Preview of Trump 2.0 Administration

Musk borrowed the playbook that Trump used in his quests for the presidency. Trump joined the GOP back in 2015 because he saw how ripe it was for a takeover. Musk hooked up with Trump because he saw a unique opportunity to have unfettered power in the second administration of a very easy to manipulate man-child. Musk didn't have to mount a political campaign, he just had to hook up with a very popular political cult figure and contribute a very small portion of his enormous wealth and time. Unfortunately, a majority of American voters gave both dicks unique opportunities to achieve their goals.

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/breaking-trump-names-susie-wiles-as-white-house-c...
BREAKING: Trump Names Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff

Former President Donald Trump will name his 2024 campaign co-chair Susie Wiles as chief of staff in his second term. Wiles previously worked for Trump’s Save America super PAC and ran point for the former president’s campaign in Florida during his successful 2016 run.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/07/powell-trump.html
Powell says he would not resign as Fed chief if Trump asked for his resignation

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that the president does not have the legal power to fire or demote him.

When asked whether he would step aside if President-elect Donald Trump asked him to resign, Powell simply said: “No.”

Powell's term ends in 2026.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/11/07/special-session-ca-values/

SACRAMENTO — Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation convening a special session of the California Legislature to safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration. The special session will focus on bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.

This is the first of several actions by the Newsom Administration, in partnership with the Legislature, as the Governor begins shoring up California’s defenses against an incoming federal administration that has threatened the state on multiple fronts.

Conservatives are getting ready to do the slash and burn "fixes" that they failed to carry out during Trump's 1.0 administration. Their think tanks around the country have been working hard setting up the steps involved. And Trump's mental decline and golf outings will allow them to forge ahead unfettered. Unfortunately, over 74 million lost souls gave the conservatives the opportunity to make their lives even more miserable than they already are.

Donald Trump and Sudan: What to expect from the returning US president (Middle East Eye)

Under Joe Biden, Washington did not engage with the crisis in Sudan at a high level. Under Trump, it will likely be a pawn in a regional deal... “I’m pretty sure Trump can’t find Sudan on a map,” one diplomat in the region told Middle East Eye... "But he does like to pick sides”...

Terrorist groups embrace chance of weakened US hegemony under Trump (Guardian)

While Donald Trump has cultivated his reputation as a feared strongman, internal chats and online talk across a spectrum of terrorist organizations calling the US government their enemy show that many see advantages to the president-elect’s incoming administration. Key to those beliefs are Trump’s own promises that once in office, he plans to reduce the global US military footprint and purge the so-called “deep state” national security agencies of workers he considers disloyal to him...

Trump’s wild threats put press freedom in the crosshairs in second term (Guardian)

Aside from worries about Trump’s demonization of the press inciting violence against journalists, free press advocates appear to be most alarmed by Trump’s call for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke TV networks’ broadcast licenses and talk of jailing journalists who refuse to reveal anonymous sources. Still, despite a conservative majority on the supreme court and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, those same people also say that America’s robust first amendment protections and a legislative proposal and technology to protect sources mean that a diminished press under Trump is not a certainty...

Edited to add: Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders (CNN)

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN... Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon. “We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said. Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back. “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”...

Unconventional Trump brings openings and perils for Africa (BBC)

It is difficult to try to predict the decisions that US President-elect Donald Trump will make when he returns to the White House. But one thing seems unlikely to change: his dislike of patient, principled diplomacy as a means to peace and his preference for transactional politics and populist gestures. This brings openings and perils in some areas in Africa... Sudan is currently Africa’s largest war and its biggest famine for decades. There is no sign that Trump is concerned...

Could it be? I read that Biden won by more votes in 2020 than Trump did in 2024, yet did not claim mandate to upturn everything that preceded him.

Richard Stengel stengel | 2:51 PM · Nov 17, 2024:
Former Under Secretary of State in Obama admin & Editor TIME. Co-chair, CARE. Political analyst @MSNBC. Book: "Information Wars." ...

Trump has fallen below 50% in the popular vote. His margin of victory (pop vote + electoral college) is the third smallest since 1888. (Only JFK in '60 and Nixon in '68 were smaller.) If 238k votes in the blue wall states had been different, he would have lost. Not a mandate.

