Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

From H1B to H5N1

We move now from the MAGA civil war over H1B visas to the H5N1 bird flu. (It’s getting hard to keep the abbreviations straight without a bound reference.)

CDC:

December 18, 2024— A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus (“H5N1 bird flu”) infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States.

[…]

A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected; avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death. No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected. This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low.

No need to panic. Donald Trump will be in the White House again on January 20. And a pale horse will be loose in the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s set to “go wild on health.” So, no worries.

Unless you own cattle in California (The Independent):

A dozen more dairy herds in California have been stricken with bird flu as the virus continues to infect animals and humans around the U.S.

Nearly 700 herds in the state — or 71 percent of all herds — have caught H5N1 since late August, forcing Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and the government to announce new testing.

While California, the nation’s top milk-producing state, has the most infections in dairy herds, more infections were reported in Michigan, and the number of confirmed human cases has inched closer to 70, according to health officials.

A virus sample from the infected person in Louisiana, the CDC announced after Christmas, showed signs of genetic mutations. One of them was found in a teenager in British Columbia in November who was in critical condition for weeks.

Intelligencer asked Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, for her assessment of the potential risk. She believes the mutations occured in the patient over the course of the infection and not in the wild. “So it was unlikely to be transmitted onto another person, and it’s not actually emerging in the birds that this person became infected by,” she advised:

I don’t know what it would take to turn H5N1 into a pandemic virus, and I don’t think anybody does. I can’t say when or if it will happen. I mean, it’s something that could happen tomorrow, and it’s something that could never happen. But the chances of it happening are continuing to increase, and that’s what gives me cause for a lot of concern.

Don’t handle dead or sick birds, for starters. Or drink raw milk. Avoid bird droppings, etc.

As a virologist, do you think this feels like a slow-motion disaster unfurling?
It feels like a slow-motion disaster. The cattle outbreak has spread far and wide. We still don’t know how many cows and herds are affected. There are some states where there’s been almost no testing, so we may well see new states popping up on that positive map. There’s no way that you can contain an outbreak if you don’t know the full scale and scope of that outbreak.

Adding to the problem, there are multiple genotypes of the virus circulating. The case in Louisiana was associated with birds, which is different from the cattle virus. It’s not that big of a distinction to the general public, but what that means is that there are essentially multiple sources of this virus. So you could get it from cows, but you could also get it from birds. You could get it from domestic birds, or you could get it from wild birds. In fact, that’s how a lot of the domestic poultry operations are getting infected, because wild birds fly in there and the next thing you know, you’re having to cull a flock. So there’s a lot of the virus around just in nature. It’s also now getting into wild mammals, including ones that live in close proximity to people, like skunks and foxes and raccoons. It’s also getting into pets. It just feels like there are so many different pathways for this to go terribly wrong.

Mark Sumner at Uncharted Blue cautions:

This is not the time to panic and begin stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods. However, it may be an excellent time to make sure you following the news (no matter how unpleasant that is these days), have a supply of masks, and are prepared to deal with a return of “social distancing.”

The big problem may be that, if H5N1 does break through into the human population, almost everything that comes next is heavily dependent on the government response–a government response that’s set to be determined by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr.

And unless there’s an outbreak of responsibility and common sense in the MAGA GOP when and if an H5N1 outbreak occurs, we’ll have a pale horse loose in the DHS and Panama Orange holding daily briefings again in the White House Press Briefing Room.

Have a stiff one this New Year’s Eve.

MAGA GOP in disarray

So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast):

Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported.

Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.”

H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program.

See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.

“The workers that are here on H-1B visas should be deported at the same time we’re deporting the 15 million illegal aliens Biden brought across the border to suppress wages to low-income workers,” Bannon said. “American workers should be hired immediately to fill those gaps, and then we should start the discussions on reparations, on what they knowingly did to American tech workers.”

Government requiring that people wear face masks during a deadly pandemic is tyranny. Government dictating that private employers hire less-skilled workers for specialty jobs and paying them reparations puts America first. Not that there’s anything central-planning about that.

