel’s office more loyal to the president.

Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has pushed for an overhaul of that department that includes firing “woke” generals.

“Oh yeah, and fire any general who has carried water for Obama and Biden’s extraconstitutional and agenda-driven transformation of our military,” he wrote in his book this year. “Clean house and start over.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, spoke recently about getting rid of 600 people at the National Institutes of Health. As a candidate for president, Kennedy talked about prosecuting former NIH official Anthony S. Fauci “if crimes were committed.”

Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in her own book last year decried the fact that Hillary Clinton wasn’t prosecuted for using a private email server and that former intelligence officials like James R. Clapper Jr. and John Brennan weren’t prosecuted for perjury. She also complained about the lack of “accountability” for intelligence officials who signed a letter linking Hunter Biden’s laptop to possible Russian disinformation. (Contrary to how some have portrayed the letter, it didn’t directly say the laptop was disinformation.)

Even the “establishment ” pick Li’l Marco:

Our current President is a demented man propped up by wicked & deranged people willing to destroy our country to remain in power

It’s time to fight 🔥with 🔥 pic.twitter.com/InzXGdWCXm

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 31, 2024

Retribution IS the Trump agenda. They all have many things they want to do, most of which Trump doesn’t really care about. But this they agree with.

Rolling Stone reports that Trump is NOT HAPPY that he’s not getting to wet his beak on some of the cash that’s been rolling in to an affiliated superpac. (Obviously, he IS wetting his beak with all the others.)

“It’s my fucking money!” the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner privately vented in October, referring to an alleged sum in the tens of millions of dollars, a source with direct knowledge of the matter tells Rolling Stone.

Trump wasn’t talking about a business deal. Rather, he’s been grumbling about money donated to a think tank his former staffers and allies founded in 2021 to “advance the America First agenda.”

For several months now, according to three people with knowledge of the situation, the former president has complained to an array of confidants and Republicans about the millions raised by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGAfied think tank launched near the start of his post-presidency. The nonprofit is populated by several former high-ranking Trump administration officials, including Larry Kudlow, Rick Perry, and Linda McMahon, and it’s led by Brooke Rollins, who served as a top White House domestic policy aide to Trump. AFPI is one of several Trump-aligned organizations and think tanks working to craft an intellectual framework for hardline policies, ranging from voter crackdowns to potentially invading Mexico.

In the ex-president’s mind, Rollins was making a “killing” off of his name, sources recount, and was stiffing Trump. “It’s not right,” the former president has groused in recent months. 

It’s illegal, of course, but you can’t blame Trump for not giving a damn about that. The FEC is toothless at best. He wants his cut.

He will continue to get his cut while he’s in office. His only real agenda now is Vengeance and Money. Anything else is secondary.

Trump is an ass Part DLXXXIV:

According to the Trump-friendly cable news channel, Trudeau’s visit to Trump’s Florida home had the Canadian playing timid defense. Trump’s threat to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, the Fox report suggested, prompted a complaint from Trudeau that such a move would “kill the Canadian economy completely.” Trump offered that maybe Canada could just become a U.S. state, which prompted Trudeau to “laugh nervously,” Fox reported.

That part’s probably accurate. When a leader who has repeatedly expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin starts coveting your nation’s land, it’s fair to be a bit worried.

Trump’s suggestion to Trudeau was that he could become governor of this new state of Canada. When someone else present suggested that this would mean adding a state that would probably vote Democratic, Trump submitted that Canada could be annexed as two states: one conservative, one liberal.

Coming from the guy who offerened to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, I wouldn’t laugh too hard. Orange Julius Caesar is feeling his oats.

He was doing his Silverback Gorilla thing of dominating Trudeau in his typically crude way but as the author Philip Bump points out ,if that were to happen it would be a big mistake:

If somehow Canada were to become part of the United States, though, the effect would not be that we tacked on a light-blue version of Montana. It would, instead, be an enormous boon to the American left.

Canada has its wingnuts but they’re not MAGA and they are much smaller in number overall.

It’s stupid. It won’t happen. But it does suggest that we can expect more embarrassing and dangerous behavior from Trump on the world stage as he swings his giant *hands* around.

