I was on the radio last week with Michaelangelo Signorelli and Joe Sudbay last week and Joe said something that really resonated with me. Speaking of the Iran war, he said that it felt to him like the early days of COVID when we knew that something bad was happening but had no idea what was going to happen. It’s a feeling of free-floating anxiety mainly caused by the fact that we know Donald Trump is a clown and his administration is filled with incompetent toadies.
That’s exactly how I feel right now. We simply have no way of knowing how this thing is going to go. We just have to hope that Trump stays lucky. Right now it doesn’t look promising.
President Donald Trump began his second term with a promise to cut “billions and billions of dollars” in government spending empowering Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate programs and fire workers it deemed wasteful.
One year later, cuts to programs and personnel at federal agencies that had been declared unneeded mere months ago have hampered the US government’s abilities to prepare for domestic emergencies; monitor terror threats; guard against cyber-attacks; broadcast US information into Iran; and quickly help US citizens stranded abroad, current and former government officials told CNN.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans have long criticized the way that DOGE and the Trump administration slashed government programs, warning it harmed the US domestically and abroad. Now the cuts, which continued even after Musk left government last spring, are again being scrutinized as US strikes on Iran have sparked a war that’s spilled out across the Middle East.
I’m reminded of the nurses and doctors wearing garbage bags for PPE. And Trump saying “slow the testing down, please…”
And this:
