Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Snake oil freak RFK Jr was confirmed this week and has laid out his first 100 days:

Hours after being confirmed as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a statement that laid out sweeping plans for his first 100 days in office. Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The document called for the federal government to investigate the “root causes” of a broad range of conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. Conspicuously absent was any explicit mention of childhood vaccines, which Kennedy has long railed against as the head of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense.

But the document did zero in on another one of his fixations: a class of widely prescribed drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. The government, he said, would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, [and] mood stabilizers.”

He is not a doctor and knows absolutely nothing about any of this. He’s a conspiracy theorist and a crank who has said that most school shooters are on antidepressants which is a lie. (I wonder when someone’s going to ask Kennedy about his obvious steroid abuse? )

He may not have mentioned vaccines (he’ll get to that I’m sure) but the anti-depressant thing has long been one of his issues. But don’t worry, he has a plan: re-education camps:

Kennedy said he planned to dedicate money generated from a sales tax on cannabis products to “creating wellness farms—drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country.” He added, “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need—three or four years if they need it—to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” The farm residents would grow their own organic food because, he suggested, many of their underlying problems could be “food-related.”

This is some serious woo-woo bullshit which proves that the conspiracy theory industry of both the left and right has now fully merged.

But hey, if the CDC won’t be chasing diseases and epidemics anymore at least we’ll have “wellness camps.”

Half of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — a group known as the CDC’s “disease detectives” — were among the cuts made Friday by the Trump administration, multiple health officials tell CBS News.

The cuts are among the thousands of probationary workers being let go this week across the federal government as part of efforts to shrink the federal workforce overseen by President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, task force headed by billionaire Elon Musk.

The CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service or EIS officers are hired in annual classes through a competitive process. As part of the fellowship, they serve for two years around the CDC or deployed to health departments across the country, often on the front lines of public health responses. Many go on to rise through the ranks at the agency after being selected for the program.  All of the most recent class of hires to serve in the EIS were told Friday they were among the cuts, officials told CBS News.

Meanwhile:

Grocery prices are going up, we may be dealing with another pandemic, Trump is threatening draconian tariffs and we’re on the verge of deporting the vast majority of the agriculture workforce. So the economy is getting more fragile by the day.

One of Trump’s answer to all that is “drill, baby, drill.” Krugman takes a look at that in his newsletter today:

Basically, any large decline in energy prices would lead to a fall in production, driving prices right back up. In today’s world, U.S. shale oil drillers are the marginal producers — the producers whose decisions set both a floor and a ceiling on overall oil prices. As I write this, the benchmark price of U.S. crude oil — the West Texas Intermediate price — is just over $70 a barrel.

And here’s the thing: any substantial decline in prices from this point would make drilling new wells unprofitable in many U.S. oilfields:

This doesn’t mean that production would stagnate; it would decline, as older fields get exhausted.

So even if you believe, wrongly, that regulation is a major barrier to energy production, there’s no way Trump can engineer a major decline in prices.

Meanwhile Trump is demanding a reduction in interest rates which won’t happen if inflation persists. At least if the system we now have is still functional. Krugman again:

Right now the Fed is a quasi-independent institution run by technocrats, who set interest rates based on their assessment of what the economy needs rather than taking instructions from the executive branch. But Fed independence rests on political norms rather than any strong legal foundation. Given the fact that Trump has already shut down USAID, a blatantly illegal move, and effectively shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which also looks illegal, it’s surely possible that he can find a way to force the Fed to cut interest rates even in the face of rising inflation.

Critics will point to the example of Turkey, whose authoritarian leader, like Trump, insisted that rates should go down, not up, in the face of rising inflation; the Erdogan regime didn’t reverse course until inflation was above 80 percent. But Trump surely won’t listen.

There’s also another thing populist regimes do when inflation runs hot: lie about it. While Trump isn’t a “populist” in the sense of caring about the working class, he does have a populist-style disdain for expertise. And one way to deal with bad economic numbers is to order the statistical agencies to produce better numbers. Most famously, in 2014 Argentina admitted that it had been deliberately understating inflation for the past 7 years.

