A mystery disease in Congo has killed over 50 people—half within 48 hours of getting sick and it’s spreading rapidly.
We don’t need no stinking NIH or CDC or WHO. We’re done with all that. Don’t worry, Donald Trump and Bobby Jr will lead us through it. They’re geniuses. Eat some organic grapes and drink a Diet Coke. You’ll be fine.
A case in point, his continued insistence that tariffs are not paid for by a country’s own businesses and consumers.
Reporter: Americans who are concerned about higher prices believe, as most people do, that tariffs are paid by consumers and importers when they import things into this country.
Trump: ….It's a myth that's put out there by foreign countries that really don't like paying… pic.twitter.com/uWGK9QevWq
It’s a lot. One of the main questions I get about what’s going on is a simple, “why are they doing this?” It seems inexplicable that anyone would think such a chaotic, disorganized, slipshod assault on necessary government functions makes sense in a complex world in which millions of lives are dependent upon them working. There is nobody in America, even the most fervent Trump voters, who could have expected that he would essentially turn the government over to Elon Musk and allow him to take it apart with a chainsaw in the first months of his presidency. So why are they doing it?
Trump’s campaign was based upon restoration. He was going to finish the job he started before the Democrats rigged the election and stole the White House from him. His issues weren’t much different than the first time he ran. Immigration topped the list, tariffs were going to solve every economic problem, foreigners were going to pay up and he was going to end whatever the fever swamp culture war issue of the day happened to be, in this case “DEI” and transgender people. He said he’d bring costs down with “drill, baby, drill” and would initiate the usual GOP roll back of regulations and tax cuts. And he somehow convinced millions of Americans that they had been rich when he was president before and vowed to make them prosperous and happy once more.
Many of us were aware that there was another agenda, a very detailed one, called Project 2025, which Trump said he hadn’t read and disavowed. I think we knew that it was likely going to be at least attempted because many of the people involved were Trump insiders but it was unclear whether they’d be able to accomplish their goals especially since Trump didn’t seem particularly interested in massively cutting government. Whenever he was asked about the deficit or downsizing government services, with a few exceptions, he waved it away because he was going to bring in so much money with the tariffs a that it would all be taken care of. He believed that voters weren’t all that interested in details and he was right.
Yes, he originally wanted to become president again to stay out of jail but the Supreme Court took care of that last summer so it became a moot point. And of course he wants to accumulate as much money as possible and is quite successful at doing that as president. So far, he’s shown that he no longer cares at all about the appearance of corruption and is openly trading in Crypto schemes and foreign investment partnerships as president. So it’s not making money that’s making him do what he is doing and it certainly isn’t ideology because he has none. No, the motive that is driving him to do everything he’s doing is simple: vengeance.
That was the one issue that Trump never failed to bring up on the campaign trail and it’s the one, I believe, that motivates everything he is doing today. I’ve written about his philosophy of retribution extensively over the years because he’s never tried to hide it and it clearly is one of the single greatest clues to his character. But it’s now gone far beyond his desire to hurt individuals — he’s now intent upon seeking revenge against the country itself, maybe even the whole world.
Trump is seething with anger and resentment at having been officially exposed as a sexual predator, a fraud, a coup plotter and a thief. He’s still upset about the Russia Investigation, which he even brought up again on Thursday explaining that he and Vladimir Putin were bonded over it which is why he feels he can trust him. Imagine the fury and frustration he feels at people knowing, no matter how much he says otherwise, that he lost the 2020 election and couldn’t admit it. The damage to his fragile psyche is overwhelming and all he wants now is to wreak revenge on his enemies.
And this goes beyond his well-known desire to go after the Department of Justice and the FBI. This week he signed an executive order pulling security clearances from a private law firm that is representing former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. He couldn’t be more clear about his motives. Note the steely ire in his voice as he talks about how he’s been “targeted.”
