Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Trump skipped a ceremony for fallen soldiers to play golf but don't forget the time Biden did something worse: attended the same ceremony and looked at his watch pic.twitter.com/1uI5sUvAUb

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 4, 2025

Yes, Trump went to a golf event at his club in Florida rather than attend the dignified transfer ceremony of the soldiers who died in Lithuania last week. But then they’re just a bunch of suckers and losers so what would we expect?

This is a minor atrocity by comparison to all the major atrocities of the last week but I just had to note it. All the years we’ve had to put up with the right waving the flag and “love it or leave it” and “these colors don’t run” and today they worship a man who could barely even be bothered to mention dead soldiers much less attend the ceremony to receive them back to the United States.

This isn’t a new thing for him. Recall in the first term:

 In the world of President Donald Trump, he has paid his respects to “many, many” returning soldiers killed in the line of duty, with daughter and top presidential aide Ivanka Trump adding that “each time” she has stood by his side at one of these ceremonies, it has hardened his resolve to bring troops home.

In the real world, Trump has traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware exactly four times ― fewer than half as many times as his vice president ― and avoided going at all for nearly two years after getting berated for his incompetence by the father of a slain Navy SEAL, according to a former White House aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bill Owens, the father of William “Ryan” Owens, refused to shake Trump’s hand at that Feb. 1, 2017, encounter, the aide said, and then told Trump that he was responsible for his son’s death for approving the disastrous raid in Yemen without bothering to understand the risks.

“He refused to go back for two years, he was so rattled,” the aide said, adding that the main reason Trump had approved the raid just five days after taking office was that predecessor Barack Obama had refused to do so.

What’s more, Trump made the decision at a social dinner that included his son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, and then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon, rather than his National Security Council staff.

That’s how he rolls. And he’s getting worse.

He went to jail for Trump and that’s all that matters

They gave Trump a menu of tariffs to choose from and he picked his good buddy Pete’s special recipe:

Not long after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration’s economic staff went to work on a daunting task: determining tariff rates for dozens of countries to fulfill the president’s campaign pledge of imposing “reciprocal” trade barriers.

After weeks of work, aides from several government agencies produced a menu of options meant to account for a wide range of trading practices, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Instead, Trump personally selected a formula that was based on two simple variables — the trade deficit with each country and the total value of its U.S. exports, said two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount internal talks. While precisely who proposed that option remains unclear, it bears some striking similarities to a methodology published during Trump’s first administration by Peter Navarro, now the president’s hard-charging economic adviser. After its debut in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, the crude math drew mockery from economists as Trump’s new global trade war prompted a sharp drop in markets.

Look, it could have been worse. He could have asked Laura Loomer to pick some numbers. Maybe Kanye West or Libs of TikTok.

Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined to listen to a single voice — his own — to secure what he views as his political legacy.

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

Speaking of a bad story:

4000 PTS DROP IN TWO DAYS.

$6 TRILLION GONE IN 48 HOURS

And he doesn’t give a fuck.

(Don’t you have somewhere to be?)

Donald Trump had a couple of mentors growing up. His father, Fred, taught him how to evade taxes. Attorney Roy Cohn taught him how to be an apex predator. Rev. Norman Vincent Peale taught young Donald to worship himself and “The Power of Positive Thinking” (1952). Peale officiated at Trump’s first wedding.

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends & Influence People” (1936) seems not to be a Trump ur-text. Winning friends is not a self-loving, tax-cheating predator’s goal.

The Atlantic‘s Stephanie Bai examines how quickly Canadians unified to oppose a neighbor it once called friend until Donald Trump’s second term. They seem to have found their footing faster than Trump opponents south of the 49th parallel:

On the other side of the border, Americans who oppose Trump have struggled to come up with a unified response to his presidency. In part because of the speed and scale of his directives, it’s been hard to develop a protest message or strategy that is as ubiquitous as the “Buy Canadian” movement. Since January 22, the number of street protests in the U.S. has more than doubled compared with the same period at the start of Trump’s first presidency—but they also tend to be smaller in scale, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium. Jeremy Pressman, a co-director of the organization, told me that disorientation could be a factor affecting protests. Since taking office, Trump has signed off on a flurry of actions that empower ICE to detain and deport people without due process, pave the way for Elon Musk’s shadow presidency, gut the federal government, and grant mass pardons for January 6ers (while also floating the idea of compensating them for their prison time). What should the next protest focus on when so much of American life is under attack?

