At work nobody talks about it, but I just had my physical and it was so nice that my PCP noted that we've elected a sociopath and things are really bot normal.
My organization just announced layoffs. I wasn't affected and I said that to my doctor, but her response was "not yet", meaning who knows what will happen to academic medical centers. It's not just the NIH indirects; it's also residency funding. She's at an FQCH, but I don't know if any of their funding was frozen.
Ogged, you are not alone in your thoughts about Kevin (both the ones you expressed). I also trust and hope that he'll recover well, and yes, I send his links around a lot. He has an ability to be infuriatingly right too often. And contra some, he's solidly progressive, so his ability to marshal facts and evidence is much appreciated.
FEMA pulled back 80 million from the NYC bank acct. jesus.
I think the only really hope of reining in Musk is to start trolling Trump. Start calling Musk president. Joke about how Trump is the weakest president in the history of the country because Musk is the real president. Etc. Maybe he's too senile to notice, but it should be possible to get under his skin.
Mildly good news: NIH turning the grant funding back on, obeying the court order, and irrespective of the indirect caps. Of course we'll have to see if they follow through.
1.2: I believe FQHCs are mostly funded by regular Medicare and Medicaid (at special rates in both cases), on top of a base of HRSA grants. Haven't heard of either of those declining.
5: I still think this could work, but the press conference yesterday where he sat placidly and let Musk chatter on in answer to the questions makes me wonder. It seems like it should be a huge blow to his pride, but he's sure not acting like it. Lends credence to ideas like (a) he is checked out and just ran to keep from being imprisoned, (b) his brain is working far less than ever, and (c) Musk is blackmailing him with something like, "you won the election because I rigged it for you with [technobabble] and I can tell the world." Not mutually exclusive.
Seeing Trump sign some of the EOs he's handed makes me think of a child filling out the maze on a place mat.
I still think this could work, but the press conference yesterday where he sat placidly and let Musk chatter on in answer to the questions makes me wonder.
Yeah, that press conference clarified some things for me. It seems like Trump truly is on board with the Elon stuff, for whatever reason(s).
Won't this weaken his hold on his voters? Visibly checked out cult leader seems unstable, or will propaganda support Musk now? He's terrible in front of a camera.
Weakened loyalty to the leader should (I'd think) have an effect, or are short-term gains in the next months sufficient for the needs of plutocracy and the future can just drift...
Hegseth now broadcasting Russian interests...
Won't this weaken his hold on his voters? Visibly checked out cult leader seems unstable,
Not until he is dead as doornail, unless there are ambitious underlings who will make it an issue.
I think 5 is right, and 8 made me laugh.
I know I'm getting played like a fiddle, but Trump as president of the Kennedy Center still hurts my brain.
Trump has never been interested in governing (except for tariffs and immigration). Musk is happy to take on the details. This is a partnership that could last. Or end tomorrow for some random reason.
Drum is often smart and always discusses issues in good faith. I think he says some really dumb stuff, but I read him religiously and without resentment when he gets it wrong. He doesn't pull Yglesias-style trolling shit, and his intentions and methods are good, even if his results occasionally fall short. I've given up on theodicy and karma, but damn, how awful for Drum. How sad.
Marshall is indispensible.
There's a whole bunch of our countrymen who think the Khmer Rouge had the right idea, and the Cultural Revolution was too soft on the enemy, i.e., educated people.
I've spent more time in pig barns and grain bins than most of the fuckers who think that.
That just makes you a bigger traitor.
I was just thinking yesterday about the Khmer Rouge executing people who wore glasses.
The pig barns were mostly new. Those smell much better.
"Won't this weaken his hold on his voters?"
What voters? He doesn't get to run again! Why should he care?
20: He'll find a way to say that he can because his 2 terms weren't consecutive.
The problem with atheism is that I never know what to do in situations like this. Crossing my fingers for Drum's recovery.
22: Have you tried enacting gun control laws?
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Whatever tenets, hankerings, or particular philosophical positions you hold, they cause you to be buddhaless and make you meet with saṃsāra.|>
Yeah, I've also been very worried about Drum. And I send out links to his stuff too for the same reason. I hope his congenital optimism is right this time
And let us not forget the wonderful week of confusion when Ogged sat in for him.
Jesus. https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-89/
That's awful news. Hoping he pulls through.
I came here just now after reading that. JFC.
Oh, man. Poor guy and his poor wife. He was so sensible for so long.
I am so sorry to hear about Kevin Drum. That second post is fucking eery.
I used to read him all the time when there was a liberal "blogosphere." But I haven't checked his site in years. Feeling sad and grieving that simpler time, as well.
Yes, this is really sad. I've been following his blog for over 20 years-- there were probably intervals that I wasn't checking it every week day or every other week day, but they didn't last long. He was never one to write much about his personal life, but he did share a lot about his medical conditions, so we've been watching his struggles with cancer for over a decade. And I suppose this is often how it ends -- the drugs that help against cancer leave the immune system compromised.
I checked Jabberwocking this morning out of habit; it's one of my daily reads, and feel sad again.
