Thursday, February 27, 2025
postponed
The launch of Starship #8 has been delayed once again, now scheduled for Monday, March 3. Is Musk too busy in Washington to pay enough attention to what is happening at Boca Chica? Losing his edge? Maybe this asshole is finally spreading himself too thinly. The last rocket, Starship 7, exploded over the Turks and Caicos. Since Starship has been launching, about half of the rockets have exploded. Is this a good record? If he expects a lot of people to want to go to Mars on one of his rockets, I think he has to demonstrate himself that they are safe. All aboard, Elon!
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower has been on the "right side" his entire life. I have to say it's a good thing to see some Republicans finally having an "aha" moment, or a "WTF" is Trump doing? moment. We tried to tell them repeatedly that Trump is a liar, a conman, and a thief, but I guess many people have to have their own ox gored before they will finally wake the fuck up. Let's hope it's not too late.
Ironically, Trump's Coup Attempt Is Uniting Americans to Fight for Their Common Good
By Jim Hightower
The Trump-Musk administration thought they could just stomp on us and our Constitution, replacing democracy with a MAGA monarchy. But they had not reckoned with one fearsome opponent: Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The Senate's top Democrat says he's getting "furious" about the GOP's oligarchic coup attempt. Wow, he might even fire off one of his strongly worded letters to the White House! So far, though, the Democratic "leader" is meekly urging a horrified public to just weather the storm, predicting that, "Trump will screw up."
Hello, Chuck — history clearly teaches that to fight totalitarianism, you actually have to ... fight.
People are asking: Why the hell is the party's top leadership AWOL? The good news is grassroots people themselves — the little-d democrats — have taken to the streets, leading the charge to STOP this plutocratic, autocratic power grab. So, "leaders" ought to at least follow! All Democratic national officials (including former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden) should come out and stand together, demonstrating solidarity with the majority of Americans fighting this far-right, un-American assault by rampaging billionaires.
Most encouraging is the fact that workaday people — in red states as well as blue — are erupting in spontaneous protests and unity actions. Ironically, Don & Elon's self-serving plutocratic thuggery is rallying workers, veterans, schoolchildren, seniors, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, main street businesses — and, well, Americans — against them! The GOP assault on all of us reveals that we commoners really are in this together, and it will take each of us to defend the Common Good for one and all.
This is Jim Hightower saying to get involved in some of the actions in your area. Check out the resources we've listed at jimhightower.substack.com.
GUESS WHAT? HURRICANES AND WILDFIRES DON'T HAVE POLITICAL PREFERENCES
May I just say that the stupidest, most despicable, most self-defeating political "tactic" in our present hyper-partisan climate is the accusation that victims of today's horrific wildfires, floods and such are getting what they deserve because of their political views.
Start with this month's catastrophic floods in Appalachia. If you've never had a river gushing into your home and town, you can't imagine the destruction, muck, stench, injuries, death and despair. Yet, various numbskulls who profess to be progressive have posted taunts online, chortling that these devastated victims are red-state, small-government Trump voters who don't deserve the government's helping hand in their time of dire need.
Likewise, right-wing MAGA squads, including some GOP congress critters, routinely jeer at wildfire victims in blue states and cities, gloating that hellfire is righteous punishment for "ungodly" people who oppose Trump's "divine mission."
Hello — this is not politics, it's disgraceful inhumanity. And those who engage in it are skuzz insults to America's democratic ideals of the Common Good.
Happily, though, even as some of our highest officials spew divisive and violent political rhetoric, the ingrained ethic in practically every community is to rush to the aid of anyone and everyone in times of disaster. I saw this up close when Hurricane Harvey slammed Houston in 2017. Washington officials played politics for weeks as the city was drowning — but hundreds of working people showed up from all over, bringing their small boats and power tools to organize ad hoc rescue teams, not asking anyone their party affiliation.
This is Jim Hightower saying ... That's our truest selves — and it's why it's essential to squash the malignant ethic of anyone who tries to pervert fundamental humanity into their red-blue morass.
To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Boca Chica
More Perfect Union/The Class Room has produced a 20 minute documentary on SpaceX at Boca Chica in deep South Texas. It has some new info you may not be aware of.
Monday, February 17, 2025
they are evil
Due to a confluence of events, we have decided now is the time to sell our home on South Padre Island and move inland. With everything going on, namely Trump and Musk, this is probably not the greatest time to put our house on the market. Interest rates are still high too, which will whittle down the number of potential buyers. The wife and I are getting up there in years, and this big house has become too much to handle. The things involved in getting it ready to be on the market are taking up a ton of time, so my posts might slow down even further.