But bigger protests are not necessarily better, especially when the man living inside the White House’s perimeter fence would like nothing better than to turn a protest that gridlocks D.C. into a live-fire exercise for federal troops. (His SecDef seems open to it.) Thousands of regular, smaller actions across the country may bring neighbors’ defiance closer to Joe Average in Jefferson City, Missouri. They might send a signal that this is what “people like me” do without making protesters easy targets.

Protesting conditions in the U.S. are more fraught than they are in Canada:

Protesters also face an environment especially hostile to dissent. When Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist on a green card, was arrested in New York last month, the government did not provide evidence of illegal activity. And when Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student who co-authored an op-ed urging her university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” had her visa revoked without her knowledge and was confronted by six masked federal agents last week, the Department of Homeland Security stated vaguely that she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Their stories are a warning from the Trump administration: Defiance can come at a steep price.

So be careful out there at today’s National Day of Action. Maybe leave your phone at home or turn it off before arriving. Review Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense. Be aware of your surroundings.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5 (TODAY)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Could it be partisan?

Yes, they did:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina appeals court sided Friday with the trailing Republican candidate in an extremely close state Supreme Court election, a ruling that could flip the result of the nation’s only 2024 race that is still undecided.

In a 2-1 decision with registered Republican judges composing the majority, a panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals ruled that ballots — likely tens of thousands of them — were wrongly allowed in the tally. But the ruling, if upheld, would give most of those voters a three-week window to provide additional information for their choices to count, or see the ballots get removed.

The disputed ballots are believed to favor Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs, who, after two recounts, held a 734-vote lead over Republican Jefferson Griffin in their race, which saw over 5.5 million ballots cast.

I’m busy with multiple projects (one related to this case), so I haven’t fully digested this ruling. But let’s just look at a small piece of the majority opinion (pg. 36):

Finally, as to the “Never Residents” voters, we conclude these purported voters
are not eligible to vote in North Carolina, non-federal elections, and the votes cast by
these purported voters are not to be included in the final count in the 2024 election
for Seat 6.

The judges base that conclusion on cases referencing an independent voter’s (over 18) intent (or not) to return to N.C. Thus, they argue, someone over 18 who cannot prove intent to reserve an address in N.C. is not eligible to claim N.C. as a voting residence or to vote in its state elections. “Residency for an absent, non-dependent, and emancipated adult is not inherited,” they majority writes. But here are the statutes they ignored:

§ 163-258.2. Definitions.
As used in this Article:
(1) “Covered voter” means any of the following:

e. An overseas voter who was born outside the United States, is not described in sub-subdivision c. or d. of this subdivision, and, except for a State residency requirement, otherwise satisfies this State’s voter eligibility requirements, if:

1. The last place where a parent or legal guardian of the voter was, or under this Article would have been, eligible to vote before leaving the United States is within this State; and
2. The voter has not previously registered to vote in any other state.

§ 163‑258.3. Elections covered.

The voting procedures in this Article apply to all of the following:
(1) A primary, general, or special election for federal or State office.

These statute sections protect voters wanting to exercise their rights from overseas. That assumes they are citizens over 18 (and independent if they choose). I’m not a lawyer, but don’t see anything in there about “emancipated” adults affirmatively establishing “a domicile of choice and having no intent to return to North Carolina.” But the court majority thinks that matters despite the black-letter law because black-letter law here is inconvenient. That’s some fine interpretatin’. (The NC statute mirrors the federal (UOCAVA law meant to guarantee the vote to Americans born outside the country but who never lived here.)

Judge Toby Hampson, the Democrat, offers a blistering dissenting opinion.

Why should you care? Because the GOP means to export this approach to overturning elections Republicans lose to your state, that’s why.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5 (TODAY)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Puppies, kittens and a good stiff drink. I have never needed it more.

And make it a double

IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

“The most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”

Lutnick screws the pooch again

For once in his life, Lutnick is right – if factories come back to the U.S., they will be highly automated and will create relatively few good-paying jobs. Which means lots of people will be disappointed. https://t.co/IH4j50E8qY

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 4, 2025

I’ve been wondering about this. Apparently, there won’t be a whole lot of new manufacturing jobs so if anyone is expecting that this will restore the glory years of good paying factory jobs where Americans were all (supposedly) living large in a thriving middle class, think again.

I guess the idea here is that we’ll destroy the global economy, withdraw to our own shores, build Trump’s Iron Dome over the country to protect ourselves and pick vegetables or work as servants for our wealthy overlords. I’m not sure I’m being sarcastic when I say that.

By the way, here’s our Dear Leader today:

I’m sure you find it as reassuring as I do that the president of the United States is ranting like that on a day when the markets all dropped by more than 5%. Again.

Trump's ICE disappeared a 52-year-old mother from Westminster, Maryland.

Agents refused to show her a warrant—smashing the driver's side window & yanking her out of the car with no explanation.

She has no criminal record & is legally in U.S. due to a pending immigration case.… pic.twitter.com/GG2a5uXWWD

— LongTimeFirstTime (@LongTimeHistory) April 4, 2025

Another criminal gang member disappeared off the streets by masked secret police.

What’s the difference between this and the Gestapo? I honestly don’t know.

They’re coming for Medicare and Medicaid. Talking Points Memo reports:

On March 31st, CMS COO Amy Brandt sent out instructions for major cuts that had to take place across CMS. As she explained, HHS had been assigned a total amount of savings from canceled contracts. And of that total amount CMS was responsible for just over $2.7 billion. That amounted to 35% of CMS’s average total spend on contracts from the years FY2023 and 2024. So in technical terms, a shit-ton of money and a huge percentage of the overall budget.

As career CMS people have explained to me, CMS’s work is almost entirely contracted out. So this isn’t a case where you have most stuff done in house and some subset of the work is contracted out. It’s almost entirely contracted out. I further learned that the IT component is responsible for at least $750 million of that. The request came down on March 31st with responses due on April 3rd, i.e., today. So four days to decide how to cut more than a quarter of the CMS budget.

I’m told by knowledgable sources that there’s no way to cut this much without some parts of the system simply ceasing to function. So they’ll come up with a proposed plan, warn about what will break and wait to hear back. The Brandt memo says those recommendations will be reviewed and the final decision on cuts will go into effect on April 18th.

Don’t worry they’re confirming Dr. Oz to run this so I’m sure it will be fine. Maybe his friend Oprah can help.

I don’t even want to think about what happens when they fuck with Medicare. The people who have it use it . A lot. That’s what happens when you get old. If they break this one it’s going to lead directly to people dying. And a whole lot of very angry people who vote.

But then Trump oversaw hundreds of thousands of deaths of elderly people in the pandemic and didn’t blink an eye. Since people restored him to office despite his appalling performance in that crisis, why would anything be different this time?

After a little over a year at market, sales of the 6,600-pound vehicle, priced from $82,000, are laughably below what Musk predicted. Its lousy reputation for quality–with eight recalls in the past 13 months, the latest for body panels that fall off–and polarizing look made it a punchline for comedians. Unlike past auto flops that just looked ridiculous or sold badly, Musk’s truck is also a focal point for global Tesla protests spurred by the billionaire’s job-slashing DOGE role and MAGA politics.

“It’s right up there with Edsel,” said Eric Noble, president of consultancy CARLAB and a professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California (Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who styled Cybertruck for Musk, is a graduate of its famed transportation design program). “It’s a huge swing and a huge miss.”

They offer a quote from Elon Musk in 2019: “I do zero market research whatsoever.”

He’s like his BFF Trump in that regard:

[Trump]said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I already had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”

Trump said he is skeptical of experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.” He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: “A lot of people said, ‘Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.’ ”

Trump said reading long documents is a waste of time because he absorbs the gist of an issue very quickly. “I’m a very efficient guy,” he said. “Now, I could also do it verbally, which is fine. I’d always rather have — I want it short. There’s no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is.”

Trump claimed he never read any market research for his real estate deals either. He and Elon are two peas in a pod in more ways than one.