Pushing The Limits @ptlradioshow.bsky.social @PTLRadioShow | 4:52 PM · Nov 17, 2024:

In this picture:
1 drove his wife to suicide for constant infidelity
1 is an adjudicated rapist
1 smacked his wife in the face at a nightclub in public

The MAGA Republican party of Christian values and protecting women.
https://x.com/PTLRadioShow/status/1858312348894896189

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world
Carole Cadwalladr |17 Nov 2024

1 When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next.
3 To name is to understand.
4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan.
5 You have more power than you think.
6 Do not kiss t he ring.
7 Know who you are.
8 Protect your private life.
9 Throw up the Kool-Aid.
10 Listen to women of colour.
11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies.
12 Don’t buy the bullshit.
13 Even dickheads love their dogs.
14 Pay in cash.
15 Remember.
16 Find allies in unlikely places.
17 There is such a thing as truth.
18 Plan.
19 Take the piss.
20 They are not gods.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broliga...

Elon Musk Is Now Cyberbullying Government Employees
Edith Olmsted | November 22, 2024

...Elon Musk is so excited to start his new gig ruining the federal government that he’s getting an early start by goading his millions of followers to cyberbully government employees.

This week, Musk took aim at Ashley Thomas, the director of climate diversification for the U.S. International Finance Corporation—a highly technical role that involves developing ways of securing agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather.

After a right-wing troll account posted on X drawing attention to Thomas’s position, Musk reposted it, noting that there were “So many fake jobs.” ...

https://newrepublic.com/post/188773/elon-musk-x-government-employees-call-out

Experts: DOGE scheme doomed because of Musk and Ramaswamy's "meme-level understanding" of spending

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/23/experts-doge-scheme-doomed-because-of-musk-and-...

For programs where Congress has allowed its authorization to lapse, appropriations legislation covers it. Instead of needing two laws — an authorizing law that approves funding for an agency and another to actually allocate those funds — Congress only passes the appropriation, which then gives the program the authority to spend its funding, according to The Washington Post.
...
Still, as an out-of-government entity, DOGE can only make recommendations to Congress for ways to pare down the federal budget. "Congress will still decide whether authorized or unauthorized programs get funding," Smetters said. "It is not up to the discretion of the White House."

Trump is in and some Americans say they’re out. Interest in moving abroad spikes after the election (CNN)

Interest in moving out of the US has spiked, with immigration businesses reporting a surge of inquiries since the election. And some Americans say the results have sealed their plans to leave the US. It’s impossible to know how many Americans are seriously contemplating leaving the country. But there’s certainly evidence of a post-election surge in people exploring the idea...

Military vets and federal workers can thank the voters for the war they and their loved ones will be experiencing here via two Trump admin picks ~ Hegseth and Musk.

RFK's Jr. ally has asked the FDA to revoke polio vaccine approval

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/13/rfk-ally-revoke-polio-vaccine

>16 2wonderY: Well, it would give churches and rich people more cripples to be charitable to, wouldn't it?

Looking forward to an unhappy holiday with a government shutdown. Stopped in at the post office to buy stamps and asked about their status. The USPS, it seems, is elf-funded (self-funded is what I meant!) so is not subject to closure. However, I did hear some DeJoy grumbling.

>18 2wonderY: I fear USPS will soon be on chopping block to highest bidder. MY complaint with DeJoy's USPS is that mail hold leaves most junkmail crammed in box, an advertisement to wouldbe thieves that one isn't home. The sort isn't particularly good though so sometimes important papers left in one's box ... I'm rethinking, too, convenience of USPS emailing me scans of incoming mail -- new owner(s) may not afford privacy for such data?

>19 margd: Having retired from USPS in 2013 I knew then that privatization was an inevitability. It was more than less then an old people's communication system and a package service and the package service has been getting more and more expensive......maybe not as much as the others though. A lot of the those older folks back then have passed on and more and more older folks now are at least decently versed in computer and cell phone skills. That said I very seriously doubt that what replaces it will be more efficient or anywhere close to as cheap. That's not how private corporations work and they will come out rural communities if they don't see the profit margins they'll want and that's also an inevitability. Those people are very likely going to get screwed the most. Paying more for the service and picking up their mail/packages at a point not of their own choosing. There are lots of people who buy into this canard that whatever government does a corporation can do better and more efficiently and some of those who think that are going to find out when privatization does come and I don't think they're going to like what they find.

Everything in this country is done pretty much to please the most wealthy though and this will be more of that. To me our capitalist system is a failed economic system but not enough people are there yet. The killing of Thompson relates to how our corporate capitalist health care system fails us too. What our economic system has morphed into is predicated on winners and losers and there are more and more losers these days. We see it as well in other things such as housing and predatory student loan programs. It's the way things are going and both our major political parties are bought off by all sorts of wealth entities and will defend them and this economic system to the point it's destroyed every social service.