There is a coup underway in South Korea and we don’t know at this writing if it’s going to succeed or not. The right wing would-be dictator President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and the parliament immediately convened and countermanded it which means it cannot hold under the law. The military and police are on the scene and nobody knows what will come next.

After the election here I was thinking about misogyny (I wonder why) and how it affects politics and today I was reminded of this. It’s a story in the BBC from a couple of years ago about the South Korean elections:

His fingers relentlessly tap the keyboard as he replies to dozens of their messages at his desk in the centre of a busy campaign office for one of South Korea’s main presidential candidates, Yoon Suk-yeol.

“Nearly 90% of men in their twenties are anti-feminist or do not support feminism,” he tells me.

South Korea has one of the worst women’s rights records in the developed world. And yet it is disgruntled young men who have been the focus of this country’s presidential election.

Many do not see feminism as a fight for equality. Instead they resent it and view it as a form of reverse discrimination, a movement to take away their jobs and their opportunities.

It is a disparaging development for the tens of thousands of young women who took to the streets of Seoul in 2018 to shout “Me Too” after several high profile criminal cases involving sexual harassment and spy camera crimes known as “molka”.

But now that cry is being drowned out by men shouting “Me First”.

The country’s gender politics is a minefield the country’s next leader will have to navigate – if they can first win the battle to get into office.

Conservative candidate Mr Yoon and his liberal rival Lee Jae-myung are neck and neck in a contest to become the next leader of Asia’s fourth largest economy.

Voters’ top concerns are skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, and stubborn youth unemployment.

Neither have any experience as legislators in the National Assembly which is a first in South Korea’s democratic history.

And neither appear to have a strong female voting base. Both parties have been accused of misogyny.

Mr Lee’s ruling Democratic Party has seen a number of high-profile sexual harassment scandals, with the mayor of Busan sent to prison for sexual assault.

Mr Yoon, of the People’s Power Party, has made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of his campaign.

The ministry largely provides family-based services, education, and social welfare for children and spends around 0.2% of the nation’s annual budget – less than 3% of which goes towards the promotion of equality for women. But Yoon knows this move will be popular among a key demographic – young men.

A survey last year by a local newspaper found that 79% of young men in South Korea feel “seriously discriminated against” because of their gender.

As I walk with Min-young to a cafe to meet some of these young men, he tells me that “feminism has been going in the wrong direction”.

He says many men he’s spoken to feel “let down”, adding that he believes it is “necessary to pacify, to convince and to appease them first”.

These men claim that they are not trying to drown out the voices of women, but simply to amplify the voices of young men.

Sound familiar?

Authoritarianism is many things but patriarchy is at the heart of it. It’s the oldest organizing principle in human history and it isn’t going quietly.

Looks like it. In fact the Senators don’t seem to even be slightly concerned about the imminent firing of Christopher Wray for no good reason. It’s all good:

As the Senate returned Monday evening from the holiday recess, Republican senators voiced little to no concern over Donald Trump’s corrupt plan to fire FBI Director Chris Wray and showed no signs of being ready to torpedo Kash Patel’s presumptive nomination as Wray’s replacement.

Even GOP senators who might be expected to sound some feeble caution – Thom Tillis (R-NC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Susan Collins (R-ME) – offered no reservations and expressed confidence in Patel’s prospects for confirmation.

Garret Graff, author of “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War” and “Watergate: A New History” wrote this in the NY Times:

To understand the full scope of the damage Mr. Patel could inflict, you have to understand how uniquely powerful and dangerous the F.B.I. can be — and why a Patel directorship would probably corrupt and bend the institution for decades, even if he served only a few years.

Choosing anyone new at this point is concerning because it is a flagrant break with tradition. There is no vacancy at the head of the F.B.I. After J. Edgar Hoover’s decades-long tenure, Congress set into law in 1976 a 10-year term for the F.B.I. director, fireable only for cause. It is meant to isolate the job from political influence, and Christopher Wray — nominated by Mr. Trump in 2017 — still has two years left to serve.

Before Mr. Trump, no incoming president had replaced the F.B.I. director on a whim; it’s a role that’s meant to exist outside the normal structure of political appointments. He now wants to fire and replace the man he selected to lead the institution because he seems to believe that Mr. Wray, a longtime Republican official, is not sufficiently loyal or willing to wield the bureau’s immense powers against Mr. Trump’s political opponents and perceived domestic enemies.

Unlike Mr. Patel, who has never been nominated for a Senate-confirmed position, every F.B.I. director in modern times has been vetted and confirmed (often repeatedly) by the Senate to another position first. Three F.B.I. directors were federal judges before being selected. Robert Mueller had been nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents and confirmed by overwhelmingly bipartisan votes in the Senate; James Comey, Barack Obama’s nominee, had been in front of the Senate twice for confirmation. Mr. Wray had been the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, a role that earned him the department’s highest award for leadership and public service.

[…]

What this independence illustrates is that the F.B.I. is not, as many MAGA loyalists believe, some liberal bastion of wokeness. No Democrat has ever served as an F.B.I. director. Even Democratic presidents appoint Republican officials to head the bureau, as Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton did in their presidencies.

[…]

Mr. Trump has been clear in what he is trying to do with a nominee like Mr. Patel: He wants to bend and break the bureau and weaponize it against those he sees as his political enemies and domestic critics. Mr. Patel said last year that he hopes to prosecute journalists.

We should take such threats seriously. Weaponizing the F.B.I. against domestic opponents doesn’t have to end with jail time. The F.B.I. can do immense damage to people’s lives even if they are never accused of a crime. In recent decades, it has mistakenly zeroed in on the wrong suspects in high-profile cases such as the Atlanta Olympics bombing, where its spotlight ruined the life of the security guard Richard Jewell, and the post-9/11 anthrax investigation that turned the biodefense researcher Dr. Steven Hatfill’s life upside down before the bureau realized it had the wrong man. Being the target of an F.B.I. investigation, even if it leads nowhere, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, upend families, end careers and lead to federal charges, like lying to a federal agent, that are all but unrelated to the original investigation.

He says that the FBI can survive Patel but the damage will be long lasting. I’m not so sure it will survive. We are losing out grip on what is considered acceptable and I’m not sure we will ever get it back.

But it appears we are going to see it tested. Republican Senators seem to be fine with it.

🚨🚨🚨Last night, Sen. Mike Lee wrote a blueprint for destroying Social Security. Lee’s thread was quickly amplified by Elon Musk, who Donald Trump has put in charge of slashing our earned benefits.This is a declaration of war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public.

— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) 2024-12-03T14:47:44.926Z

Here is that thread:

 1. Of all the deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people, one of them—the Social Security Act—gets far too little attention. Buckle up because this is a wild ride.

2. In 1935, the American people were sold a bill of goods. They were told, “Pay into this system, and it’ll be YOUR money for retirement.” Sounds great, right?

3. But here’s where it gets juicy, in a really ugly way. Two years later, when the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, the government did a complete 180.

4. The government—through Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson—argued in essence, “Oh no, this isn’t YOUR money at all. This is a TAX, and we can do whatever we want with it.” Classic bait and switch.

5. Let’s not forget the ruling in Helvering v. Davis, where the Supreme Court upheld the Social Security Act by embracing the government’s argument / admission that what people pay into Social Security is tax revenue—available to be used as Congress may direct—and not at all money belonging to those who paid it.

6. So, to summarize: the proponents of the Social Security Act told American workers that what they paid into the system would remain *their* money, not the government’s—to get Congress to pass it—and then told the courts the exact opposite when defending the Act’s constitutionality. The Supreme Court accepted the government’s argument, to the great detriment of the American people.

7. Now, let’s talk about what happens to “your money” once it’s in the government’s hands. Spoiler alert: it’s not managed like your IRA or 401(k). 

8. First of all, this money doesn’t sit in a nice, individual account with your name on it. No, it goes into a huge account called the “Social Security Trust Fund.” 

9. But here’s the kicker—the government routinely raids this fund. Yes, you heard that right. They take “your money” and use it for whatever the current Congress deems “necessary.” 

10. Every few years, there’s talk in Congress about “saving Social Security.” I’ve introduced and cosponsored a number of measures over the years that would fix it. But most in Congress show little desire to fix it, and are instead constantly looking for ways to “borrow” from it—with no plan to put it back. 

