This week in stupid was especially stupid.  Here, in no particular order, are some jewels.

Pete Hegseth’s brilliant defense department banned references to the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that carried the Hiroshima bomb because it was just so GAY…

The acting director of the Social Security Administration stupidly cancelled the Enumeration at Birth contract with a provider that allowed hospitals in the State of Maine to register newborns as has been done for decades.  The change required parents to go to a local federal building to physically obtain the number for their child.  After an uproar, the dumbass rescinded the order and restored the contract.

Trump’s on again, off again tariff threats and lies have roiled financial and multiple markets, including dairy, lumber, steel, aluminum industries.  Trump has been jerking both Canada and Mexico around, but Doug Ford, Premier of the Province of Ontario is having none of it.  Ottawa provides electric power to the states of Minnesota, Michigan, and New York.  I’ll refrain for now the wisdom of states not having enough locally generated power to serve their own residents, but that is a subject for a later discussion.  Ford is sick of Trump’s bullshit and has raised the price of power sent over the border by 25% and will keep that surcharge on until Trump stops threatening Canada.  He’s also ordered 100% of US alcoholic beverages off of all shelves.  The targets of Ford’s actions are specifically aimed at states that voted for Trump in 2024.

Meanwhile Trump is trying to turn up the heat on Canada.  His talk of “Governor Trudeau” has gone from joke to deadly serious.  Trump is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the country including trade, water sharing arrangements, and even the actual fucking border.  He has told Trudeau that he’s going to redraw the border between the US and Canada, and Canadians have finally figured out that Trump is trying to collapse their economy, forcing them to accept statehood.

Trump’s ever shifting and contradictions are not just him being a lunatic.  His thugs are way smarter than him, and they are roiling local and international markets and diplomatic relationship.  The chaos is by design, and the same strategy followed by Putin, making truth unknowable and keeping everyone off balance and under stress.  It’s Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy through and through.  And it’s working.

The only way to fight Trump is to stay engaged, stay fearless, and call bullshit bullshit, all the time, every time.

Looking back at history, Hitler went from newly elected Chancellor to absolute dictator over Germany in 53 days in early 1933.  After ranting during his campaigns about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of Germans, Hitler also promised to “drain the swamp” of the Reichstag.  Sound familiar?  After being appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg, he immediately began consolidating power in the Reichstag to pass a law that nullified the German constitution and accrued power to himself.  He called for new Reichstag elections, but finally decided that the only way to control the body was to ban the Communist Party, Social Democrats, and Jews.  By doing this, holding only 37% of the seats in the Reichstag, he took control and passed the “empowering” law that destroyed the German constitutional government.  He then started killing political opponents and declaring war on nearby countries.

This morning, fucking Donald Trump blamed Zelenskyy for Russia invading Ukraine, lied about Zelenskyy’s polling and called him a “dictator”.  This is right down the middle with Hitler, using the same language, the same accusations.  If the goddam Republicans don’t get off their fat asses and start doing their fucking jobs, this is going to be over, and we’ll start seeing bodies in the streets.  At this point Europe has no choice but to abandon the US as an ally and go it alone.

All the red lights continue to flash and now the sirens are sounding.  Hey John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, where the fuck are you?  Are you going to do anything besides kiss Trump’s ass?

In the early hours this morning a federal judge FINALLY took a definitive step to stop Elon Musk and his merry band of hackers rifling through your private financial data at the US Treasury. In his late night ruling, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer, cited, “the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” and order the destruction of ALL downloaded data taken since January 20.

The ruling comes from a lawsuit filed by a consortium of 19 states attorneys general lead by NY AG Letitia James (yes, THAT Letitia James).  A hearing is scheduled for February 14 to further hear the suit and responses.

After two weeks of Musk and his Tech Boys rampaging through the federal bureaucracy, the courts have finally started pulling on the reins.  Now two judges have poo-pooed Trump’s bullshit natural born executive order, and another judge today put a halt to Musk’s “Fork in the Road” demand until a hearing on Monday.  Last night, DOJ agreed to “read only” access for two “special employees” and a judge is considering that settlement now.  In the meantime, USAID remains illegal shuttered with civil servants locked out and thousands stranded in countries all over the world.

Let’s be clear, though – what Musk is doing is illegal as shit, outside of any Congressional oversight.  He’s pushing longstanding employees out, threatening others, and has even locked out thousands of employees.  He’s using the same tactics he used at Xitter, Twitter converted to X, pronounced “shitter”.  His well known tactic is to break everything, then go back and fix it later.  That’s fine when you have a private company, but when you’re fucking with 340 million Americans’ lives, the rules are, or goddam sure better be, different.