>20 lriley: "rural communities" -- poor benighted Trump voters... Not cheap but Canada Post service is excellent on our rural island, whereas private sector doesn't set foot there anymore. Either relies on Canada Post for last leg or holds pkges on the mainland for us to pick up -- while still charging extra for our out-of-the-way address!! Striking Canada Post just ordered back to work, but Amazon delivery peeps also on strike in some locations in US -- not that I blame them. Hard job.

He’s anti-democracy and pro-Trump: the obscure ‘dark enlightenment’ blogger influencing the next US administration (Guardian)

Curtis Yarvin is hardly a household name in US politics. But the “neoreactionary” thinker and far-right blogger is emerging as a serious intellectual influence on key figures in Donald Trump’s coming administration in particular over potential threats to US democracy. Yarvin, who considers liberal democracy as a decadent enemy to be dismantled, is intellectually influential on vice president-elect JD Vance and close to several proposed Trump appointees. The aftermath of Trump’s election victory has seen actions and rhetoric from Trump and his lieutenants that closely resemble Yarvin’s public proposals for taking autocratic power in America... The growing parallels between the incoming administration’s actions – especially Vance’s views – and Yarvin’s suggestions raise questions about his influence... “What’s unique is his way of rebranding or repackaging old reactionary ideas in a way that appealed to libertarian-minded kids in the tech industry, and in eventually getting some of them to embrace a lot of far-right ideas”...

>21 margd: Bezos and Trump were fighting with each other in the first Trump administration. I don't know for sure but I think that at least was some of the impetus for Amazon to start delivering some of their own packaging. This time around Bezos and Musk are fighting each other to be Trump's bestest friend so.......we shall see.

USPS has for some time contracted with package carriers like UPS and Fedex to do the final legs of their deliveries. If USPS is privatized I suspect that dynamic will change a lot and if USPS is cut up and shared by numerous corporations then I would think the logistical reach that it has now will pretty much disappear. A corporation is not going to do things that cost it money. They're all about profit for profit sake and I don't see them serving smaller communities if it doesn't benefit them or their shareholders to do so. I also don't see how you could put USPS or anything like it together again once you've taken it apart. FWIW the managers of USPS (I'm not just talking about DeJoy but all of his predecessors going back decades) don't see mail delivery so much as a service to the public....they've seen themselves as CEO's or operators of a large corporation and their decision making reflects that.

For example the switch over into automation which began in the 70's but really took off in the 80's reset the goals of the Post Office and somewhere around then it became the Postal Service. It still had its workforce (about 80% I'd guess with some kind of military background) but it began reducing those numbers towards the late 80's and began to rely on machinery and tech more and more as the years and decades have progressed since then. To the technocratic stat numbers are everything. For the more simple minded like myself though I saw it this way......when I began working as a clerk in 1986 a first class 15c stamp was expected to get a letter from the East Coast of the United States to the mail box of the recipient on the West Coast of the United States in two days and that was very much the norm then. And the Post Office did that very well and is that not efficiency? It wasn't efficiency at all though to the people who would run USPS from the mid 80's on. Their idea of efficiency was wrapped up in the stats of the Postal Service they were remaking into something completely different or what it has become today which is not nearly as many workers.....more and more reliance on machines and techology.....far higher cost to the public......and much longer delivery times.

Things do change......the internet also played a major part in the story. It was going to and did change the dynamics of this too. Just in that we were eventually going to get to the same place we are now. All this could have been done with better foresight but you have to look at people.....good people don't get important positions anywhere and good people don't get to be billionaires.....you give an ambitious not so good person too much power---expect arrogance, politics, playing about with peoples lives, some corruption and impunity to get away with everything and anything and immunity given to them by those who could possibly hold them to account. Going to happen. That's America in the 21st century.

>23 lriley: When I moved to the US ca 1980, USPS had Canada Post beat hands down. (We used to joke that CP charged storage fees in Toronto.) That seems to have changed based on my admittedly sporadic experience with both ... Sure hope USPS and other government jewels survive the next four years to start again...

Here in Denmark a domestic letter is now 25 DKr = about $4 and an international letter is $8. Almost nobody are sending letters anymore, so the price is sort of irrelevant. Parcel delivery is GPS, PostNord, DAO and Bring and they all thrive as far as I know. For myself I'm satisfied with the current state of affairs.

Trump suggests U.S. should take ownership of Greenland

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/23/trump-buying-greenland-us-ownership-plan

He made his latest comments on Greenland after demanding earlier in the weekend that Panamanian authorities lower fees for U.S. ships to transit the Panama Canal or return its control to the United States.

