Baffled European

Category: Corruption

  • Nonsense summary

    There’s been an outbreak of e-coli in Florida caused by people drinking raw milk. More cancellations of vaccine and other medical research as well.

    Nebraska is suffering a deep recession, with a 6% contraction in the economy this year so far.

    The Ford Motor Company posted a loss in Q2 of this year. They blame the tariffs, which are expected to cost the company $2billion this year.

    The price of everything is going up, except for eggs. These tariffs are biting.

    Bad weather and people are losing their homes and livelihoods because of storm damage. FEMA shrugs and ignores this. People need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Small government is the future.

    Except when it comes to racism. The immigration mania continues, there’s no way to stop it now.

    Amazingly, the Epstein stuff is still going on. Epstein’s greatest friend has not been able to shake away the story and people are asking questions.

    I’ve been away from this blog for the last month. I simply haven’t had the patience or enthusiasm to follow the experiment going on over in the USA. It’s not that it takes that much time, just that it is greater than zero and therefore more than I’m prepared to waste on watching a convicted fraudster steal hundreds of millions from his adoring followers. It’s all variations on illegal and inhumane stuff. They are inventive, but it gets to be too much.

  • A white house in a red square

    This might be counted as good news, but for the fact that it is simply undoing an obvious wrong by the government. There was in edict that trans people must have their birth name and gender on their passports. This has been overturned. It is now once again possible for trans people to get a passport with their legal, chosen name, rather than a government mandated name.

    All this name stuff highlights a few inconsistencies. The birth name of the Vice President is “James Donald Bowman”, but he changed this to “James David Vance”. Should he be forced to readopt his birth name? I guess not.

    More concerning is the case of Sergio Gor, the man in charge of appointing and vetting all White House personnel. His birth name is Sergio Gorokhovsky. He claims to be from Malta, but was definitely not born there. His keeps his actual birthplace a secret, but he does confirm it is not Russia. OK. However, being born in 1986, the big happy family that was the USSR still existed. Could that be the “not Russia” that he is talking about?

    At any rate, he has not been vetted for his position and refuses to cooperate with security checks. An imposition, considering all the money he paid over the years to get the job. At the same time, thousands of trans soldiers are being discharged with a black mark on their record, implying they are a security risk.

    There is something very wrong here.

  • I always fill my ballroom

    The success of stopping ICE from hassling agricultural and hotel workers only lasted a couple of days before being reversed. Also by presidential decree. The strong and decisive leader just keeps being pushed around by everybody around him. Maybe he doesn’t even remember what he ordered yesterday anymore.

    It’s total chaos. There’s not even any pretence at order or consistency. These orders are backed up with threats of violence for anybody who doesn’t comply with whatever the regime is demanding at this precise second.

    But there are happier matters to report. When he’s not off playing golf, the president is tweeting deranged nonsense about the lovely new flagpoles he’s had installed in the White House garden.

    That’s just the first step in his improvements. He’s getting rid of Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and having it paved over to form a patio. Apparently, the grass causes a problem for women wearing high heels. It’s almost as if he’s a feminist, aside from that rape he did.

    Next up is a magnificent, beautiful new ballroom to be built in the grounds of the White House. Somehow this is going to cost a staggering $100million. I’m guessing that for once in his life, he’s not using cheap non-unionised labour, sub-standard building materials and flouting safety regulations at every step.

    Luckily, he can get away with this in a period of peace and stability, like what we have now.

  • Forgive me, godfather

    Typically, my complaint about closing Dupont Circle to spoil the pride celebrations only lasted one day. It will remain open. As compensation, Pete Hegseth has personally ordered the USNS Harvey Milk to be renamed because woke. He deliberately chose pride month to do it. It’s bad luck to rename a ship, Pete, everybody knows that.

    Since I’m looking for forgiveness, let’s see how this works in the USA.

