MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. The current week in stand-alone format is available here. Feel free to CONTACT ME if so inclined.

[MON 02 JUN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 22

DAYLOG MON 26 MAY: Five years ago, on 25 May 2020, Minneapolis police arrested a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd on suspicion of pushing a counterfeit bill. The police handcuffed him and laid him out prone on the street, with a police officer keeping his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes -- killing him by suffocation. That set off an international wave of protests against police brutality, loosely directed by Black Lives Matter (BLM), an activist group set up in 2013 to seek police reform.

The majority of the protests were nonviolent, but a number of them degenerated into riots and looting, in part provoked by the Troglodyte Right, exploiting the situation. Compounding the problem was the slogan "Defund The Police", pushed by BLM. What it meant was that municipalities needed to shift funding from the police to other entities that didn't use force to solve problems -- but it was too easily misinterpreted as "Disband The Police", and as such was loudly echoed by the Troglodyte Right. The TD Right also shot back at the slogan "Black Lives Matter" with the meaningless "All Lives Matter", pretending that police brutality targeting people of color wasn't a problem.

Five years on, where are we now? The four police who killed Floyd ended up behind bars, and there was considerable public discussion of the police brutality problem. Alas, police killings have actually increased in five years, and police reform seems stalled. The TD Right worked hard and effectively to discredit the BLM protests. The Trump Regime is doing all it can to roll back civil rights for minorities -- indeed, has a contempt for everyone's rights -- and would like to spring the four police from prison. Fortunately, they have state convictions that Trump can't pardon.

The lack of results of the protests is discouraging, yes -- but a total defeat? There's no reason to think so. The Trump Regime's drive to roll back civil rights is fighting the tide in America, and they're incompetent; the battle isn't over, and they don't seem like winners. Reform can take a long time -- it took generations for American women to get the vote.

One valid lesson of the George Floyd story is the counterproductive nature of violent demonstrations. Right now, we're in another era of demonstrations, this time against the Trump Regime. Demonstration organizers have been very careful to avoid violence -- but it's going to be hard to keep doing so over the long run. Online trolls are calling for violence; it's hard to know where they're coming from exactly, but they clearly aren't on our side.

DAYLOG TUE 27 MAY: On Saturday, Donald Trump delivered the commencement address to the graduating class at West Point. It was a rambling, incoherent speech that went nowhere in particular and was littered with stumbles.

Trump is obviously in decline, with Rick Wilson of THE LINCOLN PROJECT shining a light on it. The place to start is the fact that Trump has never been what could honestly be called an intelligent person. He had no grasp of any issues beyond his own short-sighted gain. He had a brief attention span. He didn't think anything out, there was no bigger picture, he made no real plans, he made it up as he went along. He was willfully ignorant, with a head full of a mishmosh of fantastical and contradictory ideas.

That said, there was a time when Trump had a certain unscrupulous low cunning in his actions; he had a game and knew how to play it. Now he is no longer able to make it up as he goes along. Trump is barely even able to coherently deliver his trademark sneers at his enemies. Myself, I was thinking before the inauguration of Trump 2.0 -- who was obviously badly slipping in 2024 -- that it would be revealing if he didn't go to White House briefings to snipe at reporters, like Trump 1.0 enjoyed doing. He doesn't now, because he can't pull it off any more.

The White House posts videos of Trump's speeches, but has stopped posting transcripts -- they're too embarrassing. He's not really in charge, he theatrically signs executive orders without necessarily knowing what he's signing. The White House is really run by a back-biting mob.

Trump is going to be a lot worse in a year's time. Senility runs in his family, but they also tend to live long; he might dysfunctionally linger for years. The question is: what happens when his inability to function can't be concealed any longer? Trump, it seems, is the only thing keeping the Republican Party afloat. His voters care about him; they don't care about the GOP. What happens when Trump goes away? Hard to really say, but it doesn't sound promising for the GOP. Apres Trump, la deluge.

DAYLOG WED 28 MAY: The Trump Regime generates a stream of policy proposals that, if they don't seem bad on the face of it, quickly become so on inspection. One is a push to "unleash oil production" to reduce the price of fossil fuels.

As discussed in an article from WIRED ("Trump's Policies Are Creating Uncertainty for Fossil Fuel Companies" by Molly Taft, 30 April 2025), the oil industry is not enthusiastic -- the fundamental problem being that the long US "fracking boom" is running out of steam. It's getting harder to extract more petroleum from the ground, which translates to higher costs -- and a reduction in fuel prices would make it unprofitable to "drill baby drill", particularly since the OPEC+ cartel is ramping up production and prices are already falling.

The Trump Regime wants to enable the fossil-fuel industry by greatly accelerating approval procedures for drilling projects. What the Trump Regime does not understand is that dodging procedures would be breaking the law, and immediately lead to endless lawsuits. The oil industry understands that perfectly well -- and since such drilling projects are going to take years to get rolling anyway, there's a strong likelihood that the White House will change hands, with a new administration saying: Not so fast.

Says one oil executive: "'Drill, baby, drill' is nothing short of a myth." Right now, the industry is idling rigs and financially retrenching.

* The Trump Regime is nasty, stupid, and ignorant ... but often what is easiest to see is that they are incompetent. As another case in point, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt recently said: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University."

Even ignoring the foolish swipe at LGBTQ people, Leavitt was not making sense -- one relevant reply being: "Maybe we could have both?" One "Driver9" posted to BlueSky:

QUOTE:

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The Trump Regime is definitely scary and dangerous -- but at the same time, it's hard to believe that a gang of people so inept has a future. Eh, we're stuck with them for the time being.

DAYLOG THU 29 MAY: I commented on Tuesday that Trump's mental decline is progressing. Yesterday, popular blogger Aaron Rupar -- 850,000 followers -- cited a White House conversation:

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This is where I was thinking Trump was going to be in the not-too-distant future; it seems he's ahead of schedule. A reporter also threw the label "TACO" at Trump, relative to tariffs -- it means "Trump Always Chickens Out". He didn't take it well. It went viral.