We both feel the need to vacate the island before Musk is able to increase the "cadence" of SpaceX launches from the current 1 every 6-8 weeks to 1 every other week. I see the "cracks in," and the writing on, the wall, and they will get worse with each launch. Musk is being given anything and everything he wants here in Texas, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, as long as the GOP controls Texas.
by The Rude Pundit
Feb 16, 2025
"Evil" is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like "The cruelty is the point," but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a few Republicans who still had souls and spines. The cruelty had no real ideology behind it, just the sheer deranged pleasure of hurting people. Systematic, planned cruelty with a goal of hurting everyone who ever opposed you and your ideology? That's evil. We don't want to think that we are confronting evil now because it seems melodramatic and frankly unfathomable. If we have leaders who keep acting in ways that are evil, as in directly contrary to any concept of "good," then we need to acknowledge that we are in an evil country living through an evil age.
I just can't think of any other clearer way to describe what the Trump/Musk administration has done in this first month of its four-year (minimum) reign of terror. We want them to be stupid, and we need to think of them as incompetent, like when Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired 300 workers from the National Nuclear Security Administration because they didn't understand that those workers are responsible for the safety of our nuclear arsenal, not a bunch of hippies inhibiting the nuclear power industry or whatever the hell they believed, and now they're scrambling to rehire them. But stupidity and incompetence lets them off the hook to an extent in a "they know not what they do" kind of way. Fuck that.
These motherfuckers know exactly what they're doing. They are seeking to undermine the functioning of the federal government, getting rid of any checks on the power of the president and wanting to privatize much of its work, in order to make the nation a de facto autocracy that exists for the benefit of a few wealthy patrons, with the population kept in line by an enforced Christian nationalist morality. In other words, Trump and his enablers are acting like just about every fucking totalitarian regime in history. And its goal is to harm anyone or any idea that opposes their power, from entire institutions and populations and on down to the lowest-level individual bureaucrat who didn't pledge their loyalty. It is a kind of coup, a willful abandonment of the protections of the Constitution while pretending to save the country from crises that simply don't exist.
I don't know how you describe the actions the administration has inflicted on the country in another way that makes sense. You have to remember that anything they say about why they're doing this gutting of the workforce is nonsense, not only in the amount of money DOGE and Musk claim they are saving, but also in the context of a proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut, which is something like 16 times the salaries of the entire federal workforce. If you fire a couple hundred thousand people who are doing well the jobs they were hired for, completely decimating their finances and upending they're lives and that doesn't help anyone else, that's evil shit.
No matter where you go, evil is at play. Firing people involved in the prevention of bird flu and other viruses. Firing those trying to find a cure for cancer. Freezing and eliminating funding for USAID, which helps people in poorer countries survive diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and more. The firing of thousands of workers at the Forest Service and national parks. And so very much more. It's not just about the employees themselves, many of whom have been put through hell in the last couple of weeks, but it's about all the people who will be harmed and will die because of these cuts.
And this isn't even getting into the disappearing of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to countries where they have no connection; or the proposed complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so the United States can build some resorts; or the Justice Department's attack on the rule of law in the Eric Adams case; or the move to erase the existence of transgender people' or the unhinged attack on anything that supports non-whites or women as "DEI," which, we should all be reminded, means "diversity, equity, and inclusion," as if those aspirational ideas are bad. Or a thousand other things that I could list and that I'm sure you thought of, all, all, all with a goal to directly harm people or force them to kowtow to Trump and Musk (or, really, Musk because Trump is just his fucking poodle now). I mean, this is some supervillain shit going on right now.
"Evil" provides us with a way of framing this in the easy, Manichean way that most people prefer to view the world. I acknowledge it's got a religious sound to it. That's okay. That helps. It's an explanation that needs no elaboration. As a term it has potency because it gives the opposition a moral dynamic: we're fighting against evil. I also think that it's a way of making those who voted for Trump to articulate the way they feel like he's fucked them over (and, I know, it's a small percentage who might actually pull their heads of his voluminous ass in order to breathe the fresh air of reality). And it gives us a way to label the people who do Trump and Musk's bidding. They're not just assholes bro-coding us to the apocalypse. They're evil assholes who want to see the rest of us hurting.
It also forces us to ask questions to anyone who supports them: What actual good has been done? Can you tell us one thing that's been accomplished that makes your life better or easier? What is being proposed that would make your life better or easier? Because the answer across the board is "Not a goddamn thing."
They are fucking up the lives of Americans. They are driving people to despair. I have said that I believe the real goal here is to provoke a violent response from a group or individuals, giving Trump the chance to declare martial law and just have his way with us as surely as if he were keeping us chained to a wall. We are in the midst of evil, awaiting to see what other evil will occur.