Sociopathic overlords

Capitalists, Bannon railed, “always wanna go to the lowest-cost production.” Bannon the reactionary means to nip capitalism in the bud (Crooks & Liars):

“This is just about a compensation in indentured servants, basically quasi-slave labor in our own country by the enlightened oligarchs of Silicon Valley,” he continued. “This is like the Borgias or the Medici’s from Renaissance Italy, kind of these nation-states where Silicon Valley and these oligarchs are the feudal lords or the, as Ben Harnwell says, sociopathic overlords.”

[…]

“They bring indentured servants over here,” he said. “So you’re gonna be an indentured servant, just like many of our great, great grandparents did coming in the 19th century, before we broke indentured servitude. And we’re gonna break it here.”

“There need to be massive reparations from the sociopathic overlords,” he added.

Kris Goldsmith, the neo-Nazi hunter next door and founder of the Task Force Butler Institute, believes the Musk v. Bannon fight inside MAGA is a bigger phenomenon than many realize. Bannon built “a popular movement around right-wing extremist white nationalism.” Trump was a tool. Bannon, Goldsmith believes, could provoke the MAGA base to turn on Trump over the immigration issue Trump has run on from the moment he rode down his golden escalator.

@krisgoldsmith85 The MAGA Civil War isn’t about the base vs. billionaires. It’s Steve Bannon vs. Elon Musk. And Bannon will win. #CapCut #MAGA #DOGE #oligarchy #elon #elonmusk #trump #vicepresidenttrump #immigration #presidentelonmusk #h1b #h1bvisa #h1bvisas #vivek #vivekramasamy #stevebannon #warroom #bannon @Walter Masterson @David🤙🏽Boomer @CFH unfiltered @just-a-little-off-grid2 @MeidasTouch @The Ken Harbaugh Show ♬ original sound – Kristofer Goldsmith

The Republican Party already looks ungovernable, suggests a former GOP lawmaker. What does the MAGA civil war means for the reelection of Speaker Mike Johnson?

Another post from Daily Beast:

“When you look at people like the Chip Roys, the Tom Massies, the Andy Harrises; they drink their own bathwater. They don’t really drink Trump’s bathwater,” former GOP lawmaker Denver Riggleman explained on Bloomberg TV. “A lot of people call the Freedom Caucus a Trump protection caucus. But in reality, there are people there that are very idealistic, right? They’re ideologues, and they’re also going to do their own thing… I don’t think it guarantees Mike Johnson the speakership at all.”

Riggleman said the first day of Congress on Friday was going to be “miserable,” and he pointed out that this would be the easy part. Once they actually try to pass some laws in the deadlocked House, he said: “Legislation’s gonna be a sh–show.”

But you knew that.

I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America.

I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this:

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

That story was just revealed last year, 43 years later.

They sabotaged Carter’s re-election. I recall thinking that it was obvious when they released the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration but the Republicans and the media all said it was because America’s enemies feared Ronald Reagan’s manly strength and thought Carter was weak. But the truth is that Reagan secretly cut a deal. Then they later did Iran-Contra. Surprise!

Trump didn’t invent this stuff. It’s a deep vein in the Republican party. (His crude gambit with Zelensky was just another version of this kind of dirty trick.) He just recognized it and brought it all to the surface — unlike his predecessors, he seemed to instinctively understand that at least half the country would admire him for it.

Josh Marshall has been closely following the recent South Korean coup and subsequent fallout and has uncovered something (via this article) that I’ve not heard anyone else report. He notes that while S. Korea may be a more recent democracy by American standards it’s actually very well entrenched. But it also has a social media ecosystem that resembles our own with right wing extremists dominating the scene.

The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges.