Anyone who says “But they wouldn’t do that!” has clearly been living under a rock the past few weeks. We’re already seeing efforts to suppress bad news about infectious disease. Why assume that the same can’t happen to bad news about inflation? I’m just waiting for the day when Elon Musk declares that everyone who works at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a Marxist who hates America.

I’d guess that’ll happen within the month. Trump said a couple of weeks ago:

“I think I know interest rates much better than they do, and I think I know it certainly much better than the one who’s primarily in charge of making that decision,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to Powell, while speaking to reporters from the Oval Office Thursday.

He took over the Kennedy Center, why not the Fed? He’s a real renaissance man.

I would have thought that the Big Money Boyz would be just a little bit skeptical of anything like that since their own businesses and the markets depend upon accurate information. But so far they’re so excited that they don’t have to think about hiring black people and they can say “pussy” again that they’re fine with whatever Trump is doing.

“We knew they were going to do this. They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.”

He seems nice. And frankly, it’s clear they don’t give a damn about starving kids in Scranton or Birmingham either. In fact, I think they’re getting off on it.

Trump said last week that he campaigned on this. He did not. He would mention “waste and fraud in passing but his pitch was all about “growth” and tariffs taking care of deficits. He ostentatiously ran away from Project 2025 which is the exact blueprint they are following for firing massive numbers of federal workers.

It was a bait and switch. So far it doesn’t seem to be bothering the non-MAGA cult members who voted for Trump and the Republicans too much. I guess nothing’s happened to them personally yet. If it’s just some starving kid in Sudan it’s no biggie, amirite?

I’m trying to imagine what I would have thought if I’d looked into the future and saw this happening even a decade ago. I think I would have assumed it was some kind of dark joke:

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago.

A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr. Scholz accused Mr. Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust.

“A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Mr. Scholz said at the conference on Saturday morning, in an address opening the gathering’s second day.

Mr. Scholz said the AfD had trivialized Nazi atrocities like the concentration camp at Dachau, which Mr. Vance visited on Friday. The chancellor said Germany “would not accept” suggestions from outsiders about how to run its democracy — or directives to work with such a party.

“That is not done, certainly not among friends and allies,” Mr. Scholz said. “Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide.”

And that pig Vance had the nerve to go to Dachau and pretend to be moved. What a sick piece of work he is.

People keep telling me that I shouldn’t despair because Trump probably going to pass away in his sleep before the end of his term. If we didn’t know before we certainly know now that his dying won’t solve a thing. Look at what’s waiting in the wings.

The new generation of MAGA leaders, Hegseth and Vance, just went over to Europe and set the stage for WWIII. And we’re the bad guys in this one.

I know you don’t like X posts on here and neither do I. But Bluesky still doesn’t have the capability of rendering videos in the blog so there’s not much I can do about it.

I would never expect you to sit through a full JD Vance speech but it’s important to at least see some of the clips. It’s just shocking , even for him:

He’s saying this in Europe, not Arkansas. Apparently, he really wants to reassure China and Russia that we are with them and encouraging them to do whatever’s necessary to keep them in power in case Americans or Europeans might have other ideas.

You really should watch this one:

The Trump administration is demanding that everyone in the government say that the 2020 election was stolen and firing people who held the J6 insurrectionists to account. I know hypocrisy has been retired as a concept but this is too much.

There’s more unfortunately:

JD Vance's speech in Munich sounds like it was literally written by the Kremlin pic.twitter.com/YV1hJlyS48

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2025

Then there’s this clown:

REPORTER: You have focused on what Ukraine is giving up. What concessions will Putin be asked to make?

HEGSETH: Um. I would start by saying the arguments that have been made that somehow coming to the table right now is making concessions to Vladimir Putin, I just reject that at… pic.twitter.com/8KqMe7ohG3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 13, 2025

Aaaand, here at home:

Trump on Canada: "I spoke to Governor Trudeau … they don't have military protection, and you take a look at what's going on out there … people are in danger … they need our protection." pic.twitter.com/MdlJ4zJe2s

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 13, 2025

I’m so embarrassed.