Trump was obviously even less happy yesterday when the US Court of International Trade struck down most of his tariffs, saying he didn't have the legal right to impose them. Trump, as always, had claimed "emergency authorization", but the court didn't buy it.

Will SCOTUS rescue Trump on tariffs? I doubt it, but we'll see. Incidentally, the failure of his tariff war has led to another 4-letter acronym, "TWIT": "Trump Wants Illegal Tariffs". Alas, in the face of mockery on tariffs, Trump seems to be doubling down on them. We'll see how that works, too.

* Along parallel lines, I was thinking Elon the Musk Rat's statements about distancing himself from government were a smokescreen -- but Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, writing in NEWREPUBLIC, he wasn't getting along with other Trump Regime staffers, getting into shouting matches.

The Musk Rat took a chainsaw to government agencies, without consulting with agency heads; the agency heads generally were for cuts, but didn't like how Elon went about it. He was described as "the most irritating person" staffers ever met, one telling ROLLINGSTONE:

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Unfortunately, it is unlikely the departure of the Musk Rat will mean any improvement in the Trump Regime: Musk's DOGE was doing what Trump wanted them to do, with DOGE conveniently taking the blame for destructive actions that were going to happen anyway. The Musk Rat is not really going away.

DAYLOG FRI 30 MAY: Blogger Aaron Rupar cited Trump Regime Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as saying: "We want the US to be more like Florida and less like New York." Replies focused on relevant statistics highlighting the differences:

   NY GDP per capita:  $117K
   FL GDP per capita:  $74K
   
   NY no med insurance:  4.8%
   FL no med insurance:  10.7%
   
   NY homicide rate per 100K:  4%
   FL homicide rate per 100K:  5%

   NY life expectancy:  80.7 years
   FL life expectancy:  79 years

   NY public school ranking:  #2
   FL public school ranking:  #41

There were variations in the stats -- with one survey suggesting Florida had a high education ranking, which I found hard to believe since Florida politicians so love to bash education. Overall violent crime is much lower in Florida, but that may be a reporting issue.

* In other Trump Regime news, RFK-Q's Department of Health & Human Services released a scientific report justifying bad policy decisions. It appears they used an AI bot to generate the report, since it referenced scientific studies that don't exist.

Some call RFK-Q a "conspiracy theorist". I had to comment that I didn't use such terms, preferring:

• "conspiracy theory" -> conspiracy tale (hoax)
  
  
• "conspiracy theorist" -> conspiracy paranoid (nut)

And added:

• "pseudoskeptic" -> A person who claims to be an impartial skeptic, while expending all his ammo on the white dog and ignoring the black dog.

* A week ago, I mentioned Trump's "Golden Dome" missile-defense system, to be based on a huge constellation of low-orbit sensor / interceptor satellites. One reader pointed a particular problem with the constellation: smash a few of the satellites, they will spread debris and make the orbital region "uninhabitable".

Yeah, that sounds valid -- though I had to reply there was a broader problem, defined by the engineering proverb: "If you didn't test it, it doesn't work." Testing is a significant part of technology development. Golden Dome is a particularly troublesome system in that respect, summed up with the corollary proverb: "If you can't realistically test it, you'll never know if it works."

[MON 09 JUN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 23

DAYLOG MON 02 JUN 25: The Russians seem to have been getting an edge in their war against Ukraine as of late -- but Ukraine regained the initiative on Sunday, in a far-flung drone attack on five Russian airbases.

Ukraine claims that 41 aircraft were hit, with at least 13 destroyed, most of the targets being bombers. The airbases were all over Russia, some far out of range of Ukraine, but the drones didn't fly from Ukraine -- they were delivered by heavy-hauler trucks.

Under Operation PAVUTYNA (SPIDERWEB), conducted by the SBU intelligence service, quadcopter drones were smuggled into Russia via Kazakhstan, then assembled and placed in the roofs of "tiny houses", built to standard 20' container size for hauling on flatbed trucks. The trucks were parked not far from the targets, with roof panels pulled off to deploy the drones. The trucks then apparently torched themselves. The drones had AI-based automatic target recognition systems, having been trained to recognize aircraft -- and, it seems, not hit those already hit. At least some had video feeds, video said to have been delivered over the phone network. PAVUTYNA took 18 months to pull off; the US was not told in advance, though I'm suspecting the Pentagon still had a hand in it.

The US military knows Putin is an enemy and wants to help Ukraine against him -- though they have to do so carefully, because Trump keeps wanting to make nice with Putin. Trump is probably not too hard to fool, and he's sounding more pro-Ukraine as of late anyway.

What to make of Operation PAVUTYNA? Impressive, inspiring, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE stuff. What happens next? Impossible to say, the war goes on -- but at least it's clear that Putin had his whole day ruined.

DAYLOG TUE 03 JUN 25: Feisty Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett ("The Notorious JAZ") posed with Capitol Police cop (now political candidate) Harry Dunn -- with replies that either she was very tiny or he was very big. Dunn shot back: "Both things can be true."

* In further surprising Ukraine War news, following up Ukraine's strike on Russian bombers over the weekend, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit again. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked the Kerch Strait Bridge, but it's proven a hard target; the support columns are big and sturdy, while the Russians keep improving its defenses. It is not clear how much damage was done, but it does appear that drone torpedoes were used in the attack.

Recent Ukrainian actions have renewed confidence that Ukraine can hold on -- and if Ukraine holds on long enough, Ukraine will win. How much more that will take remains to be seen. It will help if the USA backs Ukraine more convincingly. Enough of bogus "peace talks".

