Fridays with Nicole Sander

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39 replies
  2. P J Evans says:

    And another court order that President Musk and The Felon Guy won’t like:
    https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/judge-blocks-trump-s-executive-order-ending-20180643.php

    A federal judge on Friday largely blocked sweeping executive orders from President Donald Trump that seek to end government support for programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore granted a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from terminating or changing federal contracts they consider equity-related. Abelson found that the orders likely carry constitutional violations, including against free-speech rights.

    Reply
  3. harpie says:

    A great sign seen at a recent rally:

    They’re eating the checks.
    They’re eating the balances.

    My version for toaday:

    They’re firing the scientists!
    They’re firing the JAGs!

    Reply
  4. Old Rapier says:

    I believe they want a recession so they can somehow take over the Fed. Nominally by going ballistic about them not lowering interest rates and Trump doing his King thing or having Powell fall from an upper story window.

    “Lowering interest rates” is a term of art. What they want is QE again. The Fed has been tightening, QT, shrinking its balance sheet, for 3 years. Amazingly the financial system has remained well liquefied. Money is extremely popular. Nowhere is money more popular than America. Nobody is actually against Fed ‘ease’.

    Taking over the Fed, somehow, is the ultimate goal because, besides the injection of traditional money into the system, with political control the Fed out of the hands of banks, who now have the monopoly on creating money, they could make Crypto money, ie. bank deposits. If banks no longer have exclusive power to create money then Capitalism as we know it is dead.

    It isn’t just Democracy these guys are after. They are after Capitalism. They want pure rackets.

    Reply
  5. may_08DEC2011_1137h says:

    39-45? fascism made an unconditional surrender in order to survive?

    resurrecting itself means that licence to capture or eliminate (generally shoot or blow up if there is anything left) is the default response to a continuing state of war?

    that’s what the depression generation had to do.

    [Moderator’s note: Thanks for attempting to change your name but the punctuation marks in “maybemayi%?” triggered auto-moderation. Please omit them or select a different unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. In the mean time your username temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Please omit anything in the URL field — “N/A” also triggers a mismatch. /~Rayne]

    Reply
  6. harpie says:

    I know there are a lot of people here who know a lot about Military topics,
    and I appreciate you all greatly, but I found the following really informative as well.

    Taking off from Alexander Vindman’s post [which I copied above] Deborah Pearlstein [Director, Program on Law & Public Policy, Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs] gives a mini intro on what JAGs do here:

    https://bsky.app/profile/debpearlstein.bsky.social/post/3liqjkkwuok2o
    February 21, 2025 at 11:52 PM

    Please don’t let the reporting about the Pentagon purge focus solely on DEI/Joint Chiefs. Firing the service TJAGs – the top lawyers for Army, Navy, USAF/Space Force – is incredibly consequential. A little context [thread] on why:
    […]
    Key JAGs are also expert in what’s called domestic operational law – like mil support to civilian law enfcmt & civil disturbance ops & insurrection act matters. This is a large, complex field. Here, for example, is last year’s JAG manual on domestic ops law: [link] /3

    To make it harder for mil commanders to interfere w/the ordinary application of law, the JAG corps since WWII has had its own, independent chain of command, responsible for all JAG assignments in Army, Navy, USAF. The service TJAGs just fired sit at the top of those independent chains of command. /4
    [read the whole THREAD]

    But this purge is kind of like getting rid of top legal advisors, inspectors general & (in a way) US attys all at once. Don’t miss it. /end

    Reply
    • harpie says:

      6:49 PM https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3lipymaahs22b
      February 21, 2025 at 6:49 PM

      New — All Department of Defense agencies were sent a video of an agitated Pete Hegseth debunking supposedly fake media stories. Today at least one agency called an “emergency” town hall and forced employees to watch the propaganda. [link]

      Links to: A Message From Defense Secretary Hegseth to the American Warfighter and the American Taxpayer UNITED STATES/02.20.2025/
      Courtesy Video/Defense.gov [VIDEO]

      8:56 PM Vindman’s post re: the firings [above]

      10:08 PM https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3liqdqmfqzk2b
      February 21, 2025 at 10:08 PM

      Doing this [VIDEO message] right before firing three top military leaders is so deranged. Source at DoD told me,
      “Disdain for Hegseth is a near-universal feeling even among the Trumpiest in the office.“

      Reply
      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Big Brother’s daily Two Minutes of Hate used to be more entertaining. Sending panic-stricken PR clips to the troops is not going to be the confidence-building exercise Pete Hegseth and his handlers intend it to be. Quite the opposite, I should think.

        Reply
        • xyxyxyxy says:

          As Vought said, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains….
          “We want to put them in trauma.”
          He then introduced newly hired watchdog Derek Chauvin.