    About 1500 people have been pardoned for their role in the 6th Jan 2021 uprising. Releasing a group of convicted traitors is supposed to lead to “national reconciliation”, whatever. Corruption and bribery cover most of the rest.

    Dread Pirate Roberts stands out. He’s been a folk hero to the Bitcoiners since before he was unmasked – the tech bros must have been pushing for his release. Once you’ve established that Mexico and Canada are responsible for all the drugs in your country, Ulbricht must just have been some helpless innocent, caught in the middle of it all. And such a visionary.

    It’s striking, the way they seem to regard all of these convictions as being political in some way. That somebody is being convicted for being maga rather than say, for stealing lots of money or beating up a policeman.

    “No MAGA left behind,” says Ed Martin. He’s the one who reviews pardons and then puts a piece of paper in front of the president to sign. He’s got a blank cheque, hasn’t he?

  • Tied up in blockchains

    Is cryptocurrency inherently fraudulent, or is that simply the way it has turned out? It is useless for any everyday task and indeed hostile to normal users. You got an elderly relative who struggles with online banking? Not only will they not understand how to set up and use a wallet, they also won’t understand how they suddenly lost all their coin. Or how somebody managed to steal it all.

    It’s no accident that the convicted fraudster should cash in on this scam himself. After all, it’s not so long ago that he was bilking the gullible with a set of NFTs (remember them?). Apparently, 40% of his wealth comes from the two coins he launched earlier this year. The value of both has collapsed, that’s no problem. The point of them was to transfer money from fools to the fraudster, and that has happened. The biggest “investors” in this scam have earned direct access to the president.

    The aim is now to tie various coins – including those from the president – to the US dollar. This is driven by the greed and corruption of the government, as well as the subservient Republican party. It will happen because some Democrats are fascinated by this shiny thing and think it is the future somehow.

    It’s as if the whole establishment of the USA is determined to destroy the country by every means possible. I don’t understand why so many are so enthusiastic about this project.

  • Long term planning not possible

    It was supposed to be 90 days. After the markets started trashing the liberation day taxes, the fool who raised them announced a 90 day break so that negotiations could take place. Now, just over a month later, he gets bored, or Ron Vara gets a word in when Bessant isn’t around, and arbitrarily raises import tariffs from the EU to 50%.

    All the old favourites were there. Made up figures. Attempts to divide the EU. Whining that the EU was set up to screw the USA. And still no idea of what the USA is supposed to achieve in any deal.

    Markets were in turmoil of course. The dollar also fell as a result, although Bessant helpfully told us all it wasn’t the dollar that was falling, merely that all other currencies were rising. Scott my boy, you’re supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but I think we should have a talk about these things.

    If past experience is anything to go by, this will cause a lot of short term pain. Then there will be a triumphal announcement of some amazing deal, before quietly climbing down on basically everything. Only the insiders around him shorting the markets are winners in his corrupt system.

    This is the cost of having a ruler who has massive power but zero understanding of anything. The whole of the US establishment seems to be quite content with the random damage he is causing.

  • Cancelling freedom of speech

    Two years ago, a group called Media Matters produced a report showing how far right messages on Twitter were appearing next to adverts for big corporations such as Apple, IBM and so on.

    Stalwart defender of free speech Elon Musk immediately sued. At the same time, he released an explanation of what happened and how. It seems his motivation was to show that this chain of events was so unlikely, Media Matters was wrong to make the claim. All he did was confirm the original claims. There should be no grounds for legal action, but Musk has continued to harass the group ever since.

    Media Matters is now being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for breaching federal regulations. The FTC itself is controlled by Republicans, following the dismissal of Democrat commissioners by the president earlier this year. It is the latest government agency to be turned against opponents who dare to question the rulers.

    Kristie Noem escalated her ongoing war with Harvard last week by revoking its ability to enrol foreign students. She said that all 6800 foreign students will need to find another university. All sorts of paranoid rubbish about Harvard enabling terrorism and antisemitism. Usual authoritarian lies.

