Roaming Charges: Seize the Moment Before We Tumble

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

– James Madison, Federalist Paper #47

+ Let’s try to reprise this week in the dismantling of the Republic:  Trump proclaimed Super Bowl Sunday, Gulf of America Day, and announced his plans to “buy Gaza.” From whom it isn’t clear.

On Monday, Trump said he was ordering a 25% tariff/tax on all imports of steel and aluminum and warned Hamas that if all hostages in Gaza weren’t released by noon this Saturday, “all hell” would break loose. Then he banned paper straws.

On Tuesday, JD Vance and Elon Musk fumed that federal judges had no business intruding on their unconstitutional raids on the federal government and that Trump should ignore any injunctions imposed on them. Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order rolling back enforcement of a law that makes it illegal for US companies to bribe foreign officials, arguing that the restriction puts American firms at a disadvantage, and told the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. To be fair, Trump also abolished the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, making it easier for overseas corporations and governments to bribe US officials. (He also shut down the Justice Department’s task force responsible for tracking down Russian oligarchs evading US sanctions.)

On Wednesday, Trump demanded that the Education Department be closed “immediately!” The problem: the Department was opened by an act of Congress, which isn’t as insurmountable a problem as it once might have been given that Congress barely asserts its existence anymore. Later that day in the Oval Office, Trump was allegedly told by X Æ A-Xii, one of Elon Musk’s 12 (known) kids, to “Shut up” and “You’re not the president!” Perhaps as compensation for being dissed by a four-year-old (who also wiped streams of snot on the Resolute Desk), Trump proclaimed himself the head of the Kennedy Center, whose annual awards he’d boycotted during his prior term, and called Putin to let him know he could take as much of Ukraine as he could carry back to Moscow, as long as he left the rare earth minerals behind for Trump.

+ A Data for Progress poll conducted on February 2 asked, “Billionaires have…”

Too much influence over government: 73%
The right amount of influence over government: 13%
Too little influence over government: 5%

+ Of course, the whole point of having billionaires, and their slash-and-burn hackers, run the government is that they don’t give a damn what the people think and, in fact, will almost always serve their own interests first by doing the exact opposite…

+ The only thing these three did to increase their already unimaginable wealth by unimaginable amounts was to help get Trump elected. And Trump returned the favor by giving them free range to gut the federal government’s regulatory system from the inside out, eliminating programs that curbed the growth of their wealth and protecting those features that fuel it.

+ Oxfam: The wealthiest 1% of people now own almost 45% of all wealth, while 44% of humanity live below the World Bank’s poverty line of $6.85 per day.

+ It’s a strange kind of economic populism, which bolts out of the gate with massive layoffs. But what would you expect from a guy whose only successful business venture (aside from two elections) was a TV gig where he hammed it up firing people?

+ As we bear first-hand witness to the evisceration of “democracy” in our own country by the billionaire class, it’s perhaps helpful to consult what the Greeks now think about the failure of what’s considered–rightly or wrongly–the first democracy, the one that briefly bloomed in fifth century BC Athens before being crushed and supplanted by a dictatorship of oligarchs and eventual imperial occupation, first by the Macedonians, then the Romans. Here’s the view of contemporary Greek political philosopher Takis Fotopoulos:

The final failure of Athenian democracy was not due, as it is usually asserted by its critics, to the innate contradictions of democracy itself but, on the contrary, to the fact that the Athenian democracy never matured to become an inclusive democracy. This cannot be adequately explained by simply referring to the immature “objective” conditions, the low development of productive forces and so on—important as may be—because the same objective conditions prevailed at that time in many other places all over the Mediterranean, let alone the rest of Greece, but democracy flourished only in Athens.

+ The word that leaps out at me from Takis Fotopoulos’s post-mortem is “inclusion,” now being elided anywhere it’s found in the federal government here, with consequences that would surely be familiar to Demosthenes.

+ Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor: “It is easy to dismiss D.E.I. programs as ineffectual, because in many ways they have been. But that raises the question of why the right is so determined to undermine and dismiss them.”