So back to our far-right YouTubers. The gist is that Yoon was basically living in a hothouse of right-wing Korean YouTube fake news — the opposition is plotting with North Korea!, the elections are overrun by voter fraud! — that he both appears to have bought into these conspiracy theories and also imagined that a big slice of the country did too. Whether this is precisely true or is a total explanation is a secondary matter to me. As we’ve learned from recent stateside experience, the world of early 21st century media and politics is one in which belief is highly motivated and volitional. You believe what is helpful to believe. You often “believe” as a form of aggression. I don’t know nearly enough about Korean politics to answer this question of the role of alternative media in this story. I’ll be curious what conclusions more knowledgable people come to over time. But my impression is that this is at least part of the story.

It’s an imperfect analogy. But it reminded me of a revelation some of us had in the latter part of the first Trump administration watching the actions of Bill Barr, who of course many DC commentators viewed as an “institutionalist” who would keep Trump on the rails. Barr of course did part ways with Trump toward the very end and would not go along with what culminated on January 6th. Low bar, but I guess give everyone their due. But he went along with and enabled quite a lot. And the answer was simple: what made you think Bill Barr wouldn’t be awash in the Fox News Cinematic Universe just as much as every other right-wing white Catholic guy over seventy years old? It makes perfect sense. Of course he would.

It seemed clear to me, and to people like Josh Marshall and others who follow this scene, that Bill Barr suffered from a serious case of Fox News brain rot, a malady that has a number of other associated diseases like X brain rot and Joe Rogan brain rot and Steve Bannon brain rot. It’s a communicable disease among Republicans and afflicts all strata of society from the likes of Bill Barr to Samuel Alito to Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ecstatic rally goers.

There is something we need to recognize about all this which, while it may not fix the problem, at least lets us know what the problem is not:

These stories and analogues also grant a degree of perspective, humility and perhaps bits of encouragement as we try to make sense of our own situation just in advance of the beginning of the second Trump administration. When we think about the alternative media landscape or Kamala Harris’ rush decisions from late July until Election Day, it’s easy to get the idea that the world as we have it came down to the decisions of this or that high-profile political or journalistic elite. When we see very similar events playing out in very different political cultures we’re reminded that we always greatly overplay the role of individual decision-making. We are in fact awash in big global social, cultural and political trends that we only partly understand. We play important roles navigating these winds and tides. But the winds and tides themselves aren’t of our making.

We need to try to understand these winds and tides and figure out ways to survive them and stop the people who are exploiting them to loot and destroy . But they’re happening whether we like it or not.

And, by the way, it’s important to start realizing that this right wing brain rot virus, whether Q-Anon or Sean Hannity, affect a huge number of Trump voters. This idea that the online trolls are different from the salt-o-the-earth Trumpers isn’t correct. They’re all online, watching Fox and Newsmax and/or listening to talk radio. That ecosystem is pervasive.

When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada.

Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal:

But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way?

How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America.

Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.

While Trump is toying with the idea of annexing Canada, these blue American states should bid him goodbye and be annexed by Canada.

Hell, Trump might just go along. He doesn’t like these blue states anyway. They all voted against him in 2016, 2020, and again in 2024. He’s been looking for ways of getting even. Why not simply disown them?

Letting Canada annex these blue states would also simplify Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants, since many of them reside in these states.

America First Legal, a nonprofit run by Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has already written to local elected officials in California and New York warning them not to try to become sanctuaries — threatening that the officials could be personally “criminally liable” if they refuse to support federal government efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants.

But if California, New York, and other blue states were annexed by Canada, the problem disappears.

Of course, this leaves the pesky question of whether Canada would accept America’s West Coast as its 11th province and New York and New England as its 12th? I’ll leave that question to Canadians.

I can’t say I’d blame them if they said fuggedaboudit. We may be blue states but we have plenty of MAGA weirdos too. On the other hand, it would be an economic powerhouse so …

Obviously, this is just a joke. But with Trump shooting off his mouth about annexing Canada and Greenland it makes you wonder if some of the things we believe are unthinkable are as unthinkable as we think they are.

Axios reports on a new PRRI survey:

President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps. His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans. 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy.

 “There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios.”I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military.”Jones said the bad news is that nearly half of people who consider themselves members of a mainstream political party do.

 Trump said in his recent TIME “Person of the Year” interview that he would be open to using camps to hold detained immigrants in the U.S.

His “Border Czar” Tom Homan has been filling in the blanks on the mass deportation proposals:

Homan told the Washington Post in an article published Thursday that the administration plans to locate more than 300,000 children he described as “missing” in the U.S.

 Both Trump and Homan have previously expressed support for deporting families of mixed immigration status, and Homan expounded on the idea in the interview with the Post. “Here’s the issue,” Homan told the Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position. He noted that it will be up to families to decide if they would prefer to be deported together or split up.

Homan also said the U.S. would resume family detentions and “construct family facilities” to do so.

Decent people all over the world will hate this country… and they shouldwww.washingtonpost.com/immigration/…

— Eric Alterman (@ericalterman.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T11:41:19.945Z

Update —

Since 2019, about 450,000 unaccompanied minors have been transferred to ORR, according to a Department of Homeland Security oversight report published in August. During that time, 32,000 did not show up for scheduled court hearings, and an additional 291,000 were not issued a notice to appear by ICE.

Homan acknowledged that many of those young people are probably with their parents or other family members, but he said he wants to mobilize nonprofit groups and private contractors to carry out a more concerted effort to track them down. 

What could go wrong?

That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago.

He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat.

The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,)

Anyway, hold on to your hats:

GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill.

One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks. The other entails winning over Democrats, who for the most part rejected Trump’s initial debt-limit gambit last week.

“Whoever advised the president that it was even possible needs to better understand how this place works,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said about Trump’s latest push to raise the debt limit.

It’s going to be an urgent issue for Trump as soon as he takes office. The federal government will resume the cap on its borrowing authority on Jan. 1, as the U.S. sits on a national debt of more than $36 trillion, though the Treasury Department can buy time for a number of months with so-called extraordinary measures. The fiscal time bomb illustrates the struggle Trump and Republican leaders face heading into 2025, as they consider whether to court Democrats who will want concessions or their own conservatives who are known for rigidly sticking to their demands to cut funding.

“I’ve told my caucus, if they try to do it under reconciliation, they’ll lose my vote,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Friday. “I told them: You want to kill reconciliation, put something on that we don’t like.”

They are intent upon extending their massive tax cuts and expanding them, adding more trillions to the debt. They also want much more money for drill, baby, drill, the border and the military. So they’ll have to cut over $2.5 trillion in cuts to social security, Medicaid and Medicare to cover that. Trump isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he does realize that he can’t control the hardliners on this and feels desperate already over what a shitshow that’s going to be.

Today he endorsed Mike Johnson (in the most hilariously self-serving way possible) but there’s good reason to believe that the hardliners really don’t care what he says about any of this.

Could he have buried it any deeper? Lol.

He knows they are looking at a disaster. If the Democrats hold fast, and they certainly will if the Republicans dig in on these massive cuts, it’s going to be quite a spring. And who knows if the MAGA Freedom Caucus will even vote for Johnson on January 3rd. Right now there is at least one who won’t and several more who say they haven’t decided. As Trump would say, “it will be wild!”

A couple of days after Christmas Donald Trump posted something very odd, even for him. He seemed to have accidentally posted personal text to his bff Elon Musk on Truth Social. (This has been confirmed by CNN.) Sounding downright forlorn he wondered when his pal was returning to Mar-a-lago (“the center of the universe”) because he misses him and his son X. He also mentioned that the New Year’s Eve party was going to be “AMAZING” and that Bill Gates had asked to come to dinner.

Sometimes you can be lonely even in a room full of people so perhaps Trump needs the richest man in the world by his side to make him feel loved. But it’s also possible that he senses his new best buddy is no longer as interested in him and has instead decided that he’s going to play president without him. Where are you?

Trump is spending his days down in Mar-a-Lago golfing, holding casting session for his administration and wining and dining CEOs who might be able to boost his personal fortune over the next four years. He doesn’t appear to be paying very close attention to what’s been going on in Washington or among his MAGA faithful. Several times now, he’s been late off the mark, belatedly following Musk’s lead after all hell broke loose.

It happened just before Christmas when he was busy golfing while Musk blew up the continuing resolution and almost caused a government shutdown. Trump later attempted to appear to have taken control by pretending that he had been the one to decide the deal was untenable due to overspending while at the same time demanding that the Congress raise or eliminate the debt ceiling before he took office. The Republican hardliners balked and didn’t extend or eliminate the debt ceiling and they ended up passing a watered down version of the original deal with Democratic votes.

Trump looked weak, Musk looked strong and the MAGA/Freedom Caucus appeared to be siding with Elon Musk rather than Dear Leader.

Over the past week, more fault lines appeared in the coalition, with Musk once more right in the middle of it. While Trump was photographed on the golf course every day and entertaining his dinner guests with his insufferably weird playlist of “YMCA” and Pavarotti, an online war broke out between the absent friend Musk and some of his most loyal MAGA activists.

The problem began last weekend when Trump named Indian born Sriram Krishnan, as his senior policy advisor on AI, to work with another Musk associate and fellow South African born David Sachs, his new AI and “crypto czar.” That got the attention of some MAGA loyalists, notably Laura Loomer who was, until recently, a great friend of the president-elect even travelling with him on his campaign plane. She noticed that Krishnan is a big proponent of the H-1B visa program which allows skilled workers to come into the US to work temporarily, many of them from India and Asia. The tech sector makes particular use of this program.

Loomer went after the program, saying it was unfair to native born Americans and began complaining that the loyal MAGA followers were being left out of the administration in favor of these tech-bro interlopers who were betraying the American First cause. Other MAGA followers weighed in making it clear that they did not want any brown foreigners coming into the country, in fact they voted for Trump because he said he was going to get them all out. They don’t see any difference between a Guatemalan migrant, a Haitian refugee or a Pakistani engineer.

It was at this point Musk personally joined the conversation explaining that in order the make America great again they would need to hire lots of foreign engineers and programmers because they’re the best and it would help the team.

That didn’t go over very well either. Soon his deputy Vivek Ramaswamy joined the fray posting a long screed about how American mediocrity, bad culture and a compulsion to worship prom queens instead of smart nerds makes it impossible for the country to succeed. It surely made incels everywhere rejoice that they have finally been seen but it enraged the MAGA faithful online even more.

Meanwhile, Loomer and her cadre were going specifically after Musk, suggesting that he was playing Donald Trump for a fool. She wrote at one point, “The elephant in the room is that [Musk], who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.

Everything went downhill from there. with this post perfectly distilling the argument:

He later called his MAGA critics “contemptible fools” and said to one, “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” But at least he didn’t call them deplorable. That would be very bad.

It got even uglier at that point with the likes of Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec getting in on the act as Musk proceeded to suspend the X privileges of a number of his critics, including Loomer.

Charlie Kirk fires back at Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

"It's what the American people want. The American people overwhelmingly voted for less immigration and the prioritization of the American children and the American worker— not the American oligarch."

We're witnessing… pic.twitter.com/UyumUMTQxJ

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) December 28, 2024

Bannon: “Oh yeah, tough guy? You’re a man child.”

Bannon responds to Musk calling MAGA “Racist” and saying he’s ready for “war” over the H-1B Visas — says he won’t take the temperature down, he’s “fixing bayonets” and “doubling down” (even though Trump sided with Elon) pic.twitter.com/FXLMP6Z1MS

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 29, 2024

Everyone had wondered if Trump was ever going to put down his golf clubs and say something. When he finally did it was in an interview with the NY Post in which he declared that he thinks the H-1B visas are just great and he uses them all the time at his properties.

He was extremely hostile to these visas in the past, as one of his most loyal activists, Jack Posobiec pointed out:

Trump:

"I know the H1-B very well, I shouldn't be allowed to use it. We shouldn't have it. It is very, very bad and unfair for our workers and it should be ended" pic.twitter.com/04yWzJktnq

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 29, 2024

In 2020 he formally signed an order suspending the entry of all H-1B workers:

President Trump in 2020: "As we speak, we’re finalizing H1-B regulations so that no American worker is replaced ever again."

