A (or One) Skeptic

Should President Trump be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize because of his efforts to procure a lasting peace plan between Israel and Hamas? The question is no longer quite the joke that it would have been a few months ago.

Below we consider that question in detail, here are the main points of the proposal. How many of these will actually be fulfilled, only time will tell. But here is what was negotiated.

1. Deradicalized Gaza: Gaza should be transformed into a zone that “does not pose a threat to Israel” or its neighbors.
2. Re-development for Gazans: Reconstruction, infrastructure, public services, and economic revival for the people of Gaza.
3. Immediate ceasefire and suspension of hostilities: If both parties accept the plan, war would end immediately. Israeli forces would withdraw to agreed lines, and all military operations (air, artillery, etc.) would be suspended.
4. Hostage return within 72 hours: Within 72 hours after Israel publicly accepts the plan, all hostages (alive or deceased) held in Gaza must be returned.
5. Release of Palestinian prisoners: After hostages are returned, Israel must release 250 life-sentence prisoners plus ~1,700 Gazans detained since October 7, 2023 (including all women and children detained in that context).
6. Amnesty / safe passage for Hamas members who disarm: Hamas members who relinquish weapons and commit to peaceful coexistence would be granted amnesty; those who choose to leave Gaza would receive safe passage.
7. Immediate large-scale humanitarian aid: Once the agreement goes into effect, humanitarian aid would be deployed immediately, including water, power, sanitation, hospitals, debris removal, road reopening, etc.
8. Neutral distribution of aid: Aid entry and distribution would be via the U.N. and other neutral international agencies (e.g. Red Crescent), free from interference by parties to the conflict. Opening of border crossings would follow pre-agreed mechanisms.
9. Transitional technocratic governance: Gaza would be governed temporarily by an apolitical committee of Palestinian technocrats, overseeing essential services and municipal functions.
10. Supervision by a “Peace Board” / international oversight: The transitional authority would be overseen by a “Board of Peace,” chaired by President Trump, and involving international experts.
11. Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza: The plan states there should be no Israeli annexation of Gaza.
12. Phased withdrawal of Israeli forces: As security and control are transferred to international stabilization forces (ISF, see below), the IDF would withdraw in stages, subject to conditions, milestones, and security assurances.
13. International Stabilization Force (ISF) / security arrangement: A multinational force would help secure border/perimeter areas, prevent arms smuggling, support new Palestinian police, and maintain stability.
14. Joint security cooperation: Israeli, Egyptian, and ISF / Palestinian security forces would coordinate border and security in Gaza to ensure no re-entry of weapons, etc.
15. “Free zones” and contingency if Hamas rejects or delays: If Hamas delays or rejects the proposal, Israel and its partners would begin implementing security, aid, and administration in “terror-free zones” that have been cleared.
16. Limitations on future Israeli attacks on Qatar: The plan commits Israel not to launch future attacks on Qatari territory, such as previous strikes to assassinate Hamas leaders.
17. Countering radical elements and narrative change: Educational and interfaith dialogue measures would be introduced to counter extremism, reshape narratives, and promote tolerance (including revising curricula).
18. Reforms of Palestinian Authority & governance prospects: The plan contemplates a reformed Palestinian Authority and opening the door to Palestinian self-determination when conditions are met.
19. Pathway to statehood / political horizon: While the plan does not immediately establish a Palestinian state, it envisions a future credible path toward statehood if reforms and security are achieved.
20. Dialogue to establish durable coexistence: The U.S. would launch a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to define a more permanent political horizon and vision of coexistence.

To state the obvious, there are a LOT of places where this plan could still fall apart. The first and most crucial test is whether Hamas will release the 48 hostages (only 20 of whom are believed to still be alive) and whether that will happen on Monday, as is currently contemplated. If so, Israel has a lot of prisoners that they have promised to release in return.

Now the question arises, who actually negotiated this agreement on behalf of the United States. The answer, it turns out, are Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Bishara Bahbah. Kushner, some of you may remember, helped to negotiate the Abraham Accords during the first Trump Administration. Maybe the Nobel Committee should give him the peace prize next year. Boy, wouldn’t that take Trump over the edge?

But, to be fair, Trump did apparently make a phone call to Bibi Netanyahu telling him “this is the deal that you have to take.”

So, there is an argument to be made for Trump.

Of course, he’s not getting the prize this year, since this year’s prize has been awarded to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader and activist.

On the other hand, there are many arguments to be made for why Trump should never get the Nobel Peace Prize.

• The first and most obvious argument is his descent into fascism. 
• Then there is his lawlessness. 
• There is his refusal to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. 
• There is his weaponization of the Justice Department.
• There is his destruction of boats in international waters without any evidence that they are “Tren de Aragua”
• There is his holding of immigrants in concentration camps like “Alligator Alcatraz” in violation of habeas corpus.
• There is his unilateral withdrawal from international agreements, such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Global Compact on Migration, and a number of others.