  7. RipNoLonger says:

    Interesting, scary piece by Paul Krugman yesterday:
    https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/when-maga-meets-minsky

    Laying the foundations for the next financial crisis

    Sometimes — actually, quite often — it seems as if the Musk/Trump administration tries to undermine successful government policies precisely because they’ve been successful.

    It’s hard, for example, to see whose interests Trump is serving by trying to kill New York’s congestion pricing scheme, which is already showing clear positive results, including a noticeable decline in traffic accidents. If you think he cares deeply about the relatively small number of people who commute into lower Manhattan by car (many of whom seem to like the policy!), I have a Melania coin you might want to buy.

    This behavior may in part reflect the right-wing insistence, going back to Reagan, that government can never be a force for good, a doctrine right-wingers try to validate when they’re in power. Part of it may reflect jealousy: Trump, and only Trump, is allowed to have policy successes.

    …

    This is, however, important. The Musk/Trump administration has been weakening financial regulation across the board. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which aims to shield Americans from fraud, has been shut down. All of the agencies that try to supervise and regulate financial institutions, other than the Fed, are now being run by people hostile to the very idea of regulation. Cryptocurrency, which is rife with fraud and scams — indeed, the whole thing may be a scam — is now being actively promoted by the executive branch.

    And all of this couldn’t be happening at a worse moment. MAGA may well be laying the foundations for the next financial crisis.

    …

    Reply
    • harpie says:

      I found the Krugman piece to be very helpful in organizing my thoughts.
      Thanks for linking to it, RipNoLonger!
      [Have I ever told you I love how you expanded your name?]

      Reply
      • RipNoLonger says:

        Thanks, harpie – that’s probably the most creative thing I ever did in my life, and it was totally by accident. But I do enjoy double-entendres…

        Reply
  8. harpie says:

    And now to TRUMP’s Joint Chiefs nominee, “Raizin” Caine.

    7:31 PM Aaron Rupar has the screenshot:
    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3liq2xu6bkk2j
    February 21, 2025 at 7:31 PM

    Trump announces that “Razin” Caine is the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Central casting! [screenshot]

    From the screenshot:

    TRUMP: [One paragraph to fire Brown, then]
    Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a “warfighter” with significant interagency and special operations experience.

    Reply
    • harpie says:

      https://bsky.app/profile/dburbach.bsky.social/post/3liq3ff76hc2o
      February 21, 2025 at 7:39 PM

      Trump is nominating a retired Air National Guard 3-star to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

      Highest major command was Deputy Commander, CENTSOC
      [link to BIO]

      That is not a typical resume for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to put it mildly

      One thing in TRUMP’s bio of “Raizin” Caine that caught my eye
      as “not typical” was the “successful entrepreneur” part.

      Reply
      • harpie says:

        So, it was very interesting to find this THREAD from CapaitolHunters:

        https://bsky.app/profile/capitolhunters.bsky.social/post/3liqe3tp24c2i
        February 21, 2025 at 10:14 PM

        In tonight’s military purge, Tump nominated Dan Caine for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a retired Lt. General so underqualified he’d need a waiver. Even odder: Caine was installed last month at 3 VC firms doing crypto, AI, and defense tech, including Thrive, founded by Jared Kushner‘s brother. 1/ [screenshot]

        Have to say it looks bad if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is taking a paycheck from relatives of the president. And since Trump fired the Judge Advocates General from all four military branches tonight, we might have to wait awhile for an ethics ruling on it. 2/ [THREAD]

        Reply
      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Given how recently Caine retired with only three stars, it seems improbable he’s an entrepreneur, let alone a successful one. But landing *3* gigs at VC firms says something about what’s in his head they want. Whatever it is, it’s not his non-existent experience as an entrepreneur.

        Reply
    • harpie says:

      Here’s the rest of TRUMP’s Truth[sic] Social post
      [from a link in the Tom Nichols Atlantic piece]:
      https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1893105343498199292

      TRUMP: […] During my first term, Razin was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate. It was done in record setting time, a matter of weeks. Many so-called military “geniuses” said it would take years to defeat ISIS. General Caine, on the other hand, said it could be done quickly, and he delivered.

      Despite being highly qualified and respected to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the previous administration, General Caine was passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden. But not anymore! Alongside Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine and our military will restore peace through strength, put America First, and rebuild our military. Finally, I have also directed Secretary Hegseth to solicit nominations for five additional high level positions, which will be announced soon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

      Donald Trump Truth Social Post 07:30 PM EST 02/21/25

      “Peace Through Strength!” “America First!”

      Reply
  9. Memory hole says:

    Another excellent show. I liked what you said right about the 20 minute mark. The talk was about using Musk’s $ as a toxin, how he and Trump cutting government for billionaires’ gain. You said, “it has woken people in the United States up”.
    There it is. The dreaded Woke Virus that Trump, Musk, and maga fears so much. The super spreaders are in the (white) house.

    Reply

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