* Massachusetts Senator Liz Warren has now issued a Senate report titled: "Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk's 130 Days in the Trump Administration" -- providing a trail of actions in government by the Musk Rat that "raise questions about corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest." The report says that "not every action listed ... represents a violation of Federal law," but goes on to say that: "Musk has violated norms at an astonishing pace" while engaging in and supporting actions that are "hurting the American public." It labels this "scandalous behavior regardless of whether it subjects him to criminal prosecution."

That's right. Only limited things can be done to slow down the Trump Regime for the time being, but the regime is not forever. Everything needs to be documented for accountability in the era after Trump -- and the Musk Rat also does not like the idea that people are keeping his receipts.

DAYLOG WED 04 JUN 25: I started following Jess Piper, a Missouri Democrat and a director of the BLUE MISSOURI group. What got me started on her was a video in which she pushed back on people who say: Red states should be allowed to secede, good riddance to them.

That's long annoyed me. As Piper said, 40% of Missourans voted for Kamala Harris -- are we supposed to like the idea of Blue Missourans being thrown to the wolves? No, America has a GOP problem, and it has to be dealt with.

Anyway, relative to raids by ICE, Piper commented yesterday: "I think a lot of those folks dressing up like ICE are not even cops, much less federal agents. The way they carry themselves. The way they are dressed. Something is off."

The masking, the storm trooper uniforms and armament -- it doesn't take much thought to come to the conclusion that ICE is recruiting white militiamen, or even just casually deputizing them. Some photos show ICE sporting white supremacist tattoos.

Where does that go? Hard to say specifically, but definitely no place good. Recent videos show local crowds confronting ICE on raids, shouting them down, and it seems likely there will be more such videos. It appears almost as likely that there will be violence.

I'm thinking the Trump Regime wants the violence, to justify heavy-handed repression. It will be almost a miracle if it can be avoided -- but we have to remember that violence serves Trump's purposes, not ours, and should be avoided.

* In Ukraine War news, a US Congressional delegation traveled to Kyiv and got a briefing from AFU Colonel Pavlo Palisa of Zelenskyy's presidential office. Palisa stated that Ukraine needed US assistance and did want a meaningful cease-fire -- but felt confident Ukraine was winning:

QUOTE:

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DAYLOG THU 05 JUN 25: NPR conducted an interview with Sahil Lavingia, a worker for Elon the Musk Rat's DOGE, in which Lavingia said he really didn't find all the "waste, fraud, & abuse" he was expecting to:

QUOTE:

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Lavingia said there was much room for improvement, but that was just a question of modernization. As I like to say, anyone who thinks big corporations are inherently efficient hasn't worked for one -- and small businesses can be worse.

Lavingia felt that updating government software systems had a lot of potential, there being no "better way to have a larger impact as someone ... designing and building products, web applications, iPhone applications than working for the US Federal government."

Alas, Lavingia decided to talk to a blogger: "Elon was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent. That's something he said a lot in private, and publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent." The blogger published, and Lavingia was promptly blocked out of the DOGE system. Most of the USA knows the Musk Rat can't be taken at his word; it is surprising that anyone who knew him personally would be more trusting. Lavingia seems like a nice guy -- maybe too much so.

* The Musk Rat appears to be on the bad list with the White House; I was thinking the feuding was a smokescreen, but it seems not so. The WH is factional, and the Musk Rat's (many) enemies apparently got the upper hand. Trump is only loosely in charge. There's been a lot of glee over the feud between the two, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt: they are both evil and dangerous, will stay that way, and may well join forces again.

Publicly blasting Trump's big budget-busting bill appears to have been the snapping point. The bill is clearly in trouble; it remains to be seen if there will be a good outcome, or at minimum a least-bad outcome. I'm holding my breath.

DAYLOG FRI 06 JUN 25: One of the goals of the Musk Rat's DOGE has been to improve government by using AI tools. The title of an essay by one Ben Green in TECHPOLICY ("Using AI to Reform Government is Much Harder Than it Looks", 3 June 25), says it all. According to Green: "The problem isn't just that many AI tools are unreliable and depend on messy datasets, although those issues are pervasive. The deeper problem is a large gap between technical novelty and practical functionality."

Beyond the inherent unreliability of AI systems, there are two problems: AI systems that score high on structured tests typically don't do so well at messy real-world problems, and AI tools may not be well-tuned to user needs or easy to use -- they have no user empathy.

One Blake Reid, commenting on BlueSky, said that DOGE use of AI sounded like terrible software practice, with "an engineer hurriedly deploying an unfamiliar tool to meet an impossible deadline for a problem domain in which he has no expertise." Reid quoted Waldo Jaquith, who had worked on IT systems for the Treasury in the Obama Administration: "AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this. AI gives convincing-looking answer that are frequently wrong. There needs to be humans whose job it is to do this work."

In reply to Reid, I resurrected the saying: "If buildings were put together the way most software is, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." AI only makes it worse.

I believe AI has big potential -- but as Green points out, it is heavily oversold, in this case being used as a pretext for simply "drowning organizations in the bathtub" as part of an anti-government agenda. In the era of Trump, AI has become another fraud, somewhat like cryptocoin.

The talk of "futurists" about "superintelligent" AIs is nonsensical. An AI's performance is dependent on how well it is trained -- and simply hoovering up data does not mean good training, with erroneous AI output hoovered up as well, leading to accumulated errors and "AI model collapse". Instead of "exponential growth" in capability, in practice AI is suffering from "diminishing returns", where the effort to improve doubles with every step. AI has long been like "climbing a tree to the Moon" -- rapid progress at first, that soon runs out of steam. It's always been that way: two steps forward, one step back.

[MON 16 JUN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 24

DAYLOG MON 09 JUN 25: The big news this week is, of course, is that on Saturday ICE troopers raiding heavily-Latinized Paramount, California, in the Los Angeles metro area. Citizens spontaneously formed up protest groups to confront ICE, to be hit with tear gas and such.

The protesters were careful to remain peaceful, but rowdies and criminals started to exploit the situation, with LA police throwing in their weight, and Trump calling out the National Guard, on dubious authority.