President Trump to a legacy media reporter on the order suspending security clearances for employees who engaged in lawfare with Jack Smith:
“I've been targeted for four years… I was the target of corrupt politicians for four years. Don't talk to me about targeting.” pic.twitter.com/Zzc6IfKTJG
For example, he’s angry at the leaders of the military for refusing to carry out his illegal and unprincipled orders so he installed a gadfly with no respect for them or military traditions as the Defense Secretary and he’s fired anyone who would attempt to thwart him in the future. He doesn’t like Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau because he’s young and good looking so he’s pushing the inane idea of annexing his country as the 51st state. He’s abandoning Ukraine, which he irrationally hates, probably because he associates it with his humiliating first impeachment.
Here he says that the EU was formed to screw the United States so he’s going to screw them back with huge tariffs. But in reality on some level he knows that he’s in over his head and that they know it too.
Even his allowing the violent, misogynist brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate back into the country is a metaphorical slap in the face to all the women who spoke up about his assaults, Stormy Daniels and the enduring humiliation of being caught on that Access Hollywood tape as a predatory creep.
Finally, consider that Elon Musk’s wrecking crew is really a way of punishing America for failing to love him the way he believes he should be loved — unambiguously and unanimously. If his own MAGA supporters have to pay as well, that’s their own fault for not working harder on his behalf.
Donald Trump is 78 years old and he’s been frustrated his whole life that he couldn’t ever seem to get the respect he believed he deserved. Now, having been restored to this position of power with no one to stop him, he’s settling accounts.
Think you’ve seen everything? N.C. Republicans propose that future voter registration drives be conducted with sample forms — facsimiles, not official forms. The sample forms shall be “for informational purposes only and shall not provide spaces for an individual to fill in the individual’s personal information.” So, Republicans would like to see voter registration drives that don’t actually register voters, just provide information on how someone might register on their own.
Anyone who uses a genuine form in their voter registration drive shall be a Class 2 misdemeanor under proposed House Bill 127.
Of course, there is a lot of heat coming down over N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin’s Trumpish attempt to steal a state Supreme Court seat. (Did I mention that Griffin’s accomplices in this election-stealing are Troy Shelton, Craig Schauer & Mike Dowling of the Dowling Firm, and Phil Thomas of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman?) So maybe Republicans in the legislature simply drafted HB 127 as an outrage-generating distraction.
Nah.
David Pepper calls states like North Carolina “Laboratories of Autocracy.” But I might argue that the Tar Heel State is not just “First in Flight” but “First in Autocracy.” It’s said that much of U.S. social and technological innovation starts in California and works its way east. Not when it comes to election fuckery.
Did I mention that Cleta Mitchell lives in North Carolina?
A grassroots movement is calling on all Americans to abstain from shopping with major retailers — including Amazon — tomorrow, February 28, as part of an “economic blackout.”
The purpose is to send a clear message: We have the power. We don’t have to accept corporate monopolies. We don’t have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics.
We don’t have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don’t have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs.
We don’t have to reward corporations that have abandoned their DEI policies to align themselves with Trump’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic agenda.
We have choices.
I attended the local Indivisible’s “Here We Go!” 2025 Kickoff meeting last night. Had to park two blocks away. It looked like this. Standing room only and a wait to get in. May your local resistance efforts be as well-attended. Today’s blackout was on the agenda.
Oscar-winner Gene Hackman, his wife and one of their dogs were apparently dead for some time before a maintenance worker discovered their bodies at the couple’s Santa Fe home, investigators said.
Hackman, 95, was found dead Wednesday in a mudroom, and his 65-year-old wife, Betsy Arakawa, was found in a bathroom next to a space heater, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office detectives wrote in a search warrant affidavit. There was an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on a countertop near Arakawa.
Denise Avila, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said there was no indication they had been shot or had any wounds. […]
“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa,” his daughters and granddaughter said in a statement Thursday. “We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss.”