    Harvard quickly got an injunction to overturn this abuse of government power. This was so fast, they had evidently prepared for a predictable attack. Additionally, they have announced free online courses so people can learn about the US government, civic politics, and constitutional matters. They are not powerless.

  • It’s just not cricket

    Cricket has “laws” rather than rules, the terminology reflecting the 18th century when the game was codified. In order for a batter to be given “out”, two things must happen: the fielding side must appeal; and the umpire must give the batter out.

    In principle then, a batter can be cleanly bowled, stumps and bails strewn all over the place. But if the fielders simply pick up the wreckage and reassemble the wicket, play continues – whatever the umpire might think. It is also possible that they appeal, but the umpire smiles, hands in pocket. The captain of the fielding team can even be invited to withdraw an appeal.

    We find ourselves in such a position in the USA. The president has accepted a massive bribe from Qatar. A Boeing 747, laden with bling and listening devices, an estimated value of $400m. The constitution is clear on this point – it explicitly mentions bribery (alongside treason) as grounds for impeachment.

    The president himself doesn’t know if he is supposed to uphold the constitution. The Republicans in Congress won’t express an opinion on the matter either – they are too busy inventing pseudo-legalistic sophistry to excuse this blatant corruption. They will do nothing. Should it reach the Supreme Court, they will slice and dice the question, before dismissing it.

    I have criticised the US constitution as being no longer fit for its purpose. However, when all responsible people ignore every rule, law and limitation, no imaginable constitution can compensate. Game Over.

  • Management

    When it was introduced, Tesla claimed a ten year waiting list for the Cybertruck. This was based on preorders, which disappeared rapidly as the problems with the vehicle became clear. Tesla is now stockpiling Cybertrucks, with an estimated six months inventory parked in fields, unsold. Heavy discounting, attractive specifications, nothing works – nobody wants to buy them. It’s too expensive to close the factory, so they continue to produce them. The stockpile grows.

    Intergalactic superbrain and 4D chess grandmaster Elon Musk is the man responsible for this situation. Of course, he is also the man charged with raising the efficiency of the US government. Let’s take a quick look at how that’s been progressing.

    The head of FEMA was sacked yesterday and has been replaced by another lackey. He should have a good four or five weeks to get his feet under the desk before the first hurricane.

    All 37 divisions of the National Science Foundation are being abolished. The aim is to give more political control over the remains of what science is being conducted.

    The head librarian has been fired. She was also responsible for the Copyright Office and so stood in the way of the various AI machines trying to steal other people’s work.

    National parks are being hit with another round of layoffs, the science directorates being disproportionately hit. The remainder is subject to crippling bureaucracy and micromanagement.

    There’s more. Thank goodness they have such a gifted manager.

  • Rubber stamp

    Congress doesn’t have much to do these days. Mainly it is a forum for Republicans to coo over their dictator, while Democrats cluck disapprovingly, writing their strongly worded letters.

    It has only passed six laws in the first hundred days. The mob isn’t particularly interested in new laws. There are plenty on the books that they can ignore or abuse. One of these six laws is the Take It Down act. Melania herself wanted this, who could refuse?

    In any normal world, this new law would be a good idea. Designed to take down “deepfake” and revenge porn, it is intended to protect people from onling bullying and persecution. To a tyrant, the law is an effective method of government censorship, a way to clamp down on the free speech of his opponents.

    The key to it all is in the enforcement. Take Twitter, for example, which is owned by Elon Musk. Any violation of the new law will be policed by the FTC, which is currently controlled by Elon Musk.

    Much of the traffic on Facebook nowadays is bots sharing AI pictures with each other. Since Zuck has sworn fealty to the emperor, he has nothing to fear from the law.

    Smaller companies however will be hammered, or merely comply without question. Wikipedia will probably be the prize target.

    Many writers yesterday were complacently assuming the regime is burning out, that it is running into implacable opposition. It’s only just started.