What changed? pic.twitter.com/OTPBs0CeWv

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 29, 2024

Once again,, it’s pretty obvious who wears the presidential pants in this new administration and it isn’t Donald Trump.

Elon Musk won yet another internecine GOP brawl and proved that he has the next president of the United States firmly under his thumb. Trump seems to be dazzled by him and his tech-bro billionaire buds in the same way he’s dazzled by Vladimir Putin. Having the richest man in the world be his friend is more meaningful to him than being president again.

I think we’ve all been thinking that Trump was going to get jealous and kick Musk to the curb sooner rather than later. But that’s no sure thing. He’s lost more than a step. He’s four years older than when he left he White House and he’s bored with the details of the presidency. From what we’re seeing, he’s ready to let his bff do whatever he wants and it’s becoming clear to the MAGA activists who’ve worshipped him that it’s not going to be Musk who’s kicked to the curb — it’s going to be them.

Sure, let’s talk about that canal

everybody’s looking out for him
’cause they know red’s satisfies
little girls love to listen to him
sing and tell sweet lies
New Riders of the Purple Sage – Panama Red Lyrics

Hey, let’s “acquire” Greenland and invade Panama!

Donald Trump is skilled at stoking grievance and earning himself media hits. He’ll need to now that Elon Musk is stealing his spotlight. So ahead of violating his oath of office again the moment he utters it, Trump is talking smack about real estate he’d like to acquire in his second term. Trump doesn’t know much, but he knows real estate, how to distract the media (away from casting his reality-show second term), and exclusive clubs.

Only Trump can make Jimmy Carter’s passing about himself and his “very exclusive club.”

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2024-12-29T22:37:28.678Z

James Fallows thinks Panama Orange’s tiny-violin musings about Panama treating America unfairly is more make-believe from Trump:

This rhetoric comes from the same place as his claims that migrants are bringing in deadly fentanyl (they aren’t), that public schools authorize gender-change surgery (they don’t), or that regulation has crippled the US oil industry (which is producing more than ever before). It’s based on lies; it’s designed to make his followers mad; and it works.

Like Pavlov’s MAGAs, it works. The media salivates at hearing the grievance bell ring just as readily.

The chance of the US forcibly (or in other ways) “taking back” the Canal is zero. The next time you hear this idea, put it in the category of other make-believe Trump threats and promises. These range from his promise to end the warfare in Ukraine “in one day,” to his threat to slap a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, the US’s two largest trading partners. Or even the Musk-Ramaswamy fantasy of cutting trillions in “fat” from the federal budget.

None of these claims is meant to happen, in the first day or the first year. Their purpose is to work partisans up right now.

Since the days of Rush Rooms and before OxyContin, movement conservative puppet-masters addicted generations of Republican foot soldiers to a daily endorphin hit. A hissy fit over some liberal “outrage” here, blamethrowing directed at some caste disfavored by white America there.

Fallows, however, focuses on just what a triumph of diplomacy the Jimmy Carter administration negotiated with the Panama Canal treaties of 1977-78 and the “shrewd” courage it took to ratify them. (Fallows recommends a couple accounts of the debates and contentious issues at the time.)

But Fallows also sees Trump’s grievance-based focus on the canal as a way to bring attention to the impacts of climate change:

The managers of the Canal say that what they have to sell the world is not transportation but water. Every ship that travels the 50-plus miles from ocean to ocean through the Canal requires some 50 million gallons of fresh water.

That’s how much it takes to raise a ship from sea level, in the Caribbean or the Pacific, up through multiple locks to Gatun Lake in the middle of the isthmus. The lake is 78 feet above sea level; after reaching it, from either direction, the ships then descend through locks down to sea level on the other side. Every drop of that water to fill the locks comes from rainfall in the largely forested land in the Canal’s watershed.

Savvy readers can see where this is going.