Having grown up watching his movies (he appeared in over 70 feature films between 1961 and his 2004 retirement from acting), I will miss him sorely as well. As will many others:
Gene Hackman has died. I met him on my first picture, “Hawaii” and worked with him again on “Get Shorty”. Both times were unforgettable for me, because he was the real thing; you never caught him acting. He left us a staggering body of work. Thank you, Mr. Hackman, and rest in peace.
Damn straight…you never caught him acting. Like all of the greatest actors, he knew how to listen. And how to react. Musician Billy Bragg commented on Bluesky that Hackman was “a fabulously flawed Everyman” onscreen. I concur. This morning, Digby and I were commiserating via text, and she described him as a “character actor leading man” (which I thought was a great way to put it), adding that his film technique was “so subtle and intimate”.
A good listener, a great re-actor, a fabulously flawed Everyman, subtle and intimate…all these attributes are reflected in 7 of my favorite Hackman performances (in alphabetical order).
All Night Long – This quirky, underrated romantic comedy from Belgian director Jean-Claude Tramont has been a personal favorite of mine since I first stumbled across it on late-night TV back in the mid-80s (with a million commercials).
Reminiscent of Michael Winner’s 1967 social satire I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name, the film opens with a disenchanted executive (Gene Hackman) telling his boss to shove it, which sets the tone for the mid-life crisis that ensues.
Along the way, Hackman accepts a demotion offered by upper management in lieu of termination (night manager at one of the company’s drug stores), has an affair with his neighbor’s eccentric wife (an uncharacteristically low-key Barbra Streisand) who has been fooling around with his teenage son (Dennis Quaid), says yes to a divorce from his wife (Dianne Ladd) and decides to become an inventor (I told you it was quirky).
Marred slightly by some incongruous slapstick, but well-salvaged by W.D. Richter’s drolly amusing screenplay. Hackman is wonderful as always, and I think the scene where Streisand sings a song horrendously off-key (while accompanying herself on the organ) is the funniest thing she’s ever done in a film. Despite Hackman and Streisand’s star power, the movie was curiously ignored when it was initially released.
Bonnie and Clyde – The gangster movie meets the art house in this 1967 offering from director Arthur Penn. There is much more to this influential masterpiece than the oft-referenced operatic crescendo of violent death in the closing frames; particularly of note was the ingenious way its attractive antiheroes were posited to appeal to the counterculture zeitgeist of the 1960s, even though the film was ostensibly a period piece. The real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were nowhere near as charismatic as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty…but we don’t care, do we? The outstanding cast includes Hackman (memorable as Clyde’s brother Buck), Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and Gene Wilder (his film debut).
The Conversation – Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this 1974 thriller features Hackman leading a fine cast as a free-lance surveillance expert who begins to obsess that a conversation he captured between a man and a woman in San Francisco’s Union Square for one of his clients is going to directly lead to the untimely deaths of his subjects.
Although the story is essentially an intimate character study, set against a backdrop of corporate intrigue, the dark atmosphere of paranoia, mistrust and betrayal that permeates the film mirrors the political climate of the era (particularly in regards to its timely proximity to the breaking of the Watergate scandal).
24 years later Hackman played a similar character in Tony Scott’s 1998 political thriller Enemy of the State. Some have postulated “he” is the same character (you’ve gotta love the fact that there’s a conspiracy theory about a fictional character). I don’t see that myself; although there is obvious homage with a brief shot of a photograph of Hackman’s character in his younger days that is actually a production still from (wait for it) …The Conversation!
Downhill Racer – This underrated 1969 gem from director Michael Ritchie examines the tightly knit and highly competitive world of Olympic downhill skiing. Robert Redford is cast against type, and consequently delivers one of his more interesting performances as a talented but arrogant athlete who joins up with the U.S. Olympic ski team. Hackman is outstanding as the coach who finds himself at loggerheads with Redford’s contrariety. Ritchie’s debut film has a verite feel that lends the story a realistic edge. James Salter adapted the screenplay from Oakley Hall’s novel The Downhill Racers.