And now we need to respond as if evil motherfuckers have taken over our occasionally decent nation. Call it out as evil, protest, and kick your members of Congress in the ass. The time to act is now while we're still allowed to act.
"Evil" is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like "The cruelty is the point," but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a few Republicans who still had souls and spines. The cruelty had no real ideology behind it, just the sheer deranged pleasure of hurting people. Systematic, planned cruelty with a goal of hurting everyone who ever opposed you and your ideology? That's evil. We don't want to think that we are confronting evil now because it seems melodramatic and frankly unfathomable. If we have leaders who keep acting in ways that are evil, as in directly contrary to any concept of "good," then we need to acknowledge that we are in an evil country living through an evil age.
I just can't think of any other clearer way to describe what the Trump/Musk administration has done in this first month of its four-year (minimum) reign of terror. We want them to be stupid, and we need to think of them as incompetent, like when Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired 300 workers from the National Nuclear Security Administration because they didn't understand that those workers are responsible for the safety of our nuclear arsenal, not a bunch of hippies inhibiting the nuclear power industry or whatever the hell they believed, and now they're scrambling to rehire them. But stupidity and incompetence lets them off the hook to an extent in a "they know not what they do" kind of way. Fuck that.
These motherfuckers know exactly what they're doing. They are seeking to undermine the functioning of the federal government, getting rid of any checks on the power of the president and wanting to privatize much of its work, in order to make the nation a de facto autocracy that exists for the benefit of a few wealthy patrons, with the population kept in line by an enforced Christian nationalist morality. In other words, Trump and his enablers are acting like just about every fucking totalitarian regime in history. And its goal is to harm anyone or any idea that opposes their power, from entire institutions and populations and on down to the lowest-level individual bureaucrat who didn't pledge their loyalty. It is a kind of coup, a willful abandonment of the protections of the Constitution while pretending to save the country from crises that simply don't exist.
I don't know how you describe the actions the administration has inflicted on the country in another way that makes sense. You have to remember that anything they say about why they're doing this gutting of the workforce is nonsense, not only in the amount of money DOGE and Musk claim they are saving, but also in the context of a proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut, which is something like 16 times the salaries of the entire federal workforce. If you fire a couple hundred thousand people who are doing well the jobs they were hired for, completely decimating their finances and upending they're lives and that doesn't help anyone else, that's evil shit.
No matter where you go, evil is at play. Firing people involved in the prevention of bird flu and other viruses. Firing those trying to find a cure for cancer. Freezing and eliminating funding for USAID, which helps people in poorer countries survive diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and more. The firing of thousands of workers at the Forest Service and national parks. And so very much more. It's not just about the employees themselves, many of whom have been put through hell in the last couple of weeks, but it's about all the people who will be harmed and will die because of these cuts.
And this isn't even getting into the disappearing of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to countries where they have no connection; or the proposed complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so the United States can build some resorts; or the Justice Department's attack on the rule of law in the Eric Adams case; or the move to erase the existence of transgender people' or the unhinged attack on anything that supports non-whites or women as "DEI," which, we should all be reminded, means "diversity, equity, and inclusion," as if those aspirational ideas are bad. Or a thousand other things that I could list and that I'm sure you thought of, all, all, all with a goal to directly harm people or force them to kowtow to Trump and Musk (or, really, Musk because Trump is just his fucking poodle now). I mean, this is some supervillain shit going on right now.
"Evil" provides us with a way of framing this in the easy, Manichean way that most people prefer to view the world. I acknowledge it's got a religious sound to it. That's okay. That helps. It's an explanation that needs no elaboration. As a term it has potency because it gives the opposition a moral dynamic: we're fighting against evil. I also think that it's a way of making those who voted for Trump to articulate the way they feel like he's fucked them over (and, I know, it's a small percentage who might actually pull their heads of his voluminous ass in order to breathe the fresh air of reality). And it gives us a way to label the people who do Trump and Musk's bidding. They're not just assholes bro-coding us to the apocalypse. They're evil assholes who want to see the rest of us hurting.
It also forces us to ask questions to anyone who supports them: What actual good has been done? Can you tell us one thing that's been accomplished that makes your life better or easier? What is being proposed that would make your life better or easier? Because the answer across the board is "Not a goddamn thing."
They are fucking up the lives of Americans. They are driving people to despair. I have said that I believe the real goal here is to provoke a violent response from a group or individuals, giving Trump the chance to declare martial law and just have his way with us as surely as if he were keeping us chained to a wall. We are in the midst of evil, awaiting to see what other evil will occur.
And now we need to respond as if evil motherfuckers have taken over our occasionally decent nation. Call it out as evil, protest, and kick your members of Congress in the ass. The time to act is now while we're still allowed to act.
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remember
deja vu
indeed
Delete Fox "News"
Probably