+++

+ As the Musk crew takes a widely swinging wrecking ball to the federal government, they have targeted the federal defender’s offices, which provide legal representation to low-income and indigent clients. This week, several federal defenders’ offices received notices that their leases are about to be terminated. However, federal public defense lawyers don’t work for the Justice Department; they are employees of the judiciary branch, which is one more demolition of the walls separating the branches of government as Trump seeks to expand his autocratic control over the Republic. But the potential wreckage goes deeper since undermining the Federal Public Defenders Office also cuts into not only the Constitution’s separation of powers provisions but also the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that all residents of the US have the right to effective legal representation.

+ According to a report in Drop Site News, Marco Rubio’s State Department lists Tesla as the recipient of its largest expected contracts, the department planning to purchase $400,000,000 worth of ‘Armored Tesla.’

+  The New Republic reported that one of the inspector generals Trump fired was examining Elon Musk’s failures to comply with reporting protocols designed to safeguard national security as a major recipient of Pentagon contracts.

+ Despite court orders, 98% of NIH grants that should have gone out this month didn’t, meaning that biomedical research will skid to a stop and clinical trials will end. Why? NIH’s spending on research is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the federal budget.

+ This was followed by the abrupt resignation of Lawrence Tabak, longtime principal deputy director of the NIH, as a move that came as a shock to his own lab staff.

+ Who will audit the auditors?

+++

+ February was born with too few days. Will Trump add a few more by Imperial Edict before the month runs out?

+ 30: the percentage of Americans who think all or most of Trump’s executive orders have been Constitutional.

+ As Trump slaps 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, here’s a look at who the US buys steel and aluminum from…

Steel

Canada–6 million tons
Brazil–4.1 million tons
Mexico–3.2 million tons
Vietnam–1.2 million tons

Aluminum

Canada–3.2 million tons
UAE–0.3 million tons
China–0.2 million tons
South Korea–0.2 million tons
Bahain–0.2 million tons
Argentina–0.2 million tons
India–0.2 million tons

+ The US isn’t producing less steel than Canada or Brazil because it can’t produce its own steel or because other steel-producing nations are preying on the poor, weak little US. It is making less steel because the billionaire financial class Trump surrounded himself with concluded that it was too expensive to fund steel production in the US and cheaper to finance steel plants elsewhere and import it. He should target his tariffs on them.

+ In February 2024, Canadians’ net favorability toward the US was 12%. Now it’s -20 % and still falling.

+ The Financial Times reports that “tariff anxiety” has prompted the stockpiling of $82 billion worth of gold in New York, causing shortages elsewhere.

+ Trump, when asked if his drive to annex Canada was a real thing: “Yeah, it is. I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state because we lose $250 billion a year with Canada, and I’m not gonna let that happen. It’s too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially, in subsidies to Canada? Now if they’re a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

+ The US is not “paying Canada $200 billion a year.” In 2024, the US ran a trade deficit with Canada of around $63 billion. But the US ran a $22 billion surplus in services. So the overall trade deficit was only $41 billion. And it’s not a subsidy; it’s the price Americans are willing to pay for Canadian goods.

+ I’m not a cognitive psychologist, but this doesn’t sound like a mind firing on all cylinders:

“I spoke to Governor [sic] Trudeau on numerous occasions and we’ll see what happens [Canada becoming the 51st US state], but it just sets up so good for them. Look the people would pay much less tax than they’re paying right now. They’d have perfect military protection. They don’t have any military protection, because they, essentially, because, um, and you take a look at what’s going on out there, you have Russian ships, you have China ships, you have Chinese ships, you have, uh, you have a lot of ships out there. You know people are in danger. It’s a different world today. It’s a different world that they need our protection. 

+ Stephane Dion, Canada’s Ambassador to France and Monaco, and the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the EU and Europe, say that Trump’s threats to invade and confiscate land in other countries violate international law. This is good to hear, especially since Canada has abetted and even sent troops to join many previous such invasions by the US.

+ In a talk at the King’s Head Pub, Mark Carney, the Federal Liberal candidate to replace Justin Trudeau, called Trump’s insistence on making Canada the 51st state “ridiculous” and “insulting” the “Voldemort of comments.” Carney said Trump’s aggressive posture toward Canada is a result of rising inequality in the US: “I think that Americans built their social safety net with enormous holes in it, that tens of millions of people fell through. The Americans worshipped at the altar of the market, and the gains were not spread across that society. Now, there’s a backlash. There’s a backlash, and that backlash is leading to them pushing out against us.”

