Baffled European

Blog

  • RFK again, oh no

    RFK is a reliable source of lunacy and pseudoscience. Trouble is, it’s all a constant drip-drip-drip of stupidity. Every day, he comes up with something new and it just blurs together. So many small things that add up, it’s difficult to make a big issue out of each individual point.

    Take the development of a new vaccine. Moderna received a government grant last year to develop a new mRNA vaccine against pandemic flu viruses, including possible crossovers from avian flu. Early trials are looking positive and the company wants to continue work.

    RFK has stopped the funding with a set of standard anti-vaxx nonsense. OK. He’s wrong, he’s delusional, we know that. But this is at least consistent. We would expect him to do this, it fits the pattern.

    Now we get to a second story about an outbreak of avian flu in Canada. A flock of 400 ostriches are infected and are due to be culled to prevent the disease from spreading. RFK wants to “save” these birds by bringing them into the USA to “study” and “test” them.

    Let’s get this straight. RFK wants to import avian flu and incubate it. At the same time, he’s going to prevent development of a cure for the disease, should it make the jump to humans.

    Words fail me. He’s so irresponsible, so reckless. Fortunately for everybody, the Canadian authorities are unlikely to play along. They are sensible.

  • Good riddance

    Hypercognic galactobrain Elon Musk is looking for a new challenge. It sounds like it is true this time as well. Rumour speaks of hot and steamy IVF sessions with Katie Miller, wife of unpleasant fascist Stephen Miller, which have led to the expulsion of both from the government. All he can do now is gather the photos of his children, steal some items of stationery from the office and hand over his work phone before being led from the building.

    DOGE has been a total failure and even the ideologues in the White House must see this. It is an article of faith among the extreme right that there are huge reservoirs of government waste that will release untold wealth to the country. DOGE proved that this is not the case, but caused such turmoil and destruction that will take years to undo.

    It’s not looking good for him elsewhere. Starship suffered another partial success on Tuesday. The third rocket in a row underwent a complete spontaneous unplanned disassembly event, in which the debris of the $3bn rocket ended up in the Indian Ocean.

    Tesla is not looking much better. A combination of an ageing product lineup, strong competition and an intense personal dislike of Musk has led to sales in Europe dropping by 50%. Robotaxis will not help. The hopeless Cybertruck is already one of the most conspicuous automotive failures of all time and there is no McNamara to pick up the pieces.

    Deport this African immigrant.

  • Strong and free

    King Charles opened the Canadian parliament on Monday. He did so in his capacity as King of Canada, rather than of the UK, giving his message a very Canadian flavour. He delivered his speech in English and French, speaking of a changing world, alliances with European nations and emphasising Canada’s sovereignty and independence.

    It’s not often that the British monarch goes to this trouble – the last time was 70 years ago. Despite being King, his power is strictly limited. However, he knows these limits and also knows how and when to use his power most effectively.

    Down south, in the Land of the Free, their king has abruptly realised the limits of his power. He has received a new toy from Pete Hegseth: a large golden globe where the United States covers 90% of the northern hemisphere. This is supposed to show the operation of the Golden Dome boondoggle.

    There must be some vestiges of knowledge and expertise in the US government that the regime has not yet eradicated. People who know that the Golden Dome cannot possibly work without Canadian cooperation. And so the Golden One launches into his standard 51st state routine, trying to persuade Canada to voluntarily annex itself for this idiocy.

    No problem. Canada can string this along for ever. It’ll never work anyway. All the USA is doing is frittering away its military, economic and diplomatic power. For nothing.

    “No Canada for you!” says King Charles. Quite right.

  • 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.

  • Short term planning not possible

    I’m getting used to this. I write something and the next day it is obsolete. In this case, I was complaining about how it is impossible for anybody to make long term plans when the president has the attention span of a goldfish. He’s decided to postpone the new EU tariffs until July. Going back to his not-original-but-second plan. It seems that von der Leyen talked some sense into him.

    It draws me back to looking at his other adventures in foreign affairs. The war in Ukraine continues, with Russia targeting civilians in drone attacks. It is seeping into the mind of our wannabe Nobel prize winner that Putin is taking him for a ride.