Trump likes them intimidated. They eagerly comply.

Me and my sharpie are signing a ‘zecutive order changing the name of Donald Trump to Donald Toadstool. You will henceforth use my preferred designation.

His Insecure Highness has enacted several measures since reentering the Oval Office as non-joking tests of fealty. By your bending the knee to his mighty will he shall know you either as loser or foe. It’s Toadstool’s way of getting you to blurt out, “Thank you, sir! May I have another.”

Like loyalty oaths and insisting followers publicly declaring that he won the 2020 election, it’s about getting people to submit to his dominance moves. Or as I picture it, getting littler dogs to roll over on their backs and pee in the air in submission.

Toadstool’s mind is so far gone that it’s not clear if he really gives a rat’s ass if the world accepts that with a few strokes of his sharpie he’s changed the 400-year-old name of the Gulf of Mexico. What matters is whether he can compel your obedience by uttering “Gulf of America.” For that, he doesn’t need to think. It’s all instinct.

Noah Berlatsky takes up the White House banning the Associated Press from the Press Room because the private business won’t “knuckle under” on cartographic matters:

The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance to tyranny, and a model for free speech, that much of American media needs right now.

The dispute over the name of the Gulf of Mexico seems trivial, especially compared to a range of other horrors Trump is currently perpetrating. But tyrants are tyrants in part because they insist on asserting control over even trivial matters.

Toadstool knows from trivial.

Trump wants to make the AP fall in line to show his dominance, and to show other outlets he’s willing to vindictively target them over any show of independence at all. The AP, for its part, is providing a rallying point for press freedom organizations and drawing a line in the sand for its colleagues and competitors.

If Trump is denying access to outlets that refuse to lick his boots, then any media outlet that has access is compromised. Journalists who want to be worthy of the name have a moral obligation to follow the AP’s example in enraging the toddler in chief.

What’s disturbing is just how many private businesses are obeying in advance the whims of His Royal Shroomness “out of an abundance of caution“:

The works in Gwen Henderson’s Tampa bookstore are emancipated, but organizations that want to highlight the councilwoman’s shop apparently don’t enjoy the same freedom.

This week on social media, Henderson, a retired educator, said that “a pretty prominent marketing firm” decided to take down a video showcasing her Black English Bookstore after the company received pressure from a government client.

[…]

She did not name the firm that produced the video, but a separate post on Henderson’s personal page says the “Black Moves” clip was created by PPK Advertising & Production.

The government in question among PPK’s clients seems to be the state of Florida. They seem to have done a lot of work promoting the state lottery. They are wary, therefore, about sponsoring content that might be construed as DEI-related. But Garrett Garcia, the firm’s president, pointed a finger at government more distant than Tallahassee, and at the attorney general Toadstool plucked out of Florida (emphasis mine):

“This decision was made entirely out of an abundance of caution based on articles like this one published last week in Bloomberg,” Garcia added. “We felt it was in the best interest of our business and our employees to pause these initiatives until we have time to review it in greater detail and to understand the nuances of all rapidly changing policies of the DOJ and US Attorney General.”

Forbes has also reported that Trump’s new Attorney General, Tampa-woman Pam Bondi, “directed the Justice Department to ‘investigate, eliminate, and penalize’ private companies and universities that have “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”

But a video promoting Henderson’s private bookstore is not a hiring program conceivably covered under Trump 2.0’s interpretation of federal civil rights laws. But her ad agency is running scared enough that they yanked it. And that’s just the way Toadstool and his white backlash cult like it.

“This is the bullshit that’s happening in our country right now,” says Henderson. “Even a little tiny bookstore can be impacted.”

(h/t SS)

Emil Bove, Game Master

For no particular reason. Here’s an easy-to-follow piece of advice.

If you don’t want to be called a Nazi, don’t act like a Nazi. Or Jigsaw.