The French Connection – I have probably seen this film 25 times; if I happen to stumble across it while channel-surfing, I will inevitably get sucked in for a taste of William Friedkin’s masterful direction, Ernest Tidyman’s crackling dialog (adapted from Robin Moore’s book), Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider’s indelible performances, or a jolt of adrenaline:
Gerald B. Greenburg picked up a well-deserved Oscar for that brilliant editing. Statues were also handed out to Friedkin for Best Director, producer Philip D’Antoni for Best Picture, Hackman for Best Actor (Scheider was nominated, but did not win for Best Supporting Actor), and Tidyman for Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
It’s easy to see how Hackman’s work here put him on the map; his portrayal of “Popeye” Doyle is a wonder to behold. Talk about a “fabulously flawed Everyman” …he is slovenly and bereft of social skills, but on the job, a force to be reckoned with; driven, focused and relentless in his desire to catch the bad guys. Doyle’s obsession with his quarry “the Frenchman” (Fernando Rey) becomes his raison d’etre; all else falls by the wayside.
Hackman plays him as a working-class hero of a sort. The criminal he seeks to take down is living high off his ill-begotten gains; cleverly elusive, yet so confident in his abilities to cover his tracks he seems to take perverse pleasure in taunting his pursuer. This is film noir as class warfare. Or …this could just be a well-made cops and robbers flick with cool chase scenes.
Night Moves– Set in Los Angeles and the sultry Florida Keys, Arthur Penn’s 1975 sleeper stars Hackman as a world-weary private investigator with a failing marriage, who becomes enmeshed in a case involving battling ex-spouses, which soon slides into incest, smuggling and murder. As always, Hackman’s character work is top-notch. Also with Jennifer Warren (in a knockout, Oscar-worthy performance), Susan Clark, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, James Woods and Melanie Griffith (her first credited role). Alan Sharp’s intelligent, multi-layered screenplay parallels the complexity of the P.I.’s case with ruminations on the equally byzantine mystery as to why human relationships, more often than not, almost seem engineered to fail.
Prime Cut – This spare and offbeat 1972 “heartland noir” from director Michael Ritchie (with a tight screenplay by Robert Dillon) features one of my favorite Lee Marvin performances. He’s a cleaner for an Irish mob out of Chicago who is sent to collect an overdue payment from a venal livestock rancher (Gene Hackman) with the unlikely moniker of “Mary Ann”.
In addition to overseeing his meat packing plant (where the odd debt collector ends up as sausage filler), Mary Ann maintains a (literal) stable of naked, heavily sedated young women for auction. He protects his spread with a small army of disturbingly uber-Aryan young men who look like they were cloned in a secret Nazi lab.
It gets weirder, yet the film is strangely endearing; perhaps due to its blend of pulpy thrills, dark comedy and ironic detachment. It’s fun watching Hackman and Marvin go mano a mano; and seeing Sissy Spacek in her film debut. Also with Gregory Walcott (a hoot as Mary Ann’s oafish, psychotic brother) and Angel Tompkins. Gene Polito’s cinematography is top-flight.
Young Frankenstein – Writer-director Mel Brooks’ 1974 film transgresses the limitations of the “spoof” genre to create something wholly original. Brooks goofs on elements from James Whale’s original 1931 version of Frankenstein, his 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, and Rowland V. Lee’s 1939 spinoff, Son of Frankenstein.
Gene Wilder heads a marvelous cast as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, the grandson of the “infamous” mad scientist who liked to play around with dead things. Despite his propensity for distancing himself from that legacy, a notice of inheritance precipitates a visit to the family estate in Transylvania, where the discovery of his grandfather’s “secret” laboratory awakens his dark side.
Wilder is quite funny (as always), but he plays it relatively straight, making a perfect foil for the comedic juggernaut of Madeline Khan, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman (“Blucher!”), Terri Garr and Kenneth Mars, who are all at the top of their game. The scene featuring a non-billed Hackman (as an old blind hermit) is a classic (“My…you must have been the biggest one in your class!”).