+ Make Canada Healthy Again! It took Trump’s tariffs for Canada finally to figure out that American cheese sucks…

 +++

+ Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) introduced a bill this week authorizing  Trump to ”acquire” Greenland and rename it “Red, White, and Blueland.” The best and the brightest!

+ 46% of Danish people considered the US to be either “a very big threat” or “a fairly big threat” to Denmark, a higher percentage than North Korea and Iran. Sounds reasonable to me.

+ Trump on Fox News: “We want to raise defense spending. I think we have to have it.” Cut off school lunches, cancer research, and toxic waste cleanups, but keep building weapons to kill poor people halfway around the world who aren’t a threat to the US.

+ Trump wants to resurrect Reagan’s discredited old Star Wars plan to use “space lasers” to destroy nuclear weapons. They’ll do anything to avoid eliminating nuclear weapons.

+ Space lasers don’t stay in space.

+ Yun Sun writing in Foreign Affairs: “Beijing assumes that Washington’s own policies will dismantle the foundations of U.S. global hegemony, even if it creates a lot of turbulence… in the process. China’s top priority, then, is to weather the storm.”

+ Trump is trying to shake down Ukraine for access to $500 billion in rare earth minerals as compensation for past support, even if the US greenlights a Russian takeover of the country: “They [Ukraine] may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. They have tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earth, oil, gas, and other things. I want our money secured. I told them I want the equivalent of $500 billion worth of rare earth, and they’ve essentially agreed. At least we don’t feel stupid—otherwise, we’re stupid. I said we have to get something; we can’t just keep giving money.” (Most of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals are now under lands occupied by Russia.)

+ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has evicted mainstream news outlets at the Pentagon to make room for more than a half dozen rightwing outlets. Out: The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CNN, Politico, The Hill, The War Zone, and NPR. In: The New York Post, Washington Examiner, One America News, Newsmax, HuffPo, The Free Press, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart audio services. No invite yet for CounterPunch.

+ Marco Rubio tapped David Beattie to serve as acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affair, even though Beattlie has repeatedly called for the sterilization of people he calls “low IQ trash.” Beattie previously served as a speechwriter for Trump but was fired in 2018 after he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists. According to Rubio, Beattie’s primary focus at the State Department will be to “fight censorship.” You can understand why he might be concerned about having his own opinions muted.

+ The percentage of Americans who approve of the expansion of the United States by force is 4%. Looks like Big Daddy’s going to have to take out the paddle and beat MAGA into line.

+ This week, the Trump White House banned an AP correspondent from a press event because the Associated Press has refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” citing the fact that the Gulf is not fully within the territory of the US. Indeed, Mexico enjoys more territorial rights to the Gulf than the US. (Are all tyrants this petty or just our own?)

+ Surface Area of the Exclusive Economic Zones of the Gulf of Mexico/America

Mexico: 285,899 Sq. Miles / 47.67%
USA: 268, 388 Sq. miles / 44.75%
Cuba: 31,364 Sq. miles / 5.23%
International waters: 14,047 Sq. miles / 2.34%

+ The 6.7 thousand square mile Dead Zone should be renamed the Gulf of BP.

+ The Munich Security Conference report for 2025 says that because of Trump’s proposed land grabs, the US  should no longer be perceived as “an anchor of stability, but rather a risk to be hedged against.”

+ The Inspector General at USAID warned that the US currently can’t determine whether aid is reaching “terrorist” organizations because the Trump/Musk freeze has furloughed the entire terror vetting team. In addition, despite Rubio’s alleged waiver, no humanitarian assistance is flowing because 90 percent of staff in charge of managing and overseeing this aid have been sent home and denied access to their email.

+ Frederich Mertz, who seems likely to become the next chancellor of Germany: “the EU must not come to Washington as a dwarf — because then it will be treated as one.”

+ Here’s a reminder of why you shouldn’t weep too many tears for the demise of USAID: John Bolton, who served as director of policy and budget for USAID, showing Piers Morgan his farewell present from the Agency, a hand-grenade with the inscription: John R. Bolton, Truest Reaganaut…

+ Of course, USAID will almost certainly be replaced by something worse.