>24 margd: Whether or not it makes it through another Trump presidency I think it's only a matter of time before it is privatized. If not Trump it could even happen under a Democratic presidency that comes in if that happens in 2028. Pretty much all major political actors these days are committed wholeheartedly to business/capital interests. First class letter mail use to be a real thing. It's almost non-existent now. That's where the decline really started and that's not going to turn around when people no longer send letters to each other and when banking and business can be done much faster and more efficiently and arguably more securely online. Packaging is where it's at now. There is competition but also prices/costs gradually are going higher. The great strength of USPS is its logistical reach. It reaches everywhere that others won't. USPS wasn't designed as a profit driven corporation. It was designed as a public service. There is less need for that service now though.

>26 2wonderY: One wonders if Trump's desire for Canada, Panama, Greenland, (Gaza shore?) is just
1. being an alpha male boor
2. inherent, untamed lasciviousness
3. normalizing Putin (ETA and Netanyahu) imperialism
4. personal interest (tax evasion charge in Panama)
5. ______________ ?

All of the above?

He sure knows how to touch nerves, though, and no doubt enjoys the reactions!

>27 lriley: "The great strength of USPS is its logistical reach. It reaches everywhere that others won't. USPS wasn't designed as a profit driven corporation. It was designed as a public service. There is less need for that service now though."

Wolfe Island, Ontario is 20-minute ferry ride from a major city, yet none(?) of the private carriers come anymore. Canada Post has a bldg on the Island AND delivers: increasingly Islanders give it their business. I hate to think how little service there will be in rural areas if USPS is privatized

>28 margd: Isn't it easier to launch orbital rockets from areas closer to the equator? So this might be Musk whispering in Trump's ear

>29 margd: Anyway merry Christmas or Xmas.

The punk rock and post punk of the late 70's is more my vibe but for this it's kind of like the old Joni Mitchell song Big yellow taxi---you don't know what you got till it's gone. It will disturb people for a while but that said people will get over it in time. We adapt to new situations in one way or another.

.....and we have bigger problems like climate.....like throwing all kinds of money and attention into murdering innocents. Like a two party political system that serves its donors and doesn't have time for anything else.

I suspect that the USPS will be harder to kill than you're imagining. The service is established in the Constitution, and while you could argue that that clause only says Congress has "the power" to establish post offices, I don't think any elected politician is going to go to any great lengths to make this case. What's the upside for them?
Someone as terminally stupid as Kash Patel might think that killing off federal agencies is an easy day's work, but that's just the measure of how hopelessly out of his depth the man is.

>31 lriley: We had those bigger problems last summer when you were pulling for the "uncommitted" effort to elect Trump. Are you having second thoughts now?

Yes a genocide enabler who went into the state of Michigan to canvas for voters with the daughter of a war criminal.

My current outlook on the state of American politics is kind of like this. In this last election there were two major party candidates. There are 100 Senators. There are 435 congressmen and women. I've whittled those 537 down to 2 that I would even consider voting for and they're not presidential candidates or senators. Practically the entirety of them are beholden to a foreign government and/or our military industrial complex. By the way I blocked your ass.

>33 lriley: Thank you. I always appreciate knowing that I have a dedicated reader.

Looking forward to seeing what excuses you come up with in about six months' time. I don't know what Netanyahu's going to do with the free hand that you helped to give him, but I'm guessing it's going to require you to come up with a lot of reasons why it's not your fault.

(obviously, you knew when you were making excuses for yourself back in the spring that electing Trump could only make things worse and that what you were doing could only help to elect Trump, so you'll still know that when things get really bad, but I have faith in your ability to rationalize your behavior - you've demonstrated it so many times already)

In early July the Lancet lowball estimated that the Israelis had killed 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the first 6/7 months of their murder campaign and as many 300,000. We are about 6 months on from then and the killing hasn't abated and at times has ramped up. The Lancet is not some fly by night medical journal. It's probably as respected a medical journal as there is in the world and it's gone past its 200th birthday. The United States.....the Biden administration have provided the bombs and much of the ammunition, the diplomatic cover for the Israelis to continue their genocidal war and the United States is complicit in all of the Israelis war crimes.

A breakdown of those Palestinians who have been murdered shows a concentration on the youngest. The highest % to age group 5 years old to 9, the second highest % to those aged 0 to 4 years and the third highest to the age group 10 years to 14. They've killed females to males in pretty much to equal numbers.