People had to protest, while it was inevitable that the protests would get out of control to some lesser or greater degree, and Trump would exploit the situation. Of course he would, he created it. Will this strengthen Trump or weaken him over the longer run? Public disturbances tend to strengthen Trump's hand -- but on the other side of the coin, ICE and his thug deportation policies don't go over well with the majority of the public, even though a slightly smaller majority want the deportations.

In any case, there were bright points in the chaos. Early in the trouble, a lad with a skateboard confronted a line of ICE troopers, who threw tear gas at him. He calmly stepped back, turned around, gave them the middle finger, and left, in no hurry.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called for peace and denounced Trump sending in the National Guard. Trump threatened to arrest Newsom, who replied: "He knows where to find me. I don't give a damn. But lay your hands off four-year-old girls." No little kids being arrested by ICE, OK? Newsom sometimes gets it right.

Not incidentally, the state of California is suing the Trump Gang for the military call-up. How sympathetic the courts will be remains to be seen, but it would be nice if the courts blocked the move.

* In other news, Trump is planning a military parade for himself in Washington DC on the 14th. That's the same day the national No Kings rallies will take place. There's a faction that wants to monkey-wrench the parade, but the rally organizers want rallies everywhere EXCEPT Washington DC. Makes sense: Trump thrives on chaos and encourages it, but he hates to be ignored. He whined about his meager 1st inauguration crowd, he won't be happy to be stood up again.

DAYLOG TUE 10 JUN 25: Stepping back from the LA unrest for the moment, June is Gay Pride Month -- with Marlon Wayons of the Wayans Clan commemorating it on Instagram, by sitting in a bathtub full of a rainbow load of plastic balls.

Wayans said: "Happy Pride to my LGBTQ peeps. From my block to my schools to my cast and my crews to my friends to my family ... where ever you are or have been in my life, I wish you all love and support. You can be a straight man and still love gay people." His son Kai is transgender. MW says that he transitioned when his son did, going from "denial to complete acceptance" in a week -- realizing that "it would be a poor reflection on you" for a parent to reject a trans child.

MW is far more emotionally demonstrative than I'm capable of being, but he's right. The battle over transgenders can seem absurd -- but the absurdity is all on the side of the Troglodyte Right. They think it's the hill they want to fall on.

WHY? Apparently there are like 500,000 athletes in the US National Collegiate Athletic Association -- and maybe ten of them are trans. Noisy trans-hater Riley Gaines has been up in arms because ... she came in 5th in a swim meet, tying a trans girl.

Some people are born "intergender", and it seems they have little real choice in the matter. Suppressing their rights is wrong in the first place, doubly wrong because no one else is harmed by granting them their rights. It's just bullying the weak and marginal. It's a completely manufactured controversy. I've always been Left of center, but in my youth it was normal to mock transgenders. Not any more. It is a surprise to me, in my seniority, to be fired up about trans rights ... but here I am.

Jumping back to the LA demonstrations, "Never Trumper" conservative Bill Kristol commented on BlueSky: "You know when things were pretty quiet and peaceful in LA? Before ICE started arresting residents who were bothering no one and going to their jobs. And before DHS and National Guard troops showed up and made the situation worse. Of course Trump and Stephen Miller want the situation to get worse."

I replied it was "amazing"; I'd started out as moderately Left ... "Now I feel and talk like an approximation of a No-Compromise Left radical. And so does Bill Kristol. We haven't really changed -- it's the frame of reference, shifting way Right."

DAYLOG WED 11 JUN 25: The LA demonstrations are continuing and spreading across the country. I was thinking this was going evolve into a dreadful national crisis -- but now I'm feeling much more upbeat about it.

First, it appears the level of public fury in LA is being overstated by the Feds and the news media -- boosted by fake AI images and news images from years-old disturbances. We'd think the city was in flames, but Angelinos say thing are not far out of normal. Even the LAPD says the demonstrators themselves are well-behaved, the problems being caused by rowdies and criminals trying to exploit the situation. To the extent there are incidents, they're not worse than usually seen in a big city that wins a national championship. Trump calling in the National Guard was ridiculous.

California Governor Gavin Newsom tried to get the Federal courts to block the Trump order immediately, but the courts replied that the Trump Gang had to be given time to make their case. Incidentally, Newsom is giving a master class in counter-trolling Trump. Any time the Trump Gang mouths off against him and California online, he responds right away online, hitting back: Newsom should be arrested! ANSWER: So arrest me already.

So where are demonstrations going? David Graham, writing in the ATLANTIC, points to worries that the demonstrations can always get out of hand, that the optics are bad, and so on -- that they will end up being a WIN for Trump, who is indeed already trying to exploit them. In reply, Graham points out that in Trump's first term, public demonstrations didn't necessarily cost the Dems all that much, and often did get changes in behavior from Trump -- who in practice talks big, and then flip-flops when he finds out the big talk isn't flying.

For myself, I think the USA is in unknown territory: there's never been a US president like Trump before, so we don't have experience to say what will or will not happen. Will the demonstrations move the needle on support for Trump? Maybe, maybe not. The possible futures aren't really an issue: we just have to do what we think is right. As I said on BlueSky, if I were in LA, I'd have to join in the demonstrations, regardless of the possible consequences -- because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.

The other thing that has to be realized is that, as nasty & dangerous as the Trump Gang is, they're also stupid and inept. Yes, they're scary, but we can't let the scare stop us. It is as big a military mistake to over-estimate an adversary as to under-estimate one.

DAYLOG THU 12 JUN 25: According to an article from FUTURISM ("CEOs Are Creating AI Copies of Themselves" by Victor Tangermann, 11 June 2025), a number of busy chief executives have created AI clones of themselves, the idea being to improve communications with employees.