+++

+ The House released its budget bill, which contains massive tax cuts for the rich and devastating budget cuts for the poor. The bill targets an $800 cut in Medicaid, reducing SNAP’s (food stamps and other nutritional aid to low-income families) funding by at least 20%. They aim to pass the bill through the Reconcillation process to avoid a senate filibuster David Dayen, author of Monopolized: “Here’s the best way of explaining it: they want to take food and medicine away from poor people and give that money to billionaires instead.”

+ Some things never change no matter who’s in office, like Larry Summers‘ Cassandra-like warnings on inflation: “We are now in the riskiest period for inflation policy since the early Biden administration…Even without tariffs, immigration restrictions, deficit bloat and attacks on the fed there would be serious grounds for inflation worry.”

+ Trump’s acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russell Vought, told all staff at the Bureau not to perform “any work task.” The CFPB is one of the few federal agencies that generate a profit for the US, having returned more than $21 billion. So it’s not really about “efficiency,” is it?

+ According to a Hult School of International Business survey, employers would rather hire AI robots than bring a Gen Z graduate into the company.

+ Auto insurance rates in the US have increased by 93% over the last decade, far above the 34% increase in overall consumer prices.

+ A Charles Schwab survey reveals that Americans believe an average net worth of $2.5 million is necessary to be considered wealthy, a 14% increase over 2023.

+ Americans now believe they need at least $1.46 million in the bank to retire, an increase of more than 53% since 2020, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual.

+ Less than 3% of the federal workforce has accepted Trump’s buyout. Historically, more than 7% of the workforce voluntarily leave their jobs every year.

+ According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs has ended its pledge to refuse initial public offering business with companies that had all White, male boards. White men are back, baby! (But still can’t get laid, which is why they need guns.)

+ CNN reports that 41% of companies worldwide plan to reduce their workforces by 2030 and replace them with AI.

+ Comedian Bill Burr: “There is so much fucking money in this country, and there’s so much work being done. If you work a full fucking week, you should be able to pay your fucking rent. You shouldn’t have to go and get another fucking job and still be struggling. It’s bad for the country.”

+ Meanwhile, Spain will cut the workweek to improve the “work-life balance.” The cap on hours will be 37.5 as of the start of next year, down from the current 40 hours a week. Not the direction we’re heading where the workweek will be either 60 or 0 hours.

+++

+ This is what autocracy looks like…

+ In his argument before Congress in favor of the Bill of Rights in 1789, James Madison said that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights [and serve as] an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Of course, now that they’re in power, the Federalist Society has dispensed with federalism in favor of assigning dictatorial powers to the executive.

+ Ryan Grim: “It is apparently unconstitutional for the president to instruct the Department of Education to restructure and forgive some student loan debt, but it is ok for DOGE chair Elon Musk to just get rid of the whole department.”

+ The Brennan Center’s Wendy Weiser on the SAVE Act, a Trump-backed bill requiring a birth certificate or passport to register to vote: “This legislation is being promoted as an election integrity bill, but it’s actually a voter suppression. If a married woman hasn’t paid $130 to update her passport — assuming she has one, which only about half of Americans do — she may not be able to vote in the next election if the SAVE Act becomes law.”

+++

+ ICE is apparently monitoring social media accounts to see who is saying bad things about it. So make sure you say something piquant and pithy about them because it will likely end up in your DHS/FBI file, and you wouldn’t want to sound silly when some intrepid researcher in the future FOIAs your file and reveals it to posterity…(Warning: You’ll have to say many nasty things to catch up with the Hippie Pope, whose file is already bulging.)

+ Pope Francis has sent a letter to US bishops decrying mass deportation and rejecting “any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” The actual “ordo amoris,” he writes, is the ethos of the Good Samaritan. When MAGA attacks Francis (they already refer to him derisively as “Mr. Pope”) for this powerful restating of Jesus’s teachings, will AG Pam Bondi’s “anti-Christian bias” commission investigate? Or write him off as “not a real Christian” because he doesn’t own an AR-15?

