Baffled European

Blog

  • Buyer’s remorse

    There’s been quite a bit of regret among the faithful recently. It’s not just the Epstein files and the president calling everybody up to tell them to stop talking about Epstein. Actual maga are feeling financial effects of their policies and they don’t like it.

    AirBnb is one example. Bookings have dried up. Apartments which have been fully booked in the last few years are empty. Reports in the last few days describe an Irish man who spent 100 days in the ICE detention system for a minor infringement, despite agreeing immediately to deport. There are many stories of Canadians with green cards being refused entry or deported. People are afraid to travel to the country, of course they won’t go there on holiday.

    There’s a wave of bankruptcies among farmers. Much of this can be put to the mad trade war, with Mid-West farmers being a favourite target for retaliation tariffs. They almost all vote Republican, and they are all losing money with this government.

    Then there’s the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. Some of them are getting desperate. They send their tweets to the president himself, imploring him to help them, surely he wouldn’t allow this to happen, if only he knew.

    No idea how this will run, but it is the first time I’ve seen any doubt among maga. Will this dissatisfaction develop? Will they see how they have been duped? Or will they fall into line?

  • Department of Criminality

    A bit of truth is coming out about the Abrego Garcia case. He is currently being held on criminal charges of people smuggling. The original DoJ lawyer who represented the government in the case was fired for “failure to zealously advocate” the government’s position. This lawyer, Erez Reuveni, has now filed a whistleblower complaint against his former employers. The most telling point of his complaint is that his boss, Emil Bove, said they should tell the courts “fuck you” rather than comply with their orders.

    It turns out the entire case against Garcia was manufactured. Without evidence, they declared him to be a member of the “MS-13” gang and thought that would suffice. After being called out on this, they have been desperately trying to find some grounds for this claim. Best of all, they have released a serial criminal from prison in order to get him to testify against Garcia.

    The most baroque of their evasions when trying to avoid bringing Garcia back to the USA was to state “We do not believe he is in immediate danger.” In other words, he was in a torture prison in El Salvador and they didn’t expect that to change.

    This case has been a scandal from the very first day. They were so desperate to make an example of somebody, they ignored all evidence and justice in order to get their man. But never apologise, never show weakness is their motto. This is where that leads.

  • Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

    These Epstein files are proving to be far more entertaining than I would ever have expected. Maga are really losing their minds over this story. They expected a long list of the Democrat Elite, proving them to be a bunch of rapists and paedophiles.

    Now maga have realised they’ve been lied to. All that trust they put into a convicted fraudster, and it turns out he doesn’t keep his word. Not all of them have worked it out, so much of the blame is going to Bondi, who they think is covering everything up.

    The uproar among the faithful is so great that Epstein’s greatest friend himself is getting involved. He posted a missive on Truth Social defending his “PERFECT administration”, which is “THE TALK OF THE WORLD”. Fair enough. He’s doing the old favourites of talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, radical left lunatics, and so on.

    The Epstein files, you see, they are simultaneously fakes created by Hillary, and they don’t exist at all. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    This won’t make very much difference. Some maga will realise they have been had and leave the fold. Most will learn a new line that they can repeat whenever the subject comes up. At least there is now some doubt. They suspect that this known rapist might be on a list with another group of suspected rapists. That’s as good as we can expect from maga.

  • The best free press money can buy

    I’ve tried to ignore the Jeff Bezos wedding as much as possible. Unfortunately, when people are determined to give attention to an attention-seeker, it’s hard to avoid.

    There was a time when this billionaire spent all his money on TV programmes. Stuff like The Man In The High Castle, The Rings Of Power, the Top Gear trio. All expensive, and actually quite good. This is the acceptable face of billionaires throwing their money around.

    The wedding on the other hand was just total megalomania. Renting Venice for the occasion. All of these oligarchs, they can do anything. They can buy anything. Laws don’t mean anything to them. Only a few governments can stand up to them and even they can be bought. These are the most powerful men in the world and they are literally detached from reality.

    Bezos has bought Vogue for his new wife. As in the entire magazine, including the publishing house, how sweet. The deal includes other magazines such as Wired. Now Wired has been doing a good job recently of keeping track of what the US government and all the tech bros have been up to.

    We already know what Bezos is like as a proprietor from his performance at the Washington Post. Like all proprietors, he keeps a tight rein on what his journalists print and make sure his editorial line is strictly observed. He can afford to buy his reality.

  • Day of hope

    Today is the International Day Of Hope. There is too much bad news in the world. The 24/7 news cycle only helps to increase this impression. The idea of this day is to promote the simple idea that there is a way out of the problems we have.

    Nothing binding in this. Governments around the world are invited to promote peace, tolerance and respect at a national and international level. They should encourage forgiveness and compassion between individuals. All of this is voluntary and is not expected to cost any money. Sounds reasonable.

    In a sense, this is the perfect sort of thing for the United Nations. Countries are constantly at loggerheads with each other over direct specific contentions, or merely generalised differences of opinion over certain matters. Every so often, somebody – in this case, the UN Ambassador of Kiribati – comes up with an idea that is not controversial. Something that everybody can agree about, especially if they are not expected to actually do anything. Then they can all pat themselves on the back and feel they have actually done something to bring us all closer together. Just for a day.

    So it was that UN resolution A/79/L.54 was passed with a huge majority, 161 countries voting in favour.

    One single, solitary country decided to vote against a day of hope and all that it entails. I won’t name the country, to spare them any further embarrassment.

  • Did anything happen?