The Israelis are also expanding their territory in the the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors. They do this by knocking down all the buildings and flattening the rubble city block by city block. The Gaza Strip is only 25 miles long and a few miles wide and the Israelis are moving their ethnic cleansing campaign at a good clip. As is almost all Gaza's buildings are either reduced to rubble or gutted. The people (survivors) live in camps with no clean water, sanitation and are being systematically starved. The hospitals have been attacked over and over again and are not functional. There has been no resupply of equipment, medications, and other health care items pretty much since 2023. Doctors and nurses, journalists are routinely killed, arrested and tortured. Ambulances are targeted.

This is what Gaza looked like before October 2023:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMcPrjc7YVM

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyuDZ78ZfZw

What it looked like then is all rubble now. Many of those to be seen in either video are dead or maimed now. There are lots of children. Those of the children who aren't dead or maimed are almost certainly severely traumatized. Sometimes I watch Jon Elmer's clips of the Palestinian ongoing resistance on youtube's site for the Electronic Intifada. Elmer is a Canadian journalist who reads and speaks Arabic. He has some expertise in military tactics and weaponry. He shows clips of tanks, troop carriers and bulldozers getting hit by rockets and missiles and IDF soldiers being sniped and in most of them IDF soldiers either die or need medical evacuation. Because of YouTube's rules he can only show so much. He will tell viewers that if they want they can go to his page on X and see events in their entirety. I don't feel the need to do that. I really don't want to see people killed though I will say that many of these Israeli soldiers have very much earned their deaths. One of the main reasons I watch Elmer's clips is to see the blown apart landscape that once was what we see in the walking tour videos I posted above of what once was and is no longer and will never be again. I doubt sincerely there will be any return.....the only thing ahead for the population of Gaza is more death and maybe exile for some.

The Biden administration very much played a large role in the death and destruction that has happened here. Call it what you want it is still mass murder, it is still genocide, it is still war crime after war crime, it is still ethnic cleansing. Most Democratic Party leaders either quietly supported or actively cheered this on. Others did their best to ignore. I'm not talking about republican politicos here. I know what they are. Democrat politicos would have you believe though they are for human rights all over the planet and it's a lie and what has happened in Gaza proves it. I did not vote for any of them and I don't give a fuck. They didn't deserve to win back power. The democratic party is anathema. I would like to see both of the Republican and Democratic parties to die.

K above whines and whines about our November election but K does not really care whether he puts a war criminal back in the White House as long as it's not Donald Shitbird. K was willing to go along with the dementia addled genocidal maniac right up until the last second when it became all too apparent that he was unfit for anything. I think if K were to honestly look in the mirror he wouldn't like what he'd see but then again he'd have to look honestly and I'd guess that was beyond his capability.

>35 lriley: See, I knew you had it in you - already working out why it's everyone else's fault but yours. But let's stick with you for a bit. What I don't understand is whether you're arguing now that you preferred Trump to Biden or Harris, or that you would have preferred Biden or Harris to Trump, or whether you think it didn't matter.

Those are different positions, and you've taken them all at various times. What's your view right now? (And if you like, what's your basis for taking that view over the others?)

Denmark to boost Greenland's defence after Trump repeats controversial remarks seeking US ownership

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/25/denmark-to-boost-greenlands-defenc...

>28 margd: contd. Trump grabbing Canada and Greenland without consent (that sounds familiar) would have added "benefit" of busting up NATO?

Think about the reparations it would cost if he did seize others' territory, when some future decent Administration tried to make amends. Aiyiyi!

>37 2wonderY: Denmark has not confirmed, but its interest in purchasing the US was widely reported in X and Blue Sky, e.g.,

Annie @AnnieForTruth | 9:39 AM · Dec 25, 2024:
https://x.com/AnnieForTruth/status/1871928858238214406/photo/1

:D Good one, but Denmark and Canada (with its huge archipelago to the north) should keep in mind that the US under previous administrations has already claimed right to sail waters within 200 miles of Canadian coast. As Arctic melts, looks like northern countries and even those beyond (e.g., China) will lay claim to Arctic for navigation and mineral rights.

Interesting that the US's other interest is Panama Canal ...
---------------------------------------

Canada's Sovereignty over the Northwest Passage
Who really owns it?
Joel Fu and David Jiang | January 5, 2020
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f2e7934cab2148da8400af23021f0fa9

At Trump’s inauguration, pay-to-pray

https://religionnews.com/2024/12/23/amid-uncertainty-around-religion-at-trumps-i...

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly planning an interfaith prayer service the day before his inauguration, where participants can worship alongside the businessman and his wife, Melania.
But those who want to join need to weigh the price of prayer: Tickets to the service will be awarded only to those who donate at least $100,000 to Trump’s inaugural ceremonies, or who raise $200,000.

This is a useful story about how politics works: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/technology/trump-musk-immigration-h1b-visa.ht...