That seems like a dubious idea, as underlined by a subtitle to the article: TALK TO THE AI, BECAUSE THE CEO ISN'T LISTENING. It becomes more dubious since the AI CEOs tend to hallucinate like crazy, even talking slick-sounding gibberish.

A survey of CEOs conducted in 2023 had almost half of them saying they expected their jobs to be taken over by AI. That's possible, but if so, it won't be soon. It's hard to know why CEOs insist on hyping AI, claiming it will revolutionize the nature of work.

OK, it will make big changes, but such claims sound like a mix of wishful thinking and promotionalism, underlined by a belief that AI is growing by leaps and bounds. However, as pointed out here before, it's really hitting the soft wall of diminishing returns.

As discussed elsewhere on FUTURISM, AI boosters like to talk about "scaling up" as the solution to better AI, but like 3/4ths of AI researchers aren't buying that. Grabbing more data from wherever to pump into more AI hardware just seems to make the models buggier, and there's the problem of blandly violating copyrights as well. Maybe the models need to trained better? Incidentally, some companies have set up AI phone hotlines, but to no surprise, they don't seem to be winners, either.

* California Governor Gavin Newsom has been giving at least as good as he gets in a war of words with Trump, pointing to Trump's obvious senility:

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Newsom got unpopular by running podcasts to make nice with MAGA clowns. It seemed bizarre -- I'm suspecting that it may have been from the notion, in fashion for a time, that the Dems needed to play up to Joe Rogan fans. That was a bad idea: Rogan is past his prime, and the Dems are unlikely to get many votes from his fans. It seems Newsom has realized it.

DAYLOG FRI 13 JUN 25: Yesterday, as is generally known, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem conducted a news conference in Los Angeles, relative to the disturbances there. She was not interested in helping to restore harmony, saying:

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Say what? Senator Alex Padilla of California was in the audience, and didn't like that comment. He called out: "I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary." A squad of DHS goons immediately jumped on him, hauled him out of the room, threw him to the floor, and handcuffed him. The assault was fully caught on video; there was no real provocation. Padilla was then released -- but national outrage followed, notably with angry protests from Democrats in Congress.

Exactly how this plays out remains to be seen, but I'm doubting it will be a triumph for the Trump Gang. There's a tendency to think they have some evil genius plan -- but as popular BlueSky blogger Jamelle Bouie (674K followers) wrote:

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At the time of the incident, the legality of Trump sending troops to LA was in Federal circuit court. Later that day, the court judged in favor of California, saying control of the National Guard needed to be handed back to Governor Newsom. That was not a surprise -- though also to no real surprise, a Federal appeals court then said more court discussion was required. The odds seem fair that, particularly in light of Noem's clueless statement, the appeals court will also judge against the Trump Gang.

If they get shot down, they will not be in a good position to try interventions against other Blue states. As far as the assault on Senator Padilla goes, it would seem the state of California would do well to press state assault charges. They would stick. Of course, they may have good reasons not to. There's also the question of what Republican senators will say about the assault, but I'm not expecting them to express much, if any, outrage. House MAGA have already spoken out -- to, of course, condemn Padilla.

[MON 23 JUN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 25

DAYLOG MON 16 JUN 25: The national NO KINGS demonstration was on Saturday. Ahead of time, a friend suggested that there would be violence. I replied that I didn't think so -- but I was still apprehensive.

Saturday got started off with news of a political assassination in Minnesota (more on that tomorrow), which was not promising of a good day. However, I went to the demonstration here in Loveland CO anyway. I got my wires a bit crossed on instructions & had to wander around a bit, but I got myself straight soon enough, and was glad I went. I'm thinking there were about a thousand people there, huge for Loveland, and the crowd was lively, upbeat. The crowd went from old folks to kids, with a family orientation.

People honking going past were overwhelmingly friendly, maybe like 1 in 25 being hostile. I was waving an oversized USA Rainbow flag I got from Amazon, and got a lot of compliments on it. Being straight, the flag felt a bit awkward at first, but I got good with it.

Of course, millions demonstrated across the USA. There wasn't much trouble, a few clashes with cops here and there, a few confrontations. Sadly, I later found out a bystander got shot & killed by event security in Salt Lake City.

Trump had his military parade in front of the White House. There had been fears Trump wanted clashes over the parade, and so the No Kings organizers had discouraged attendance -- suggesting that it was best to simply ignore it. That's how it turned out: there was some attendance, but not close to filling up the public spaces reserved for the event, and there were also some protesters there.

More interestingly, soldiers in the parade were obviously indifferent; they clearly didn't care, hadn't been ordered to care. Trump, in addition, fell asleep during the parade -- more evidence of his ongoing physical and mental decline. The parade was described as "low-energy", not a goose-stepping tribute to a wannabee dictator. It was as lame as could be hoped for.

The question remains of how much demonstrations accomplish -- even national ones of unprecedented size. The answer is: a lot. They raise morale and encourage people to vote, they can even be fun. If the opposition can't match the energy, they reveal weakness. In short, the demonstrations help to dominate, in a peaceful way, the national conversation. It's the MAGA trolls who need to feel outnumbered, and the MAGA politicians who need to worry about vanishing voters.

DAYLOG TUE 17 JUN 25: On Friday evening, an assailant gunned down and killed Melissa Hortman -- once the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives -- along with her husband Mark. The assailant also shot up State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, but they survived. After an intensive manhunt, the authorities arrested one Vance Boelter, 57. He had notebooks with a "hitlist" of Democrats, it seems targeted because of advocacy of reproductive rights -- Boelter is an evangelical fascist.

Where does this go? Other than Democratic politicians now being acutely aware that their security is threatened, it's hard to say. Will the shootings lead to a protracted campaign of terror? Or to public revulsion? Or will they move the needle at all?