37 is completely right.
I hadn't read him for a while, but I did for so long it's really sad. I know from my dad's case that going on a ventilator not only means things are very bad but also makes it harder for them to improve.
So sad, stupid cancer.
Feels sad also as part of the long slow end of blogging as a community.
I am mad that Trump's presence invades even private ends.
I am mad that Trump's presence invades even private ends.
I had this same thought.
I actually found the final comment a touching and characteristic flourish from Drum. He generally doesn't ask for sympathy and I took that as saying, "whatever happens to me the world goes on and there will be plenty to do."
Drum seems like someone who can easily imagine the world without him in it -- though perhaps I'm projecting -- and I thought it was a nice touch.
The comment made me sad, because so many people die every day, and yet none of them are Donald Trump.
so sad re k drum, & personally hitting very uncomfortably close to my own heart as rfk is confirmed, & my own beloved fritz with his failing kidneys is cast adrift with his dwindling system amidst an ever increasing sea of patchily vaccinated people. not great!
The comment made me sad, because so many people die every day, and yet none of them are Donald Trump.
I keep feeling like this is the hail mary that rescues this nightmare. I might want it to be Musk, though. Maybe they can be riding in the same car, since they're not technically president and vice-president.
41, 42: Roberta died four days after Trump's first inauguration.
I've also been thinking of SEK, who posted from the hospital (maybe only at one of the other places).
Roberta died four days after Trump's first inauguration.
Oof. This was so sad. But I still smile when I remember her logging on here for the first time to tell you to come to bed.
By the way, did this happen?
I've been sad too; his site (wherever he's currently blogged) has been a constant from before I even first found Unfogged. Hopefully he'll rally, but this morning's message is bleak.
49: No, Keegan was already at college by then.
Sorry for Drum and his loved ones. I miss the old blogosphere too, but I also remember how it drove me crazy in ways that social media never managed to -- there was something about the preponderance of long-winded, well-intentioned idiots who would keep an argument going, and going, and going, that led me to feel that my attention was being abused in really unacceptable ways. You know you're just wasting time with dumb little hatpin fights on Twitter; you don't have to put your back into that at all. But I would lie awake composing responses to political blog posts in my head: it was truly just as stupid, but it somehow didn't feel that way. (Unfogged has not been like this for a long time, IMO.)
Saw the news and came here to commiserate. So fucking sad. And yes to 44 & 41.
But I would lie awake composing responses to political blog posts in my head
God, same. But I would do this for Twitter as well. The slightly different norms around responses on Bluesky have greatly reduced this for me. Once in awhile, but not often, and with less aggravation.
Hopefully this is better news: https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-90/
As I mentioned here (recently i think) my mother died shortly after the 2017 as well. and I am still saddened that our last coherent conversation was a brief on about Trump (Her: "I've been so out of it that I haven't read a newspaper, what's the idiot up to?" Me: "Idiocy.")
But then I am irked that I even care about that; and she was very political so a good chance our last conversation was going to be about something political anyway.
But then I find I am still saddened and enraged. So much thought and discussion time wasted on that motherfucker. Using the vaunted rodent* orgasm scale, just the degradation of people's mental space alone makes him a monster (not as great of one as Jimmy Carter. of course ...).
*I forget whether it is canonically mice or rats.
My dad died in March 2017. In February, just before it was certain he was dying, a nurse decided to give him a mini-mental to see if he was oriented. When asked to name the president, his response was "It's a mistake, but they elected this Trump guy." The nurse didn't give gin extra credit for understanding the big picture, so he failed the test by not knowing the date or where he was.
He also kicked a nurse to stop from going on some kind of breathing assist. Which wasn't as fun.
Maybe the nurse was a Republican though.
56 is good news. I hope that treatment works and that he's back home soon. I've got my fingers crossed.
Less positive update today: https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-91/
But apparently back today (Sunday) last night (Saturday):
https://jabberwocking.com/madness/
Speaking of the old blogosphere, anyone see this story about the founder of SCOTUSblog indicted for... well, for lots of fraud?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/tom-goldstein-scotusblog-poker-charges.html
No wonder blogging went away with all the money there was to be made. Ogged should return more often to blog his own secret life of high-stakes gambling, hookers, and blow.
Shockingly, the NY Mag story doesn't seem to have made SCOTUSblog's own "morning read" list for Friday.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/02/the-morning-read-for-friday-feb-14/
I'd lke to retract the snarky comment about SCOTUSblog since I see his wife still writes there a lot. What a shitty situation.