    I’ve managed to ignore this nonsense for a week and it’s been great. However, it’s so fascinating to watch this train crash, I must come back to it. What did I miss?

    There was a tragic flash flood in Texas which killed over 100 people, including a group of children on holiday. The agencies responsible for this sort of thing have been gutted by the government and have formed a circular firing squad, everybody blaming each other.

    Nothing going on in the trade war. 90 deals in 90 days was the idea. They have managed one, and it’s not very good. The deadline has extended to August for the time being.

    Grok has restyled itself as “Mechahitler” and is pushing conspiracy theories about how the Jews run the world. Linda Yaccarino resigned as Twitter CEO a day after Grok started posting rape fantasies about her. This AI thing is working out well.

    The army has occupied MacArthur Park because somebody left the cake out in the rain or something like that. Presumably to intimidate the local population.

    Releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files was a big promise. Bondi said she had the files on her desk a couple of months ago. She admitted her mistake last week and now says that in fact these files do not exist at all. Maga are furious about this and have noticed all sorts of other betrayals. Too late.

    All totally insane. I think I’m up to speed.

  • Freedom and liberty

    “What’s your message to communist Zohdan?”

    A question at Tuesday’s press conference.

    How things have changed since January. The new administration banned AP from press conferences because they were insufficiently positive towards the president. They sued against the decision and won. The regime blocked them anyway.

    By now, all recognised press organisations have been banned from official press conferences. What remains are a set of influencers from Twitter and Youtube who agree with the project and will flatter the president appropriately. It’s no wonder he hated the NATO presser so much last week. That was the first time he has faced real questions for ages.

    “We’ll have to arrest him,” came the reply. “We don’t need a communist.” He went on to threaten a number of other political opponents with deportation, some of whom were born in the USA.

    Bondi is on the case, trying to find ways to suppress opposition.

    That’s where we are, less than six months in. The president talks about arresting and deporting his enemies to a tame press and that’s the way things are.

    Then there’s also the reports from Abrego Garcia’s trial, where he describes the harrowing torture the regime put him through. No wonder they tried so hard to stop him coming back. This is another one of the changes we have seen.

    I’m taking a break from this for a week or so. I’ve had enough of these monsters.

  • Heatwave

    It is too hot today. A peak of 37°C. It’s to be hoped this will be the hottest day of the year, but it won’t be. Another burning hot summer, drought, forest fires, failing harvest. This is happening too often and we all know why.

    Most of the world recognises the problem and is doing something about it. Rather too slowly, it must be said, but it is being addressed.

    The disheartening thing is that this is the new normal. If we stopped all CO₂ production right now, it would take decades for this extreme weather to subside. As it is, everything is going to get worse.

    Significantly worse, as the denial of reality becomes suppression of reality in the USA. They’ve already got rid of climate scientists and are currently shutting down information sources. This week, they also decided to stop sharing some of its weather data. No explanation, just a termination. The service is still running for military purposes.

    This is not a game-breaker, but it makes it more difficult to model and measure things like the sea ice extent at the poles, one of the bell-weathers of climate change. Hurricanes will be more difficult to predict as well, hope FEMA is prepared for that.

    This issue affects me, it affects all of us. But these bone-headed, ignorant, stubborn, irresponsible fools in the USA are doing their best to ruin the world for everybody. There’s nothing we can do.

  • Citation needed

    Science journals have a poor reputation among academics. The publishers have a cartel which controls the distribution of scientific papers. It’s not so much the content or the refereeing process that people complain about, although both of these are far from perfect.

    The main criticism is the high price and limited access. Sharp practices such as bundling journals to constantly introduce new journals that people are forced to accept if they want the high-impact publications. With universities as the major customer, there is a guaranteed source of income that the publishers exploit.

    Until now.

    The US government has cancelled the subscriptions for thousands of journals. They are apparently “exorbitantly expensive” and “not a good use of taxpayer funds”.

    This is being rolled out across agencies. The NIH claimed they were still subscribing, saying that the journals “promote transparency and replicability in research”. Indeed they do. However, they changed their minds a couple of hours later, saying that they don’t want to pay for “unused subscriptions to junk science”.

    This is not a move to get the publishers to behave and sort out their pricing policies. It is a straight attack on science. It is impossible for scientists to work without these references.

    They don’t want science. If science doesn’t say what they believe, they must silence it. AI produces something that looks and sounds like science and that is enough for them. They can always make AI agree with them. This is the future.

  • Eliminating waste and fraud

    The immigration policy will cost $170billion according to the budget proposals. That’s a lot of money. It’s 15 times the amount that ICE gets at the moment. Where is it all going?

    There are the new detention facilities. DeSantis was given a tour of the new concentration camp they are building in the Everglades, checking the shower facilities, etc. It will be finished soon and should be able to incarcerate thousands of perfectly innocent people that the regime doesn’t like. A big chunk of the budget will go to building a network of similar prisons all over the country.

    Then there’s personnel. ICE is going to experience a massive expansion, with tens of thousands of new recruits, with all of the command structures and adjuncts that come with it. It will attract a certain sort of person from the start, but the regime is already screening all applicants for government jobs for loyalty and zeal. In any case, the esprit de corps of ICE will self-select to produce a group of fanatical racists, united by their delusion.

    Finally, this is a lot of government money that is being splurged by a mob of criminals, so a significant amount will go to those with good connections. They will receive generous contracts and will deliver sub-standard performance, assuming they do anything at all. There won’t be any comebacks.

    I think that just about covers it. What’s the point of all this again?