+ Perhaps Bondi could begin her investigations into “anti-Christian bias” with Trump’s Border Czar Thomas Homan, the man credited with inventing the child separation policy: “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope. Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church. He wants to attack us securing our border? He has a wall around the Vatican, does he not? So he has a wall to protect his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States?”

+ Does Homan not realize that 97% of the people ICE will be dragging out of churches are devout Catholics and thus part of the Hippie Pope’s flock? More likely he just doesn’t give a shit. But imagine the outrage if someone in the Biden adm had told the Pope to shut up about abortion?

+ By the way, there is an ancient wall around the Vatican. Still, the gates are wide open, and anyone can enter regardless of faith, ethnicity, or country of origin–no passport is needed, not even one of those much hated but rarely seen vaccine passports.

+++

+ The planet just experienced its warmest January on record…

+ At least 55 million Americans are expected to migrate within the country in the next decade, most of them fleeing the environmental and health consequences of climate change, including more than 5 million this year alone.

+ Energy Secretary Chris Wright: “The US should stop the closure of coal-fired power plants,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, adding that the fuel source would be “essential to the nation’s power system for decades to come.” Why? Power-hungry AI data centers that need the electricity to steal all of the future, except those involved in the mining of coal.

+ In 2004, it took the world a year to install a gigawatt of solar power. In 2023, it took only a day. Americans, however, can’t get too excited about this remarkable achievement given that Trump has “paused” the permitting of solar projects, even on private lands, effectively paralyzing the development of new renewable energy plans across the country for at least the next two months.

+ EPA director Lee Zeldin said he will try to “claw back” some $20 billion in funding for climate projects awarded under the Biden administration.

+ Trump on gut regulations for powering AI data centers: “We’re going to let the people that are buying the electricity make their own electric plants, electric generation plants… We’re calling it a national emergency. And that’s exactly what it is.” As long as those plants don’t generate electricity through solar, geothermal, wind or hydro power.”

+ Natural ecosystems have seen a 47% decrease against their estimated baselines as of 2019.

Global forest area: –32 %
Natural Ecosystems (extent and condition: -47%
Coral reefs: -50%
Wetlands: -85%

+ Werner Herzog should remake Fitzcarraldo as a climate change thriller, but instead of lugging a steamship over the mountains, try the even more surreal-but-real task of pulling it up the dried-out riverbeds of the Amazon…

+ Someone asked me, who could possibly replace Kinski? Aye, that’s the rub. The only actor I can envision in the role, who has a similar anarchic on-screen presence, is Lars Eidinger, (Irma Vep and Babylon Berlin), who says his new film, The Light, directed by Tom Twyker, explains “why the world’s on the brink: we’re governed by people who have a narcissistic personality disorder.”

+Alaska has imposed a moratorium on the hunting of the Emperor Goose. Not for humane reasons or out of appreciation for the wonders of this avian denizen of the frigid waters of the Far North. No. They’ve had to close the season because the Emperor Goose’s population, like that of the Common Murre in Arctic waters, is in a nosedive, caused by the climate-driven warming of the North Pacific, Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean.

+ I reported in Roaming Charges last week that Chinese EV-maker BYD is kicking Tesla’s ass in the UK. But the thumping is actually happening across Europe.

Increase/decrease in EV sales in Jan. 2025 v. Jan 2024…

Spain

BYD +774%
Tesla -76%

Portugal

BYD: +207%
Tesla: -29%

France (which just imposed a weight tax on vehicles, which hit EVs hard because of their heavy batteries)

BYD: -14%
Telsa: -63

Belgium

BYD: +89%
Tesla: -45%

Germany

BYD: +69
Tesla: -60

Norway

BYD: +21
Tesla: -38%

Sweden

BYD: +35%
Tesla: -44%

Source: Bloomberg.

+ Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would impose a $1000 tax on all EVs, regardless of country of origin.So they’re not against raising taxes, after all.

+ Fire historian Stephen Pyne, author of the classic book Fire in America: “California is built to burn — it’s not unique in that — but it’s built to burn on a large scale and explosively at times. You can live in that landscape, but how you choose to live will affect whether that fire is something that just passes through like a big thunderstorm, or whether it is something that destroys whatever you’ve got.”