    Then there’s been a change of approach towards Syria since his visit to the gulf states. With these states having essentially infinite petrodollars for bribes, he has turned away from his previous solid support for Bibi and his perpetual war. Will this affect his crusade against “antisemitism” that his government is using to silence its critics? Possible, but it’s so useful they’ll likely keep going. Consistency is for betas.

    The problem is that the USAians congratulate themselves on having a strong and decisive leader, but he keeps getting pushed around by everybody. At some point, the rest of the world will simply ignore the USA rather than waste time. This will come as a surprise to the USAians and I don’t think they’ll like it.

  • 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.

  • The cost of paranoia

    Moody’s lowered the credit rating for the USA last week. They had concerns about the federal deficit. Those concerns have been justified with the new budget proposal, which will raise the deficit by almost $4trillion.

    The headline policies are predictable: a massive giveaway to the president’s friends and clients, to be partly funded by destroying Medicaid. Destroying education, science, research etc are all part of it as well. The Golden Dome makes its appearance with $25bn as a first payment in what is expected to cost $175bn in total. It’s a waste of money, but go ahead.

    What is astonishing is the amount of money they want to spend on racism. ICE will receive $50bn to build a network of concentration camps for up to 200,000 inmates as part of the mania against “illegal immigrants” and anybody else who gets in their way.

    There will be another $30bn to turn ICE into a massive secret police force. This is for hiring, transport and infrastructure, again purely for the perceived necessity to remove undesirables.

    Best of all is a provision that would prevent judicial oversight of what the government is up to. It removes any penalty for the government ignoring an injunction or a contempt charge. Nice.

    This was passed by Republicans. Their great leader told them it would be “ultimate treason” to reject it. It still needs to be passed by the Senate. It’ll be interesting to see how much they accept.

  • Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar

    I have a problem with the Supreme Court of the USA. This is unlikely to bother the justices there, but I’m going to complain anyway.

    The issue this time is lifting the protections that 300000 Venezuelans had against deportation. The Supreme Court has decided that they shouldn’t receive the protection of the law as a group, but rather fight each case on an individual basis. This is the same solution that they found with the purge of trans soldiers from the military.

    Laws control and limit human behaviour. They allow society to function by discouraging a range of destructive impulses. At the same time, they protect us and promote acceptable behaviour. Most of all, the law should be viewed as a system created by humans in order to serve humans.

    There is a breed of judge which regards the law as a clever logic puzzle. It is an enclosed, (fairly) consistent system, which can produce very unexpected results, if you set your mind to it.

    This approach enslaves humans to the law. So what if hundreds of thousands of people have their lives ruined? So what if it leaves them at the mercy of an over-powerful and vengeful executive? It fits in with their interpretation of the law, fine.

    Germany doesn’t get everything right, but emphasising human dignity in the first line of the constitution sets a good example. It tells judges exactly where their priorities lie. The US judges are failing at their job.

  • The emperor’s new clothes

    The USAian media is taking the line from their emperor-god about Biden and his cancer diagnosis. Many questions about who knew what and when. This led them into one of their favourite topics: whether Biden is going senile or not. Might be the last time they can do this, even though it is now irrelevant.

    It is a real contrast to the way they fawn over Biden’s successor. He was rambling on yesterday about how he’ll win California and New York if there were “honest” elections. That was part of it, at any rate. He kept fading in and out of various topics. He doesn’t really seem to know what he is talking about and cannot maintain a single line of thought for longer than about ten seconds.

    Just straight reporting would question the dubious notion about him winning a slew of straight Democrat states. Not to mention the implied slur that the elections up to now were not honest. Then they could probe what he intends to do to make them fair. And yet all they do is faithfully sanitise this deranged, incoherent garbage.

    CBS had a story talking about the demolition of the IRS, but pulled it to put on a feature about Cajun music instead. PBS edited one of their documentaries to remove a contributor who was critical of the president.

    The press always likes to characterise itself as “telling truth to power.” They are a disgrace.