Trump declared a national emergency, which gave him extra powers. It's those powers that he invoked to put immigrants in jail, shut down departments, etc. Some he's out somewhere in the South, playing golf (badly).
He'd better finish all his nonsense before his term expires, because we're going to have to make very carefull legislation to make sure that future presidents will not be able to do all the extra-legal things that Trump did. Future presidents will be put in a straight jacket. At least the Republican ones.
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People are declaring that the US system of education is broken. All right, people; you get a star sticker. And You get a Star, and You get a star! (Just kidding!)
These days I worry about how to sequence my thoughts, to take into account reader fatigue. Can you believe this? But a diatribe on US Exceptionalism was not what I wanted to draw your attention to.
One thing that I thought was good was the idea of referendums. You put these questions on ballots, and people get to express their opinions on the matter. But the questions, depending on how subtle they are, need to be phrased carefully. But it's my belief that citizens are gradually losing the ability to understand tricky language. Think about that.
Those who formulate questions for referendums are going to increasingly be able to phrase them in such ways as to confuse voters into voting exactly the way they do not feel. Some young people are only comfortable communicating in emojis. I mean, consider that they feel the need to have even secret meetings in a meeting app.
But seriously, though in certain quarters, reading at a high level is taken for granted, in other quarters, reading too much gets a child condemned by its peers as elitist, and blackballed by the parents of kids who are "emoji learners," to coin a phrase, and many school boards aren't happy about making demands of their darling children!
I think Henry Ford is indirectly to blame for the failure of US education. It works fine in the Third World, where kids can be brow-beaten into learning tough material in their large classes. In the US, though, education doesn't lend itself to economies of scale. US kids know their rights.
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By now, most people watching the Trump Administration closely would have heard about the chat group set up by the Hegseth Defense Department, which accidentally included a journalist. That really doesn't look like carelessness to me; it was intentional, possibly sabotage. Or one of them wants to claim sabotage on a future date.
AOC and Bernie Sanders were in Arizona, at a rally in Tucson. This is heartening news. The important thing for young people to remember—those who are too young to remember the Vietnam War (pushed misguidedly and deceitfully by various members of the government), and the enormous efforts it took to get out of Vietnam, and the Civil Rights movement, and what it took to get equitable laws passed, will be amazed at how much determination and patience it takes to oppose a stubborn enemy, such as the Maga movement. States will have to take over the safeguards that the federal government was responsible for before Trump/Musk. Some states might pass laws for this purpose, but the so- called Red States won't, and they'll be great fodder for opportunists.
At least a few of the consequences of the 'cost savings' that Musk has instituted will affect the poorer citizens who voted for Trump, but perhaps there aren't very many such people. A lot of rich maga business owners will be happy. I don't know about farmers. (Trump's people will claim that it was Biden's quick response to the Avian Flu threat that ruined the poultry business.)
I'm angry about the destruction of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) which the Administration gleefully destroyed. It was a promising way of fighting against unfair business practices. For that alone, I think Musk should be beheaded.
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There is a word to describe the condition of being uncomfortable with the gender assigned at birth: dysphoria? something like that; and I just realized that trans women—that's former guys who have undergone some sort of gender conversion to become women—and who get sent to prison for some law they have broken, are put in women's prison. This seems uncomfortable for the natural women in those prisons, who may be required to do things alongside Trans women at certain times of the day.
I have generally considered that, well, who really cares what happens in jail? Those inmates deserve what happens to them. But these days, all sorts of people I consider innocent are often sent to prison, and it could be months or years before they're released.
Why this issue has come up is because Trump has issued an order saying that trans women sent to prison should be put in a men's prison. Many people are apparently against this.
Actually, I can see how many people could be against putting these former guys in women's prison, too. Getting a gender transition causes so much trouble, that I think—and I'm no legal expert, so my attitude towards this issue could be considered based on prejudice, but nevertheless a strongly held opinion—I think these 'women' should be given 20 lashes, and then sent home. It's a bit much that they can disrupt the prison system, ɓy first getting gender transition, and then breaking the law. Their punishment should be twice as severe as it would normally be.
I really wonder how many of these women exist; trans jailbirds.
This is one of the few 'edicts' from Trumpie that I'm in favor of.
Well. Just on Saturday, my wife and I participated in a protest against the Tesla dealership in the town where I was visiting family in Arizona. Along with many others, we rejoice when Musk loses money in the stock market, the more money the better, because we do, too, and unlike him, being retired, we depend on our stocks for our income. (He uses his stocks to acquire more companies, such as Twitter. Which he then mismanages.)
However, though we are happy to apply pressure on the Tesla dealerships, we're not hostile to Tesla owners. They must have acquired their cars with the most enlightened motives (while the rest of us made do with buying hybrids), and we can't fault them. There are dealerships in Britain, whose employees have displayed placards reading 'WE HATE HIM TOO!' The highly excitable Wall Street types might see the protests taking place at the dealerships, and sell their Tesla stocks. That would be fabulous. Meanwhile, the Dow is on a downward plunge, not because of anything we do, but because of the Musk-Trump foolishness. One set of Trumpadvisers want to sabotage government, generally. Another set of them want the stock market to do well, as an endorsement of Trump's (mythical) financial ability. Well, they can't have both. Wall Street wants stability. The Stable Genius only knows to generate instability.
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Some things that Musk and Trump are doing can be reversed: Laws; Social Security; Education Department, and so on. Immunization rules, trade deals.
But some damage is permanent: selling off National Parks to lumber companies; preservation of monuments; it's too demoralizing to list the possible damage.
Democrats and Liberals are non-violent people; like Quakers, Mennonites, people of strong principles, they prefer to make peaceful, non-violent protests; sit-ins, occupations. Burning in effigy.
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Something I have said often: one benefit of going to college is to learn ways of keeping yourself amused in your free time.
Why do kids these days have their faces glued to their phones? They're bored. Their interests are few. Some have no interests, and just need to check in with their classmates.
I didn't have a cellphone when I was 12, and my parents were around 40 at that time, and probably would not have given me one (even if available). I just went home after school, and read the book I was in the middle of reading: Hardy Boys, probably. They were really too short!
Kids are difficult to keep amused. But adults, too, are all too easily bored. The smartest people are less likely to get bored. On the other hand, smart 'kids' get bored, too. The important thing is to have a ton of ideas in your head, so that any idea that happens to cross your mind connects up with related ideas that are already there, waiting for it.
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