Over time, this watershed, like so many others, is becoming hotter and drier. Over time, many of these surrounding forests, where not officially protected, are being cut down, paved, and developed or turned into cattle-grazing land. Thus the Canal authorities have put themselves at the center of a struggle to protect their business interests by preserving, and even trying to expand, what is also a globally crucial reservoir of biodiversity.

Shorter Fallows: No water, no canal. So let Panama Orange fume about imaginary unfairness. Fallows sees Trump’s Panama rhetoric as a path to “global discussions of sustainability. I hope some people now thinking about Panama will reach the same conclusion.”

Bring it on.

Quietly and with little fanfare (1924-2024)

What more can one say about President Jimmy Carter? I lack the words. Let me borrow a few from Jonathan Alter, biographer of “a formidable, complex man” writing at Washington Monthly:

He was the first American president since Thomas Jefferson who could reasonably claim to be a Renaissance Man or at least a world-class autodidact. At various times in his life, he acquired the skills of a farmer, naval officer, electrician, sonar technologist, nuclear engineer, businessman, equipment designer, agronomist, master woodworker, Sunday School teacher, land-use planner, legislator, door-to-door missionary, governor, long-shot presidential candidate, U.S. president, diplomat, fly-fisherman, bird dog trainer, arrowhead collector, home builder, painter, professor, memoirist, poet, novelist, and children’s book author—an incomplete list, as he would be happy to point out.

That’s when Carter wasn’t defending democracy around the world or working to eradicate the Guinea worm and river blindness, Brian Klaas reminds us:

The Carter Center, the NGO that he founded in 1982, has been a crucial force for good, known primarily for its work on successfully promoting democracy and providing high-quality election monitoring across the globe. It deserves that reputation.

I’ll spare you the description of infection by the parasite. But Carter’s success at eradicating infections were dramatic:

Before Carter got involved, Guinea Worm was prevalent in 21 countries, infecting at least 3.5 million people per year. Today, that figure is down to just 13 cases per year. It’s a reduction of 99.99% in just a few decades, making it one of the most successful public health interventions in history. 

[…]

Similarly, the Carter Center has done tremendous work at tackling onchocerciasis, or river blindness. That disease comes from black fly bites, and it’s prevalent in 31 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Again, it’s a largely neglected disease, despite the fact that just shy of 20 million people are currently infected, with about a million of them having lost their vision due to the infection.

The Carter Center has provided hundreds of millions of rounds of treatment for river blindness, drastically alleviating avoidable suffering. It doesn’t generate headlines, nor is it usually mentioned as a core part of Carter’s reputation in American political discourse, but had Jimmy Carter not decided to devote his efforts to these programs, millions more people would have been needlessly blinded by a devastating parasite.

I’ve bristled for years when conservatives sneered at Carter and his legacy in office. Those sneers speak volumes about their values and little about Carter. He was a lucky man but an unlucky president, his accomplishments obscured by what might have been, writes James Fallows, a veteran of the Carter White House:

Probably only a country as near-impossible to lead as the United States of that time could have given someone like Jimmy Carter a chance to lead it.

Despite it all, Carter had broader support during his first year in office than almost any of his successors, except briefly the two Bushes in wartime emergencies. Despite it all, most reckonings have suggested that Carter might well have beaten Ronald Reagan, and held on for a second term, if one more helicopter had been sent on the “Desert One” rescue mission in Iran, or if fewer of the helicopters that were sent had failed. Or if, before that, Teddy Kennedy had not challenged Carter in the Democratic primary. Or if John Anderson had not run as an independent in the general election. What if the ayatollah’s Iranian government had not stonewalled on negotiations to free its U.S. hostages until after Carter had been defeated? What if, what if.

Carter claimed for years that he came within one broken helicopter of reelection. It’s plausible. We’ll never know.

But perhaps one lesson from the Carter presidency Democrats (and Joe Biden today) have yet to learn is that humility is a negative on the national and world stages. Bluster draws eyeballs and inpsires undeserved confidence. Competence and caring? Not so much.