Here’s the intro from Reuters:

A U.S. federal prosecutor agreed on Friday to file a motion to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams to spare other career staff from potentially being fired for refusing to do so, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s career public integrity prosecutors in a meeting on Friday that they had an hour to decide among themselves who would file the motion, the sources said.

The volunteer was Ed Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, who agreed to alleviate pressure on his colleagues in the department’s public integrity section, two sources said.

Sullivan did not capitulate, someone familiar with the meeting told Reuters. He was coerced, and to his colleagues “a hero” who spared them.

So Bove set up one of those torture rooms from the Saw franchise, minus the blood. Or else the trolley problem, except the person who throws the switch to save five elects to be the one run over on the side track.

More federal prosecutors have resigned under Trump over the Adams case than during Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre.

Fools and cowards

In addition to the stinging letter of resignation from Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, the Washington Post reports that “Kevin Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, and John D. Keller, acting chief of the department’s Public Integrity Section” resigned in addition to three others from the Public Integrity Section.

Hagan Scotten, the Southern District’s lead prosecutor in the Adams corruption case, resigned Friday and sent his own stinging rebuke to his bosses in D.C. (Washington Post):

“[A]ny assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” he wrote.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten wrote. “But it was never going to be me.”

What an abomination AG Pam Bondi is running.

Baby tapir named Ume. Who knew they were so cute?

Born last Sunday, Feb. 2, to mom Yuna, little Ume sports the signature white spots and stripes of a newborn tapir, making her look like a tiny, fuzzy watermelon. 🍉 Mom and baby are thriving behind the scenes, and we can’t wait to share more updates soon. pic.twitter.com/T9qH8UabmS

— Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 11, 2025

How is it possible that baby Ume keeps getting cuter? This fuzzy little watermelon is just ten days old and had some zoomies while trying to nurse from mom behind the scenes. Watch until the end to see 900-pound Yuna roll over so her playful tapir calf can nurse. Such a good mom! pic.twitter.com/PIN2cWTa9O

— Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 13, 2025

The adorable tapir calf is already mastering the art of wiggling its tiny trunk. 🥰
Baby tapirs use their tiny trunks for sniffing, exploring, and even grasping small objects. Their trunks are an extended upper lip and nose, which helps them sense their surroundings and forage. pic.twitter.com/k66B9FvaSY

— Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 8, 2025

Sleepy baby:

The growing baby tapir is very sleepy. 😴 Tapirs have a third eyelid, or nictitating membrane, that lubricates and protects the eye.

📹: Keeper Katie pic.twitter.com/NiJPUkBo73

— Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (@PtDefianceZoo) February 11, 2025

FYI:

Common Name: Tapirs
Scientific Name: Tapiridae
Type: Mammals
Diet: HerbivoreGroup
Average Life Span In The Wild: 25 to 30 years
Size: Height at shoulder: 29 to 42 inches
Weight: 500 to 800 pounds
Size relative to a 6-ft man:

Tapirs look something like pigs with trunks, but they are actually related to horses and rhinoceroses. This eclectic lineage is an ancient one—and so is the tapir itself. Scientists believe that these animals have changed little over tens of millions of years.

Behavior

Tapirs have a short prehensile (gripping) trunk, which is really an extended nose and upper lip. They use this trunk to grab branches and clean them of leaves or to help pluck tasty fruit. Tapirs feed each morning and evening. During these hours they follow tunnel-like paths, worn through the heavy brush by many a tapir footstep, to reach water holes and lush feeding grounds. As they roam and defecate they deposit the seeds they have consumed and promote future plant growth.

Life in the Water

Though they appear densely built, tapirs are at home in the water and often submerge to cool off. They are excellent swimmers and can even dive to feed on aquatic plants. They also wallow in mud, perhaps to remove pesky ticks from their thick hides.

Tapir Species

New World tapirs generally live in the forests and grasslands of Central and South America. A notable exception is the mountain (or woolly) tapir, which lives high in the Andes Mountains. Woolly tapirs, named for their warm and protective coat, are the smallest of all tapirs.