11. And the returns? Forget about compound interest or stock market gains. Your “investment” in Social Security can give you a return lower than inflation. 

12. If you had put the same amount into literally ANYTHING else—a mutual fund, real estate, even a savings account—you’d be better off by the time you reached retirement age, even if the government kept some of it! 

13. Do the math: with Social Security, you’re looking at a return that’s pathetic compared to market averages. It’s not even an investment; it’s a tax. 

14. And let’s talk about how this system is set up to fail. The demographic shift? More retirees, fewer workers. It’s almost fair to compare it to a Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors. 

15. Every dollar you pay into Social Security, only to see it gobbled up by the government itself, is a dollar you can’t invest in your own future. It’s government dependency at its worst. 

16. Remember, this isn’t just about retirement. It’s about independence, about controlling your own destiny. With Social Security, you control nothing. 

17. The government promises you security but gives you dependency. It promises ownership but gives you a tax receipt. 

18. And don’t get me started on the management. The Social Security Administration is a bureaucratic behemoth, not exactly known for its efficiency or innovation. 

19. If you think your money is safe there, you’re in for a rude awakening. The mismanagement, the waste, the deception—it’s all on display. 

20. So, what’s the solution? We need real, genuine reform. Within the Social Security system, Americans should be able to invest in their own future, and not be shackled by the worst parts of this outdated, mismanaged system. 

21. It’s time we acknowledge the truth: Social Security as it now exists isn’t a retirement plan; it’s a tax plan with retirement benefits as an afterthought. 

22. We were sold a dream, but received a nightmare. It’s time for a wake-up call. We need real reform. 

23. It’s time for Americans to know the true history of the Social Security Act. The more people learn the truth, the more they’ll start demanding answers, options, and real reform from Congress. Please help spread the word. 

24. The history of the Social Security Act—which sadly must include the deceptive manner in which it was sold to the American people—is yet another reason why America’s century-long era of progressive government must be brought to a close.

I’m not going to take the time to rebut all that. I’m sure you know it’s bullshit and that Social Security is a social insurance plan which is paid for the way all such programs are paid for.

But go ahead Elon. Try it.

Would you buy a used covert operation from this man?

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, flagged this on the hellsite. (Yes, I still monitor.):

A self-described “deep state” wrecking ball, Kash Patel is a favorite of Trump’s MAGA base. However, during the first Trump administration, Patel’s actions revealed him as a bombastic fool who put SEAL Team Six in harm’s way through his ineptitude. open.substack.com/pub/theicema…

— Seth Hettena (@hettena.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T16:08:46.292Z

Kash Patel’s knees are scabbed from making obeisance to Donald Trump. And he’s got a fanatic’s zeal (check the eyes) for punishing Trump’s enemies. Which is why Trump wants to make him director of the FBI next year.

Hettena points out at SpyTalk just how cavalierly Kash Patel operates in the security sphere:

On October 30, 2020, President Trump signed off on a mission to have SEAL Team Six rescue Philip Walton, a 27-year-old American who gunmen had abducted from his farm in the West African nation of Niger, near the border with Nigeria. The kidnappers had hustled Walton across the border to Nigeria and were demanding a $1 million ransom.

In their book Only I Can Fix It, journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported that the plan called for the SEALs to parachute into northern Nigeria and move three miles on foot to reach the compound where Walton was being held.

Overflying Nigeria required permission from thge Nigerian government. I know you are surprised that the Trump administration bothered. But the Pentagon thought it best not to violate another country’s sovereignty without asking.

Patel told Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “got the airspace cleared.”

Um, no. Pompeo later told Esper that he’d never spoken with Patel.

A few hours later, the Pentagon learned that Patel’s information was — what? — inaccurate. By this point, the SEALS were minutes away from crossing into Nigerian airspace. The aircraft circled for an hour while State obtained the necessary clearances.

The mission proceded successfully with no SEAL injuries.

But the Pentagon was still furious at Patel. Tony Tata, the Pentagon official to whom Patel had given the green light, confronted Patel in a rage.

“You could’ve gotten these guys killed!” Tata shouted at Patel, according to a report in The Atlantic. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Patel’s response was: “If nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares?”

Yes, put that man in charge of a federal law enforcement agency and his agent’s lives.