Worse, the DOJ, now under Trump acolyte, Pam Bondi, is now completely weaponized, and she’s even calling the attorneys “Trump attorneys” which the most certainly are not.  She issued a memo today announcing a plan to “root out corruption” which is translated to “make the DOJ corrupt as hell“.  So a coup is underway, stealing the US government from under the noses of the American people and none of the guardrails are even left standing.

The wheels of justice are starting turn, though too slow and too late.  The problem I see, though, is when the courts rule against Trump/Musk, (which they will) how are those orders going to be enforced against them?  It’s damn sure not the DOJ or FBI, not the Congress, and not the SCOTUS.  We are entering an absolutely lawless age in the use where the Felon is running the prison, and all the guards work for him.  This is going to take millions of people to stop and that’s going to require courage.

Pissed off at Joe Biden’s support for Israel after the attack by Hamas, Arab Americans broadly supported Trump in 2024 and were a major reason that he won Michigan.  These Arab Americans voted for Trump even though he has a terrible record with Palestinian issues and even has riffed about how Gaza would make a great seaside resort.  They ignored the facts, voted for Trump, and guess what he did for them?  He announced today that the US would “take over” Gaza and that the Palestinians should move to an unnamed new “beautiful land”.  He said that the US would turn Gaza into “the Rivera of the Middle East.”

No one should be surprised.  Trump has been saying what he would do.  Arab Americans, with heads firmly up asses, voted Trump or stayed home to send Biden a message.  Well, they sure showed him, and contributed to fucking over their own people for generations, if not forever.  After Trump’s announcement, neighboring Arab nations said no to this plan; Trump responded by wiggling his tiny tallywhacker at them, telling them to go pound sand.  Literally.  And I’m sure he’s planning on using his new shiny sovereign wealth fund to use US taxpayer money to build it.

So, thanks Arab Americans, you sure showed Joe, and in the process helped to fuck over the US AND the Middle East, all at once.

Installing sycophants, weirdos, and Russian assets to cabinet positions with a compliant Senate doing zero to stop it. Threatening career civil servants. Purging the FBI, installing loyalists. Painting over core values of federal law enforcement.  Weaponizing the US bureaucracy while decrying weaponization.  Blaming Biden and Obama for everything.  All of these terrible actions are Trump’s retribution for the federal government prosecuting him for the crimes he committed.  As bad as that is, though, that’s not the big problem.  The big problem is Elon Musk.

You know Musk as the CEO of SpaceX, which he founded, and Tesla, which he did not.   He took over Tesla through a series of stock buys which gave him control.  The story is interesting that you can read about here, but not the subject for this piece.  Prior to these two ventures, Musk founded X.com (not Twitter) which was a fledgling payment platform that merged with Confinity, another payment platform founded in part by Peter Thiel (yes, THAT Peter Thiel) in March of 2000.  The combined company took on the X.com name (Musk has always been obsessed with X) with him as CEO.  In September of that year, Thiel lead a coup against Musk and ousted him from the company.  Even back then, Musk was infamous for being a very difficult and unpredictable.

Musk has also been obsessed with payment platforms for decades, and when he bought Twitter and renamed it X, he announced his intent to convert into a super PayPal for payments.  And just so you know, just a couple of days ago, Musk unveiled another a global payment platform as part of X called X Money.  Why do I mention this?  It’s no coincidence that over the last few days Musk has taken control of both the Office of Personnel Management computer systems and the US Treasury payment systems.  When given control, he then locked out career civil servants from the system.  It’s also no coincidence that a 30 plus year Treasury leader, David Lebryk, suddenly retired on Friday, apparently over a conflict with Musk over the payments system.

So why is Trump handing US government data and payment systems over to Musk?  That’s easy.  It’s my strong belief that with Trump’s acquiescence, Musk intends to privatize all data and payments systems and roll them into X Money, putting himself alone in control of the largest economy on the planet.  That’s not an exaggeration.  All the red lights are flashing, and it’s obvious, or should be obvious, even to the most casual observer.

Let’s be clear…Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about actual governing.  All he wants is the trappings, the fawning, the power, Air Force One repainted, and self glorification.  If he has a guy like Musk doing the dirty work, all the happier he is, as long as the FBI and DOJ are punishing his enemies.  And he knows if his guy is controlling ALL THE MONEY, he can stay in control and elections won’t matter.

You can call me crazy, but I believe this is where we’re going.  If Musk gets away with this, and I believe we’re in severe danger of that, we as a people are FUCKED, and it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible to get unfucked, Especially with the spineless, heartless, and brainless leadership in Congress and the packed courts.  There’s no legal precedent for this, and no statutory structure that’s robust enough to stop it, since laws don’t mean a goddam thing to Trump, Musk, and the rest of the American Gestapo.

God help the United States of America, what’s left of it.