One unsurprising result was that MAGA trolls and politicians -- most prominently Utah Senator Mike Lee -- on hearing about the shootings, knew the shooter was almost certainly MAGA, so immediately started to deflect blame, spreading stories that the shooter was a "Marxist", or even that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was behind the "hit jobs". Total fabrications of course, but Lee and his kind assume their voters are stupid and will gladly buy such lies. Lee was pointedly criticized by Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who had been a friend of Hortman's, and others in Congress; he didn't apologize, but he deleted the posting. It would be nice if he backtracked, but that is out of character for MAGA -- they usually just double down. How long can the lies keep going on?

* More encouragingly, the NO KINGS demonstrations on Saturday were a huge success -- possibly the biggest mass action in American history. In the meantime, Trump's wish for a goose-stepping military parade was a big fizzle.

It's worked out perfectly for us. Trump appears to be aware that he's been shown up -- though it's hard to say, since he's always unglued about something anyway. We can hope he's at least dimly aware that public opinion is shifting against him.

White House statements do suggest that Trump is figuring out that his mass deportations mean an economically-disastrous gutting of America's labor force. Does that suggest rationality prevailing? Doubtful on the face of it -- and then Trump went on to say he'd leave Red states alone, just target Blue cities like Detroit, meaning politically weaponized deportations. Adding to the chaos, other messages coming out of the White House say no change in policy. It's hard to sort out the confusion, but it seems likely Trump's public support will continue its decline.

DAYLOG WED 18 JUN 25: David Graham of ATLANTIC just released a commentary titled: "The Democratic party slides into irrelevance" -- complaining about the lack of leadership and direction of the party.

I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, the Dems are on the back foot, but it's just the reality that they don't control Congress, and so not so much they can do to push back right now. There is no shortage of Dems standing up and speaking out -- such as Tim Walz, Jaime Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, and a long list of others. OK, it's more or less just talk, but they don't have the power right now.

Steve Benen, writing on MSNBC / MaddowBlog, suggests that maybe things aren't so dismal. He pointed a special election on 10 June for a seat in the Oklahoma House, with a win for Amanda Clinton of Tulsa, Clinton being a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. In the 2024 election, the district went for Kamala Harris by +19 points, but now elected Clinton by a staggering +69 points. That is not an exception either, with Benen citing THE DOWNBALLOT to say that out of 29 special elections so far this year, Dems have run an average of +16.4 points over the 2024 presidential election.

Benen commented that some observers decided from the 2024 election that the GOP was dominant and the Democrats dispirited -- to Benen then saying: "The more Democratic candidates overperform in 2025 elections, the more those assumptions unravel."

The NO KINGS demonstrations last Saturday were clearly a big Dem win. Republicans have been calling NO KINGS a dud, but turnout was at least 5 million -- an order of magnitude more than the Tea Party demonstrations of the Obama years. Benen said that the idea of the future belonging to an "energized & invigorated Right" was nonsense: "Between activism, election results and protest turnout, those assumptions about the prevailing political winds are due for a reassessment. The backlash to Trump is real."

As David Graham admitted, things should be looking up for the Dems going into the 2026 mid-terms. In the meantime, possibly he should be more patient with them. They do have an issue with squabbling among themselves, but that is not really a big deal. BTW, as far as the NO KINGS turnout goes, the definitive turnout result should be available from the Harvard Crowd Counting Consortium, after they doublecheck and crunch through the numbers. With a national event that covered even small towns, that will take a few weeks.

DAYLOG THU 19 JUN 25: Today is "Juneteenth", a national holiday in the USA, celebrating the last day of American slavery. Vann R. Newkirk II published an essay in THE ATLANTIC titled "The Hollowness of This Juneteenth" -- pointing to the ugly irony of celebrating the end of slavery, while the Trump Gang tries to restore white supremacy. That is a reality, but I take the opposite view: celebrating Juneteenth points to the hollowness of Trump.

Many white Americans were not happy with the end of desegregation in the 1960s, with the "blacklash" becoming more visible in the 1980s, and grotesquely obvious after the election of Barack Obama -- leading to the rise of Trump. However, Trump can't kill Juneteenth off; he is very troublesome, but inept and weak. The faction that elected him is in demographic decline, with the majority of Americans against them. Juneteenth will persist -- while Trump and his supporters are headed for the trashheap of history.

* As another demonstration of the weakness of the Trump Gang, yesterday Vice President JD Vance decided to open an account on BlueSky. I thought it was a fake account at first, but he declared on Xitter that he'd set up the BlueSky account, so it was for real.

Why did he bother? Seems he was trolling, pushing the hate on transgender Americans. However, the general reaction was to block him, pushing Vance -- as shown on ClearSky -- to the top rank of blocked BlueSky users. Yes, it does indeed seem that on BlueSky, most users will block trolls & not engage them. There's a lot of trolling, particularly on Xitter, that BlueSky doesn't have a future, but that's just trolls whining. They don't like being blocked and ignored.

* In Ukraine War news, MILITARNYI reports that the French, working with NATO, are developing countermeasures against glide bombs, which the Russians have been using with brutal effect against Ukraine. The main countermeasure appears to be interceptor drones that hit the bombs in flight.

However, detecting the bombs is troublesome, since they have a small "radar cross-section" and little thermal signature. The report hints at use of a fire control network coordinating responses from multiple sensors. Ukraine is building its own radars, and they may well use "frequency hopping" to make sure they're not so easily detected and targeted.

Improved air defenses are needed. There was a particularly brutal attack on Kyiv a few days ago, with dozens killed. President Zelenskyy said:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

It's bad news, but there is a silver lining. After World War II, the US conducted a careful study of the impact of "strategic bombing" on Germany -- and concluded that the intensive bombing of German cities by the Allies created great misery, but did not seriously impede the German war effort. Putin cannot win the war by hammering Ukraine's cities.

DAYLOG FRI 20 JUN 25: As discussed in an article from GIZMODO ("Trump's Crypto Is Crushing MAGA's Pocketbook" by Luc Olinga, 13 June 25), Donald Trump didn't think much of cryptocoin a few years back, but he's good with it now. That's because he's been making big money off his personal "memecoin", of course named "Trumpcoin". However, to no surprise, most of the buyers of Trumpcoin have been taken to the cleaners.