The risen Kdrum's post gets at something that has surprised me a bit this time round. Trump 2 is much more like Default Republicans but with Forum Drama than Trump 1 was. The things he is actually pursuing for more than a day are:
- nutso foreign policy
- freedom fries/WH solar panels gesturing
- searching USASpending.gov for "boobies" and holding beneficiaries of small grant programs up for mockery
- tariffs with non-USMCA/NAFTA countries
Things that didn't last or haven't happened:
- mass deportation
- annexing Greenland or Canada
- Mexico and Canada tariffs
The common factor of the first four is that it's very much stuff bog-standard Republicans do. (In fact it's even bipartisan - have a look at the list of William Proxmire's Golden Fleeces and tell me DOGE wasn't strongly inspired by that guy, whose heyday was a formative period for both Trump and Musk.) Partly this is just a recognition that the party is a rotten institution that became thoroughly radicalized in the early 90s and never came down, partly it's that the ambient level of drama in politics has been permanently turned up. Partly though I think the divorced rich guy faction around Trump has got the upper hand in courtier politics over the bomb throwing pseudo intellectual faction.
69 There's definitely an added groyper element, I guess that wasn't a thing last time (otoh, there's your forum drama, specifically 4chan). Some of the crazier stuff like Canada even goes back to paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan.
Haven't the Texas Rs had invading Panama on their platform since 1979 or something?
I'm sure they do but it was the Canada thing that really seemed like it was out of left-field. And crazy bugfuck nuts batshit insane too. Trump has done irreparable damage to our relationship with our single most important trading and security partner on account of some dementia related fever dream/toddler tantrum dominance display.
69: He did sign an order for steel tariffs and Canada is the major exporter of steel to the US. So he's def pursuing that.
I mean I think he keeps being thwarted in his anti-Canada goals because there's a clearer head or two (auto manufactures) saying not to damage the US' industry.
It won't last. Or maybe he'll just change his tune if we elect PP (now slightly less likely!)
73: Is it your sense that the Canadian patriotism we rare seeing right now will make Canada unwelcoming to US tourists? My dental hygienist was worried about that the other day. She's Ukrainian, by birth though, and has an Eastern European accent.
I worry a little bit about myself, though.
74: I don't think so. A lot of Canadians are quite conservative along similar lines to American Republicans so it's not like anti-2SLGBTQ feelings don't have roots here as well. As long as you don't start talking about how Canada is stealing from the US or revealing a misunderstanding of trade, you'll prob be fine.
60: an OT I know saw some family members of elderly patients ask physicians not to ask who the President was last time, because it agitated their family members so much.
75: I used to get in arguments with my mother-in-law about political stuff, because she's pretty conservative and completely emotional. She was opposed to adding dental care to OHIP, because "we can't afford it" and she seems to think that it's easy to get medical care in the US if you have good insurance. Tim grew up in Ontario, but his family is from Manitoba. His Dad was also conservative but less emotional and more open to facts. With my MIL, if her other son, the one with kids says something political, she is likely to agree with it. When Tim's Dad was alive, she would usually defer to him.
It's a good thing there's no one with acess to the White House and a financial incentive to damage bug three automakers.
77: Yes, my mother (and her family) are the same way. Didn't matter I spent over a decade in the US experiencing it first hand, I obviously didn't understand it as well as them. I remember having to tell my parents that even if I had good insurance, I was paying hundreds of dollars a month, as was my employer, and I still would have to pay for care including for emergencies.
More recently, I was talking to my parents, complaining about my week and ended with the fact my friends are being fired from their government jobs. My mom was shocked, then was like 'oh your US ones' and dismissed the whole thing. She's a lost cause and I really need to stop expecting otherwise.
My gf has legal residency in Mexico and is there for the month dealing with some tax and house maintenance stuff. She reports anti-gringo sentiment is up sharply and rising, unsurprisingly. She's of Indian descent and fluent in Spanish, so generally flies under the radar.
I went to the thing, but I have emotional difficulties with open earnestness and this is pretty earrnest.
I guess it's like church, stand in the back quietly.
Is it the real Vikram from Duolingo?
If I were a smoker this would be like Friday night standing outside the bar.
Well, no. That's her cousin Vikram from Goa.
From what I can tell, there seem to be several Vikrams about.
84: Was this one that started at the Fed building and ended up at City/ County?
We were there but did not see you and/or recognize you. Lots of bundled up people, however.
I do wish they had advertised the destination better, as other family members came late and never really figured out where to go.
I went to the one in Squirrel Hill, because it was closer.
I am foregrounded in one of these pics on bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/bdt13.bsky.social/post/3lifhqj2k4k2z
I see that. I decided downtown was kind of far, but they looked bigger than the Squirrel Hill one.
We had a good crowd, but it was weirdly an entirely different crowd than the one that came out on Saturday. That crowd was young, this one was old. It would be nice if we could get the youngs and the olds out at the same time.
I would bet that the young people are more likely to have jobs that do not observe George Washington's birthday.
I went to the Anchorage one. It started fairly small but eventually filled up both sides of the street for the whole block in front of City Hall. Lots of honks from passing drivers, including a few big trucks. Definitely an older crowd. I hadn't been planning on attending but I decided at the last minute to go and I'm glad I did.
Four days since KD's last (surprise) post. I assume if anyone knew anything they would post, but it's ominous.
My experience was similar to 99, and I've also been worried about KD lately.
Latest update, for those who haven't been following KD's blog, generally positive news: https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-95/
Hey, thanks. I was wondering, but forgot to look.