This is also Brooks’ most technically accomplished film; the meticulous replication of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory (utilizing props from the 1931 original), Gerald Hirschfeld’s gorgeous B & W photography and Dale Hennesy’s production design all combine to create an effective (and affectionate) homage to the heyday of Universal monster movies.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” — Arendt
Forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand. — Deepthroat, “All The President’s Men”
Air traffic controllers are required by law to retire at 56. It is a high-stress, high-intensity job that requires intense focus. The retirement rules are there to keep us all safe. But sure, let’s put some retired, elderly air traffic controllers whose skills are obviously rusty back on the job.
By the way, this has been put on hold and Musk has already fired hundreds of FAA support staff that helps the ATCs do their job efficiently. Of course.
Meanwhile, Kash Patel is getting right to work:
According to a Thursday report from ABC News, Patel wants to partner with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts league to help up the fitness standards of FBI agents. Purely coincidentally, the UFC is headed by pro-Trump businessman Dana White, who regularly appeared alongside the president at campaign events, donated heavily to the president’s reelection effort, and even spoke alongside him at his Election Night acceptance speech. Again. It’s coincidental.
I guess if that’s the worst most useless thing he’s doing we can breath a sigh of relief.
How about this?
The Trump administration touted a nearly $1 billion plan Wednesday to combat the spread of avian flu and mitigate skyrocketing egg prices as the outbreak rips through poultry flocks across the United States.
But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors.
Aaaand:
White House official threatens to redraw Canadian border
A top White House official has threatened to redraw the Canadian border amid Donald Trump’s ambition to turn the country in America’s “51st state”.
Peter Navarro, one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, is pushing US negotiators to discuss reworking the border with their Canadian counterparts, The Telegraph can reveal. “Navarro recommended revising the Canada-US border, which is just crazy and dangerous,” a source close to negotiations told The Telegraph.
Tip o’ the iceberg. People are now dying overseas and soon will be here, possibly in large numbers. But all across the board we’re seeing those quotes being illustrated in vivid, living color.
According to Philip Bump the data shows that this idea that a bunch of young, white Andrew Tate/ Joe Rogan dudes were the key to Trump’s victory in November is simply not correct. In a way, its something much more disturbing:
YouGov has been tracking Trump’s favorability since early 2016 as part of the work it does for the Economist. The polling firm shared quarterly averages of the president’s numbers since then. What we see is that there has been an upward trend of support among younger U.S. citizens, while the views of older Americans have remained fairly flat.
The increase since early 2021 has been higher among young men than women (18 points vs. 11 points) but that is again a function of race. White men under 30 have gotten three points more favorable to Trump than White women in that age range. Non-White men now view Trump 29 points more favorably, a jump that’s more than 20 points bigger than the increase among non-White women.
He points out that the younger generation is much less white in general which means that these shifts have a larger effect o the overall population of young people than the rest of us but the partisan shift is interesting as well, particularly when it comes to gender:
Since 2016, White men under the age of 30 have gotten 17 points more Republican on net while young White women have stayed about the same. The gap in partisan identity among young White men peaked in 2021 and has since declined, landing just above where it was in 2003.
The shift among young non-White men has been much larger — more than 30 points since 2016. That’s true of both those under 30 and those aged 30 to 44. The shift among younger non-White women has been 25 points on net in favor of the Republican Party since 2016.
Younger non-White Americans, though, remain much less Republican than younger White Americans. We’re describing the change, not the end point. In the 2024 Gallup data, about 58 percent of young White men said they were Republican or Republican-leaning. Among young non-White men, 39 percent did. Among young non-White women, that figure fell to 28 percent.
Ok, that’s good. But why the shift among non-white young people toward Trump in any case? It’s not a gender gap apparently and it’s not about issues:
If we look at policy views — rather than ones centered on politics — the argument that there’s been a significant divergence on gender erodes further.