Trumpcoin is similar to Bitcoin, the original cryptocoin, in that it is digital serialized monetary units, "tokens", with identity established and preserved by a "blockchain" encryption scheme that keeps track of the tokens changing hands.

It differs in how it was created. Bitcoin was created through "mining", being produced by intensive calculations that burn up a lot of energy. That was apparently done to restrict creating bitcoin to those willing to pay for the energy. Trumpcoin was, in contrast, "minted", with a fixed set of tokens, a billion of them, simply created. There was no need to waste energy.

Trumpcoin was released on 18 January 2023, at $23.93 USD per token. The billion Trumpcoins were to be released over three years lest flooding the market drive down the price. Exactly what stake Trump himself has in Trumpcoin is not clear, but Trump-related groups in charge of the exercise made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Of course, Trump declared: "I'm not profiting from anything." That's as believable as anything else Trump says, which means: NOT VERY. Trump also gets a cut any time somebody buys or sells Trumpcoin, bringing in hundreds of millions more.

Trumpcoin almost doubled in price in a few days after issue, then gradually dropped to less than half its issue value. A few dozen buyers made fortunes at the outset, playing the game of "pump & dump", while hundreds of thousands of small players were taken to the cleaners. The groups in control of Trumpcoin of course take no responsibility, saying Trumpcoin was just an "expression of support" for Trump, and that Trumpcoins were not "an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type."

In other words, buying Trumpcoin was just giving money for nothing to Trump. There was an infamous dinner for big Trumpcoin buyers in May, seen with good reason as an exercise in presidential corruption, a "pay to play" scheme. Everything Trump Touches Dies.

[MON 30 JUN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 26

DAYLOG MON 23 JUN 25: Over the weekend, as is now widely known, US Air Force B-2 stealth bombers struck deeply-buried Iranian nuclear production facilities. The Israelis had been pounding Iran, but didn't have the munitions to hit the buried facilities. The Americans did have the munitions, in the form of giant "deep-penetration" AKA "bunker-buster" bombs. Exactly how much damage they did is hard to say; it is known that the Iranians hauled away their highly-enriched uranium (HEU) stockpiles before the strikes.

The Trump Gang's backgrounding on the strikes was the usual gaslighting. It was true that the Iranians had built up HEU stockpiles and could have put together a Bomb fairly quickly if they wanted to -- but that had been true for a long time, and they hadn't done it.

There was global condemnation of the strikes, except for Israel -- though some were quietly OK with curtailing Iran's nuclear capabilities, if the strikes really did so. Who knows, Iran might cook up a Bomb very soon now. Russian indignation over the US hitting a "sovereign state" with "bombs & missiles" was particularly rich. Military pundits, like retired US Army General Mark Hertling, were somewhat torn on the necessity of the strikes, but were concerned that the Trump Gang hadn't really considered the consequences, having failed to understand the truism: The enemy gets a vote.

Indeed, today Iran has sent ballistic missiles against US facilities in Qatar. Domestically, there was indignation over Trump not getting congressional approval for the strikes -- though there's no way he would have bothered to ask.

Maybe more importantly, there was little US public support for the strikes, which contradicted Trump's bogus slams on Democrats as "war mongers". A poll before the strikes said 60% of Americans were AGAINST, with only 16% being FOR. Trump usually pays attention to polls; it's unsettling he didn't this time. Myself, I accept that a case could be made for action, but my answer to the poll would still have been NO -- we don't go to war if we don't have to, too many things to go wrong.

BlueSky blogger Ron Filipkowski commented:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

* Sigh, every morning in the age of Trump 2.0, it's hard to get out of bed, in the face of everything going wrong all the time. I'm learning to soak it up: these strikes are bad news, but not by appearances bad news at a whole new level.

The USA is at war with itself and will be for years. My primary goal now is to see it through to the end -- and it will end. In the meantime, I stand tall, be resolute, don't lose my cool, and watch out for dangerous flying objects thrown at my head.

DAYLOG TUE 24 JUN 25: An article in ATLANTIC ("The Myth of the Gen Z Red Wave" by Jean M. Twenge, 20 June 2025) probed the belief that Generation Z, the under-30s, shifted to the Right and voted Trump in the 2024 election.

There's some ambiguity in that. 52% voted for Kamala Harris, while 46% voted for Trump, meaning they were for her overall. However, the proportion of Gen-Z voters for Trump was significantly higher in 2024 than in 2020 -- men more than women -- and turnout was low. The complication with that is that there's no sign in polls that Gen-Z has turned strongly Right -- instead endorsing diversity and reproductive rights in large and growing proportions. So, why the high Trump vote?

The fact appears to be that tough economic conditions for Gen-Z incline them to vote against the status quo; they shifted Right in 2012, with a moderate decline to 2016, and then a strong Left shift in 2020. The shift to Trump in 2024 again meant dissatisfaction with the status quo. To be sure, it's hard to understand why anyone would think a nasty piece of work like Trump should be POTUS; possibly gaslighting by trolls had something to do with it. BlueSky users are only too familiar with trolls who pretend to be on the Left, but focus on bashing the Democrats -- suggesting they're not really on "our side", presumably working for the Kremlin or whoever.

It is frustrating that Trump can win when demographics say he can't. However, I'm suspecting reality is soaking in for Trump's Gen-Z voters. Before Trump 2.0 took office, he was polled at +5 points approval with Gen-Z -- now he's more like -25. Will things turn around? Given Trump's ability to defy what would seem laws of political gravity, that's a fair question. However, the Trump Gang has many weaknesses -- and, over the long run, we can expect some good luck and not always the bad.

DAYLOG WED 25 JUN 25: Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful [Budget] Bill" is making its way through Congress, generating fear as it does so -- for example, by threatening a sell-off of Federal lands. Fortunately, that's not gonna happen.