+ The Simians have joined the Orca Resistance! This week, a Toque Macaque entered a power station outside Colombo, “monkeyed” with the transformer, and knocked out power for most of Sri Lanka!

+ A new study just out in Nature Communications (Pesticides Have Negative Effects on Non-Target Organisms) confirms that pesticides are toxic to organisms they are not intended to harm, including fungi, microbes, plants, insects, and vertebrates, including, naturally, humans.

+ Just what America needed: more plastic to slurp into its collective brain…

+ Trump’s obsession with plastic straws can be understood as trolling of virtuous liberals. Still, it doesn’t make much sense as a MAGA issue since paper straws–far from being woke devices shoved through the squeezed lips of plastic-loving Americans by goody-goody Greens–were one of the great American inventions of the 1890s, replacing the rye straws that dissolved in your mouth as you sucked down mint juleps.

+++

+ In the last two years, H5N1 has been responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million chickens in the United States, many of them egg-laying hens.

+ For years, Trump, followed by FoxNews and MAGA, blamed the inflated price of eggs on Biden’s economic policies. Now, to shield Trump from the inflationary fallout, they’ve discovered bird flu as the driving force, a disease detected and monitored by the very same public health agencies they are rapidly unplugging.

+ Ohio is now on the scoreboard with its first human case of bird flu.

+ Winnie Byanyima, the head of the UN’s AIDS response division, warned that HIV infections could see a six-fold increase if US support is ended and not replaced. Trump’s newly confirmed director of HHS, RFK, Jr., has suggested multiple times that HIV isn’t the cause of AIDS and that the disease’s spread was mainly the result of “heavy recreational drug use in gay men and drug addicts.” It’s almost as if they want HIV infections to rise in Africa…

+ Levels of influenza nationwide are now at the highest they have been since the peak of the 2009 swine flu pandemic. But as the US confronts its worst flu season in 15 years, the WHO reported that the CDC has stopped sharing flu surveillance data through WHO platforms.

+ Gaines County, Texas has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US. Now, a measles epidemic is spreading among children through the school system.

+ A new report by Human Rights Watch shows that black women in the Mississippi Delta with cervical cancer are more likely to die than white women, the disproportionate mortality rates a consequence of poverty, racism and lack of access to health care and education.

+ Soon doctors being paid by Medicare will be getting calls in the operating room from an 18-year incel with posters of Dr. Mengele in his bedroom working for DOGE questioning whether the gall bladder surgery really needs to be done under anesthesia.

+++

+ Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries: “What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it’s their government.” How weak can you get?

+ Moshik Temkin: “Historical perspective: FDR’s New Deal was largely about creating the foundations necessary to protect American society from collapsing into authoritarianism and fascism. Our leaders, from both parties, have spent the last 50 years dismantling those protections. And here we are.”

+ At a closed-to-the press meeting, Eric Adams, the indicted mayor of NYC, told the city’s top commissioners not to publicly criticize Trump or interfere with his raids on immigrants, and Adams would make sure Trump didn’t cut funding to the NYC government’s coffers. Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Justice told federal prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams, the man Nate Silver called the “future of the Democrats” and claimed he would prove to be so popular Biden would step aside and let him vanquish Trump…..

+ Claudia Sheinbaum asking the critical questions about the drug trade and letting Trump know national sovereignty is a two-way street:

“They have a lot to do in the United States. How does fentanyl or any drug arrive in the US? How does it arrive? What happens after the border? Who operates the distribution of the drugs? Who sells the drugs in the cities of the United States? That has caused so much tragedy? Where does the money from sales go in the United States? How is it that there are weapons in Mexico for the exclusive use of the US Army? Who sold them? How did they get to our country? So there is an important part they have to do in their own country. Or is it that there are no drug cartels in the United States nor organized crime there? Start with your own country. We are going to collaborate, but it will never be subordination or interference. There will be coordination, but we will always defend our sovereignty.”

+ US banks would need another bailout if they had to stop taking deposits from the drug trade…

+ Trump, while proclaiming Super Bowl Sunday “Gulf of America Day:” “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza…We may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it.”  Some days, it’s hard to believe we’re living in the same country that produced Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglas, Mark Twain, WEB Dubois, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald (and Ella, too), William Faulkner, Buster Keaton, Billie Holiday, Orson Welles, Langston Hughes, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Gore Vidal, Bob Dylan, Audre Lorde, Stanley Kubrick, Adrienne Rich, Ishmael Reed, Susan Sontag, and Toni Morrison…

+ When asked on Morning Joe what the response would be if Trump ignored the rulings of federal judges, Sen. Amy Klobuchar says Senate Republicans might stand up to the White House. “I’ve seen a few of them stand up from time to time.” In other words, the Democrats won’t do anything. But the Republiclans might. Eventually. Maybe. Hopefully…If not, there’s that asteroid headed our way.

+++

+ Has Tinder’s algorithm ever spit out a more perfect match?

+ 20 million: number of people in the US who suffer from “social media addiction.” Seems low.

+ RIP: Tom Robbins. When I met him at Olsson’s Books & Records in Georgetown, for the release of Still Life With Woodpecker, Robbins was pretty stoned and wearing a necklace with a plastic banana. He inscribed Kimberly’s copy of Woodpecker with a red marker nearly as fat as the one Trump uses, “Yum! TR.” I suppose I should have been jealous…His first novel, Another Roadside Attraction, is as pertinent as ever, though perhaps not as funny, given the circumstances…

+ Tom Robbins on his literary roots: “I’m descended from a long line of preachers and policemen. Now, it’s common knowledge that cops are congenital liars, and evangelists spend their lives telling fantastic tales in such a way as to convince otherwise rational people that they’re factual. So, I guess I come by my narrative inclinations naturally.”

+ Watching Kendrick Lamar and SZA annihilate Drake while Serena Williams crip-walked on what remains of his career during the Super Bowl was a blast. But this was even better…

+ Zül-Qarnain Nantambu, the flag-unfurling dancer, was detained by security and banned by the NFL from future Super Bowls (a silver lining, I’m sure.)  Nantambu said he asked himself before taking the field for Lamar’s performance: “Are you going to be a coward? Are you going to take a stand?”

+ Given Lamar’s demolition of his Canadian nemesis Drake, you’d have thought MAGA would have embraced his performance, wrapped as it was in red, white, and blue imagery, but they couldn’t see past his blackness and denounced the Pulitzer Prize winner. Both Matt Walsh and George Santos slammed Kendrick’s performance as “trash” and the ever witty Lauren Boebert asked, “Tell me I’m not the only one needing subtitles for this!!” She’d have to learn to read first.

+ To bolster their case, these rightwingers pointed to data showing that Super Bowl viewership “lost 1.3 million viewers after he finished  the halftime show.” Typically, they missed the significance of the “after.” “After he finished” means they were sticking around only for Kendrick Lamar since the game was a bust and the commercials were worse…

+ John the Baptist wants his head back… “I didn’t lose it for this,” he told Dante, while strolling in the Emperyan gardens of the Paradiso.

+ These are the frigging choices? Did no one see La Chimera, The Beast, Evil Does Not Exist, Janet Planet, or All We Imagine of Light?

+ Dave Davies, lead guitarist for The Kinks, on listening to Hank Williams in the early 60s: “Hank Williams was a big inspiration. And it wasn’t just his pictures that made him look so cool. It also had a lot to do with the subject matter. There are great stories behind those songs. It really helped me in my writing, and I know it inspired Ray. Great titles like, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” And one of my favorite songs by Hank Williams was: “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy,” which was really poignant for me at the time.” Don’t leave us hanging, Dave, do tell…

I Bailed You Out When You Were Down on Your Knees, So Will You Catch Me Now I’m Falling…

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

Captial’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the Class Struggle
Jodi Dean
(Verso)

How We Sold Our Future: the Failure to Fight Climate Change
Jens Beckert
(Polity)

Waiting for Robots: the Hired Hands of Automation
Antonio Casilli
(University of Chicago)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

Closer to the Bone
Tommy Castro and the Painkillers
(Alligator)

Apple Cores
James Brandon Lewis Trio
(Anti-)

Cowards
Squid
(Warp)

Economy Über Alles

“Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There’s only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy über alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and driving an entire civilization insane. Don’t spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming.”

– Tom Robbins