“Imagine a trillion-dollar publicly-traded company that was regularly in the news for corruption scandals, couldn’t account for a majority of its assets, and has never passed an audit. Shareholders would demand resignations. The SEC would launch investigations. Executives would be forced to resign. Yet, when it comes to the Pentagon, the largest line item in the federal discretionary budget, this persistent level of dysfunction has largely been met with indifference. … If the Trump administration is really serious about reducing wasteful spending, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency would have spent the last month at the Pentagon, not the U.S. Agency for International Development.” [editor’s note: Does someone want to tell this “pundit?” The DOD audit is still to come; “You said” was just the lowest hanging fruit. – SAT] additional editor’s note: Does someone want to tell SAT that the word “gullible” is written on the ceiling? – TLK] (02/18/25)
“In early January, Donald Trump Jr.’s private plane landed on a snowy airfield in Greenland. There was little fanfare upon his arrival, but his 14 million social-media fans were certainly tagging along. ‘Greenland coming in hot … well, actually really really cold!!!’ President Trump’s eldest son captioned a video he posted on X. It was shot from the cockpit of the plane, where a ‘Trumpinator’ bobblehead (a figurine of his father as the Terminator) rattled on the aircraft’s dashboard as it descended over icy blue seas. It was a stunt of MAGA proportions. Don Jr. was arriving in Greenland on behalf of his father who, along with his new buddy Elon Musk, had announced a desire to seize that vast Arctic landmass from Denmark through strong will or even, potentially, by force.” (02/18/25)
“The spectacular dominance of America’s Magnificent Seven tech firms — with $1 trillion-plus market caps — has been a marvel to behold and a genuine source of American pride. This is a theme that both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have in celebration of American business prowess. The Magnificent Seven companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — have a combined net worth greater than all the companies in Europe. Now that’s Chiefs-versus-Eagles dominance. The mystery is why many regulators in Washington view these digital-age companies, whose continued rocket-ship growth has created hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs for Americans, as villains not heroes. They keep calling for a blanket of smothering regulations via antitrust laws to rein in their market power.” (02/18/25)
“Last Friday, an estimated 14,000 federal workers were fired from their positions across multiple agencies. Among them was Brian Gibbs, a National Park Service ranger whose heartbreaking account of losing his ‘dream job’ puts a human face on a crisis that threatens the very fabric of American life. ‘I am the smiling face that greets you at the front door,’ Gibbs wrote. ‘I am your family vacation planner … I am the Band-Aid for a skinned knee.’ This generous offering of his words reveals an essential truth: Public service is not about bureaucracy; it’s about the careful, often invisible, undervalued work of maintaining our society’s fundamental freedoms.” [editor’s note: When “progressive” pundits like this can distinguish between actual “public service” work and the money laundering, fraud and other crimes that surround most of it, we can start calling it “progress” – SAT] (02/18/25)
“European elites are in a tizzy: not because their political leaders are in freefall or because their economies are in decline, but because Vice President JD Vance had the bad manners to air their dirty laundry in public. At the Munich Security Conference, the U.S. vice president accused Eurocrats of abandoning some of the sacred principles that sustain democratic nations. He is correct; free speech is under attack in Europe and open elections are under threat. Why? Because, like liberal governors and mayors in the U.S., establishment pols in Europe are in crisis. Their policies have driven down growth and built gigantic welfare states that are unsustainable.” (02/18/25)
“The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals put a final end to former President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan on Tuesday. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey originally sued the Biden administration over its $500 million effort to wipe away student loans, known as the SAVE plan. The court’s Tuesday ruling found that Biden’s secretary of education had ‘gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.’ Bailey noted in a statement that the ruling has no active impact beyond blocking future presidents from attempting Biden’s maneuver. ‘Though Joe Biden is out of office, this precedent is imperative to ensuring a President cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt,’ Bailey said in a statement.” (02/18/25)
“Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday proposed cutting taxes by nearly $2 billion, echoing a priority of Republicans, while also outlining a plan to fight water pollution and push back on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Evers will deliver his two-year spending plan to the Republican-controlled Legislature on Tuesday night. Republicans have promised to dramatically rewrite the plan, as they have done on his three previous budgets, before passing it later this year. Evers has clashed with Republicans over tax cuts in the past, gutting a $3.5 billion tax cut in the last budget, while approving a $2 billion tax cut in 2021. In his new budget, Evers said he will call for cutting taxes by nearly $2 billion — equal to about half of the state’s roughly $4 billion budget surplus. Republicans have said they want to use all the state’s surplus to cut taxes.” (02/18/25)
“One of the themes recurring in conservative media these days is the normalization of Donald Trump by historical analogy. This kind of sweeping arrogation of power, we’re told by Wall Street Journal editorialists, columnist George Will, and other conservative commentators, has ample precedents in the records of progressive presidents particularly: Woodrow Wilson, both Roosevelts, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. So why this harping on poor Donald Trump? Trump’s overreaching claims to power, Will tells us, ‘is an institutional consequence of progressivism.’ Journal editorialists note that ‘Mr. Trump is stretching laws to see what he can get away with, but so have other recent Presidents,’ including both Obama and Biden. As historical analysis, this is malicious piffle.” (02/17/25)
“The Washington Post reportedly killed a $115,000 advertisement calling on President Trump to fire DOGE chief Elon Musk — sparking renewed outcry over censorship at the Jeff Bezos-owned publication. Advocacy group Common Cause wanted the anti-Musk wraparound ad, which would cover the front and back pages, to run this week, but it was scrapped without management providing a reason, according to the Hill. Common Cause, along with partner Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, had planned to spend $115,000 for both the wraparound ad and a similar full-page ad inside the paper, the outlet reported. ‘We are forced to ask ourselves if the Washington Post — a pillar of investigative journalism during Watergate — is unwilling to challenge those in power,’ Virginia Kase Solomón, president at Common Cause, told the New York Post in a statement.” (02/18/25)
“Guess what? The Trump administration’s much-criticized strategy to get Western Europe to do more to defend itself is working. President Trump smiled in the Oval Office as Robert F. Kennedy Jr was sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes, Europe’s leaders were miffed that President Trump had a one-on-one call with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week apparently without consulting them. And that he sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff to to Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible deal to end the Ukraine war with their Russian counterparts — while not inviting them. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO members in Brussels, ‘Leaders of our European allies should take primary responsibility for defense of the continent.'” (02/17/25)