The world’s biggest tapir is found in the Old World—Southeast Asia. The black-and-white Malay tapir can grow to 800 pounds. It inhabits the forests and swamps of Malaysia and Sumatra.

All tapir species are at-risk largely due to hunting and habitat loss.

You’ve been boarded

Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. — Anne Applebaum

More than a few of us not in federal employ feel the same. People I know have, like the refugees in Casablanca, fled the occupation. Except today it is the U.S. they are fleeing, not fleeing to.

Applebaum suggests that whether Musk-Trump’s Project 2025 saboteurs call their goal “Liberation Day,” or replacing all mid-level bureaucrats with MAGA loyalists (RAGE, in Curtis Yarvin’s coinage), or Steve Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state,” regime change from within is the goal although their motivations may differ.

Hugo Chávez used a similar approach in Venezuela, as did Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Applebaum explains:

Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, the newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the original regime-change blueprint—are now using IT operations, captured payments systems, secretive engineers, a blizzard of executive orders, and viral propaganda to achieve the same thing.

This appears to be DOGE’s true purpose. Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.

Ask the people of Ukraine what that’s like.

What Musk-Trump means to achieve — Musk by Bond-villain design and Trump by feral instinct — is to replace the long-established culture of public service with something other. Applebaum is not sure what, but it’s not American.

Christian nationalists want a religious state to replace our secular one. Tech authoritarians want a dictatorship of engineers, led by a monarchical CEO. Musk and Trump might prefer an oligarchy that serves their business interests.

You can bet it will reflect the corruption at Trump’s core. Per Vought’s designs (himself a Christian nationalist), civil servants “who had previously viewed themselves as patriots, working for less money than they could make in the private sector,” Applebaum explains, “must be forced to understand that they are evil, enemies of the state.”

From where federal workers now sit (state workers and university employees soon enough, then you), they can either resist the Nazis or join the Vichy government. That’s how Applebaum frames the choice in her link: “Putting them all together, the actions of Musk and DOGE have created moral dilemmas of a kind no American government employee has faced in recent history. Protest or collaborate? Speak up against lawbreaking or remain silent?”

Drink the Vichy water or waste-bin it?

The Ink this morning proposes another analogy for regime change: alien invasion.

In Cixin Liu’s massively popular sci-fi epic The Three-Body Problem, an advanced society abandons their collapsing planet and sets out to take over the Earth. But to pave the way and make sure they don’t meet effective resistance, they monkey wrench human progress by distributing viral propaganda, recruiting allies in the gaming community, cutting sweetheart deals with oligarchs, and interfering with scientific research.

Thus, Physics World reports:

Scientists across the US have been left reeling after a spate of executive orders from US President Donald Trump has led to research funding being slashed, staff being told to quit and key programmes being withdrawn. In response to the orders, government departments and external organizations have axed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, scrubbed mentions of climate change from websites, and paused research grants pending tests for compliance with the new administration’s goals.

James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, warned an audience this month at the Royal College of Art in London, “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages.”

The Ink continues, “It’s as if the tech oligarchs who’ve journeyed from South Africa to remake America — the guys who, as therapist Daniel Shaw remarked, ‘read Orwell’s 1984 and decided the hero was Big Brother’ — read Liu’s trilogy and decided the San-Ti (the alien invaders) were the heroes.”

We cautioned yesterday, that in plain view and through sheer doggedness, the United Daughters of the Confederacy succeeded in fixing “The Lost Cause” myth in minds across the South and farther for generations. Christian nationalists want a Jesus-über-alles theocracy and damn your religious freedom. Tech billionaires want their Red Caesar. The international autocrats’ club wants a capitalism even more rapacious, NATO castrated, and popular sovereignty replaced with neo-feudalism. They are all so focused on powers they hope to accrue that they’ve blinded themselves to what they likely will lose in making a devil’s bargain. None of this is secret, but their plans are obscured by the sideshow antics of men like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Americans busy working and paying bills will be slow to catch on to what they are losing. Perhaps until it’s too late. But our history also holds solitary heroes like Rosa Parks whose actions inspire transformational movements. Pray we have a few left.

A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets.