for how long has it been illegal for a Federal dollar to fund research about gun violence? this is an old GOP tactic. you'd like to think all the dead kids would constitute a backfiring of it but, so far, nope.

yeah. i think a Wired guy put it well. for the moment, Elon is the working head of government while Trump is the ceremonial head of state. Trump as just a resentful old man who likes power and adulation. It’s always about who gets to run the show in his name.

elon was really a last minute coup, like watching a demon get possessed by a demon. the first demon wants an exorcism!

there was a fire in the kitchen and just when mom put it out i left the shower on in the bathroom i am so awesome i saved our home.

a bit oddly, i take some hope in this. when steve effing bannon is calling then oligarchs and using expletives to describe them, maybe something is changing. dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3...

the public sure didn’t like inflation they blamed on the last guy. sure, some parts of the public are insulated. but most of it, most of us, are not.

i worry abt more subtle things, the gutting of state capacity from within, corrupting (and skimming from) Federal payments systems etc. i don’t worry at all abt stuff the public will feel unsubtly in prices. i’m grateful for that. when we actually experience the idiocy we’ve elevated, we’ll learn.

i would like it if i were sure people who understand the law surrounding eg access to federal records and systems (not to mention election law) were noting all the possible violations. maybe from all these experts they are firing, we as civil society should fund some investigators-in-exile.

mad bro disease.

what is it they say about Rome and all the thoroughfares?

i’m sorry about your wank aches. that sounds painful. but i think you could find a friend!

one thing different is now we all wonder about the politics of letting this story through when a year ago it was just WaPo’s core beat.

I think you are giving them far too little. These people had very steady lives. They don’t any more. They are well aware.

Sometimes you know what you are giving up, and you give it up amyway.

We have Nicholas Gottlieb at US AID, David A. Lebryk at Treasury, who knows how many others, giving up their careers rather than betray their values. Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, the CEOs of CBS + ABC, placate and bribe the President to preserve and expand their empires. Money makes people pathetic.

they may think they are.

Should people who openly bribe the President, even if they are “respected” lawyers or CEOs or whatnot, doing it because “it’s in the best interest of shareholders” be welcome in polite society? Should you serve them in your restaurant? Speak politely with them at conferences?

I think that’s right. I hope they’re badly wrong. The US is a lot bigger and more fractious than post-Communist Hungary. They’re running their play. We all have to live out the experiment, playing whatever part we choose.

How is this the world we live in?