Some context is needed to explain. Jay Kuo, writing in THE BIG PICTURE blog on Substack, pointed out that the Democrats can filibuster objectionable bills in the Senate; the Republicans then need 60 votes to proceed, and they only have 53 seats there. There is an exception for "budget reconciliation", which is of course all about passing a government budget. That only takes a straight majority vote, it being undesireable to hold the government budget hostage -- which still can happen, of course.

There is inevitably an urge to tack on "riders" to a reconciliation bill to push through legislative actions that would be shut down by a filibuster. However, such riders run into an obstacle: the "Byrd Rule", introduced by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) 40 years ago. The Byrd Rule says, in effect, that riders not pertinent to the budget are not allowed. That can be ambiguous, and so the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has to make the judgement call. The GOP majority could vote to override her, but that would be more or less ending the filibuster, and the GOP doesn't want to do that. Anyway, Senator Mike Lee of Utah -- a nasty MAGA troll -- was pushing a rider to allow a sell-off of Federal lands, but MacDonough said NO.

To elaborate, the US government owns a staggering 28% of America's lands, mostly out West, including 84.5% of Nevada. The proposed sell-off was less than a percent of Federal lands, max 3.3 million acres, allegedly to be used for housing & infrastructure. That doesn't sound so bad -- but if I were asked, I'd still say NO. That's still more land than the state of Connecticut, and it looks like a land grab being promoted by wealthy interests. The benefits to America are unclear, while it could open the door to many evils.

There's more bad things in the Big Ugly Bill, one being a drive by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas -- another nasty MAGA troll -- that would withhold broadband internet funding to states if they tried to regulate AI tech for the next ten years. Given what an ugly mess AI is, that's not good. The parliamentarian gave that rider a PASS, but a number of GOP senators don't like it, so we'll see what happens there.

DAYLOG THU 26 JUN 25: New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani scored an upset victory yesterday, winning the primary election for the mayor of New York City -- in a rebuff to Andrew Cuomo, previously NY state governor and preferred to win, until the last few days.

Mamdani is still something of an unknown quantity to me -- but he's smart, charismatic, and ran a highly effective campaign. Cuomo, in contrast, didn't inspire confidence, coming across as consistently unpleasant. He had to resign from the governorship because of sex harassment charges; none of them were really proven, but his credibility was shot.

As for Mamdani, the trolls were out in force, with accusations so shrill and over-the-top that they seem to have helped him instead of hindered him. Supposedly he was an anti-semitic [snarl word:] Muslim with a Red Left agenda. First, in the era of the Gaza crisis, anyone with sense denounces Netanyahu. Second, Mamadani has interesting Leftist ideas -- such as city-controlled grocery stores in "food desert" locales -- that are worth a try. We just have to see how well he implements them, and what he does if they don't work out so well.

In reality, Mamdani was careful to go Left while reaching out to liberals more towards the center. One Eric Blanc wrote on BlueSky that Mamdani was, on the campaign trail, entirely pragmatic -- not concealing that he was a person of the focus Left, but talking in language the center Left could accept. That's why he won. Blanc wrote that "Zohran smartly rejected a widespread Leftist tendency to treat liberals and liberalism only as ideological competitors to be fought ... Zohran & NYC [Democratic Socialists] spoke to millions & found ways to reach far beyond the echo chamber."

There was still much denunciation of Dems by the Red Left in the replies to Blanc's postings. Admittedly, Cuomo's endorsement by prominent Dems like Bill Clinton was not a good look, but there's still too many people with the "3-minute hate" on the Dems. In the age of Trump, if I see people whose first priority is to attack Dems, I tend to think they're not on our side.

Some I came across were clearly radical anarchists. I've become more enthusiastic about blocking such folk. There's no arguing with them: if I try to get them to explain exactly what anarchism is really all about, I end up knowing less after they tell me than I did before I started.

Alas, establishment Dems appear to have very mixed feelings about Mamdani, which doesn't help matters much. These days, we can't be fighting among ourselves. I try to stay out of fights, and block if that's the only way to do it. In any case, I'm taking an interest in watching where Zohran is going.

DAYLOG FRI 27 JUN 25: According to a Pew poll, even if all eligible US voters had turned out to vote in the 2024 election, Trump would still have won, and by a bigger margin: 48% to 45%, about twice the actual margin. That actually makes sense: people who sat out the election didn't think much of either candidate, not seeing Kamala as smelling better than Trump. That skew of the balance favored Trump -- according to Pew, 44% to 40%. There was 64% turnout in 2024, more than any election since 1904, except for 2020. There was a skew towards Trump all down the line, notably with more nonwhite voters going to Trump.

There were many replies on BlueSky that Kamala only lost because the voting machines were rigged. I do wish that were so, but I say once again that there's no evidence it was. The Dems had poll watchers in all states, and it was only the far Right who screamed CHEATING! The CISA internet security also said there was no cheating, and voting machines have plenty of security engineering.

Some of those screaming about cheating say the odds are impossible that Trump could have carried all the swing states, but upset election wins are nothing extraordinary. In 1984, Walter Mondale took 1 state, Ronald Reagan took 49. The 2024 election was projected to be close, and in fact it was. The calculations of "odds" are nonsensical. Kamala Harris said there was no cheating; she had access to the best intelligence, and she can be believed. Those screaming CHEATING! ... not so much.

* It is still puzzling that "people of color" voted more Right in 2024. That seems to have been a fluke, possibly caused by the Gaza crisis. In response to the wave of bigoted attacks on Zhoran Mamdani in the recent NYC primary election, one Jake Grumbach wrote on BlueSky:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

I replied: "That POCS FOR TRUMP narrative never did look quite right. With the Trump Gang now in full White Supremacy mode, it's evaporated." The USA is finding out how bad Trump 2.0 really is; those who voted for him in 2024 must be waking up.