[…]
“The bottom line is we don’t see a ton of evidence of a rightward shift among 18-29 year olds in this data,” Schaffner said in an email. “Perhaps that’s occurring on other issues that we aren’t capturing here, but even when you look at questions about racial attitudes and sexism there still isn’t anything too dramatic.”
The same holds for recent polling from The Post. On a question about Trump’s efforts to exceed his authority since returning to office, young men are less likely than men overall to say that he was acting within his authority, and the gap between men and women under the age of 30 was lower than any group of respondents aged 40 or over.
[…]
That non-White Americans (and, as the VoteCast and Edison exit polls suggest, Hispanics in particular) shifted to the right in the Trump era is not new. What the data presented above suggests is that the decline in racial polarization explains more of the shift among younger people than does gender.
I find that incredibly depressing and I have no explanation for it. These particular kids aren’t voting like their parents which I guess may be understandable but why in the world are they so enamored of Trump? They don’t agree with him and it doesn’t seem to be about young men going for the macho party or the macho dude. Even the younger Black and Latino women have moved toward him. Is it just because they, like many of their white counterparts, now see him as normal and are just going along for the ride? I don’t get it.
Even if one of his minions actually wrote that under his name, he knows about it because the media here and all over the world picked it up. It was incredibly provocative and caused a huge amount of consternation. His smug look says it all.
It has apparently been decided that the toddler in chief has to be allowed to swing his very tiny hands around so they’ve come up with a framework for a”deal” that will put the revenue from the extracted rare earth minerals into some kind of an investment fund to be shared between the two countries. There are no details and it really adds up to nothing at least at the moment. Trump will say that he won’t offer any security guarantees and treat Zelensky like shit in the meeting if he wants to while loudly proclaiming that he’s the greatest deal maker the world has ever known.
In the end it adds up to nothing new. We knew that when Trump won he would leave Ukraine out to dry and give Russia whatever it wanted and that’s basically what’s happening. But in order to keep him from making things even worse everyone has to pretend that he’s a genius and a God so here we are.
I will say that Trump is so driven by malice at this point that I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulls something worse to stab Ukraine, and specifically Zelensky, in the back before it’s all done. I don’t think he’s done with them yet.
As they deport innocent children, they invite psychopaths back into the country:
Self-proclaimed misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been allowed to leave Romania on a private jet bound for the U.S. despite facing rape and human trafficking charges that are still pending, CBS News’ partner network BBC News and the French news agency AFP reported Thursday. Citing sources in Romania, the outlets said the Tates, who are dual U.S.-British nationals, were flying to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Prosecutors in Romania have alleged for years that Andrew, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, set up a criminal enterprise in the country and in Britain in 2021, along with two women, and used it to sexually exploit multiple people.
As you can see by that video, Andrew Tate is a psychopath who has made his name as a violent misogynist. Trump has intervened to bring him home:
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the Trump administration was pushing Romanian authorities to return the Tate brothers’ U.S. passports and allow them to leave the country.
Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told the Euronews outlet recently that Mr. Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell had raised the case with him at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, but denied that he was pressured.
Even some Republicans are appalled:
Governor Ron DeSantis says the Tate brothers aren’t welcome in the state, and his attorney general is exploring legal options:
You may recall, he has a particular advocate in the Trump inner circle:
Trump counselor Alina Habba to Andrew Tate: “Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan” (Andrew Tate is facing trial in Romania for rape and human trafficking.) pic.twitter.com/jtKOmt7xPS
Trump is so insane with anger and resentment that he’s going out of his way to show that there are no limits to his depravity as he seeks his revenge. This one’s for E. Jean Carroll and the other women who accused him. It’s one big fuck you to all of them.
Update: This from Tristan Tate right after the election says it all:
People have been convinced that “woke” is the big problem in our culture. Really???