I’m really just scratching the surface here, and honestly, I don’t have the time or inclination to list all of the reasons that Trump should never get a Nobel prize. It doesn’t really matter, in any case, because the Norwegians hate Trump, and they are never going to give it to him regardless of what else he does.

It’s also pretty well known that Trump only wants the prize because Obama got the prize. He doesn’t care about peace in Palestine. He likes Netanyahu, but he doesn’t care about the Israelis. Just like he doesn’t care about his own voters, who are about to (or already have) get screwed on health care and farm subsidies and tariffs on consumer products.

As for the Nobel, Obama himself has conceded that he didn’t really deserve the prize. He mostly got it for “presidenting” while being black. Formally, Obama got the prize for promoting nuclear disarmament, diplomatic engagement, promoting multilateralism, climate change leadership, and his work on human rights and democracy. That’s not nothing, but again, it’s not the kind of thing that would normally get you the prize.

It’s a moot point, because Trump isn’t getting the prize. Not now, not ever. All I’m saying is, in the interests of objectivity, there is an argument to be made for giving him the prize.

For this latest shutdown you can thank Newt Gingrich.

He was the guy who invented the “who will blink first” game of chicken back in 1995 in the pair of shutdowns against Bill Clinton. That’s when Gingrich wanted significant cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental protection, and other social spending along with tax cuts — where have you heard that before? — and triggered a five day shutdown in November and a 21 day shutdown in December to get his way.

That shutdown ended with Gingrich backing down after the media portrayed the Republicans as at fault for the shutdown and Gingrich (in particular) as petulant, with Gingrich having complained publicly complained about being snubbed on Air Force One by Clinton during a trip to Israel for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.

But the switch had been set.

Before that there had been the occasional one or two day “shutdown” at the end of budget cycles where the Congress and the President hadn’t finished dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s before a new budget came into effect. But those never caused major disruptions to the functioning of the United States government and never caused people to be furloughed.

It may also be of interest that these kinds of shutdowns never seem to happen in parliamentary governments around the world, where failing to agree on a new budget just causes the old budget to roll over until a new budget is enacted.

Only in America do these disputes lead to shutdowns. 

Only in America.

Trump, of course, procured the all-time record for shutdowns in his first administration, a 35 day imbroglio with Congressional Democrats over “border wall” funding, DACA, immigration caps and budget caps.

Trump, Mr. Art of the Deal, eventually backed down on that one. 

Will the GOP back down this time again?

I guess we’ll see. 

They, of course, are claiming that the Democrats are trying to “give health care to illegals.”

You would think that at some point just lying straight through your teeth would come back to bite you. Hasn’t happened yet.

What the Democrats want is (1) extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, (2) reversing cuts to Medicaid made in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and (3) restoring recissions for previously scheduled funding that the Trump administration unilaterally took out of federal funding (and the Republicans then rubber-stamped).

In other words, they don’t want health insurance to become more expensive for the average American.

Why Republicans want to burden their voters with more expensive health insurance (again, just like in the earlier Gingrich-Clinton dispute), remains a mystery to me.

But J.D. Vance and Republican leadership are out there claiming Democrats want to give healthcare to “illegals” even though they know perfectly well that the undocumented are not entitled to Medicaid, or ACA subsidies, or any other federally-sponsored health care funding.

(Not to get too technical, but in Massachusetts and other states there is something known as the Uncompensated Care Fund, which pays back hospitals when people without insurance walk into their emergency room and receive care that hospitals are federally mandated to provide. Before the enactment of the ACA this was a much larger problem because people with non-emergencies would walk into an emergency room to get some kind of routine medical care, and yes, that sometimes included the undocumented.)

Democratic leadership was roundly criticized by their own voters for backing down to Trump and the Republicans the last time that the federal budget was about to expire. They are well motivated not to let that happen again.

On September 22, in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump filed an executive order intended to designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Like so many of Trump’s other executive orders, this one is likely to be ineffective because there is no identified organization, leadership or membership to apply it to. In fact, if you look at the text of Trump’s anti-Antifa executive order there is no specific person or recognized organization mentioned in the text.

As our dear Leader and beloved President and his many acolytes toss adjectives around that they don’t understand, it may be time to distinguish between various of these terms, just so that our right wing friends can get a few modest guideposts to what these things actually mean.

To establish some modest bona fides, I should mention that I did actually study Marxian economics in 1976-80 at the University of Massachusetts, back when UMass was one of the three universities in the country where one could actually study Marxian anything. At the time UMass had inherited distinguished faculty from Harvard University, where they had not received tenure. It ended up being our blessing.

Also, I should also point out that there is no “radical” left wing in the United States. That pretty much went out of fashion with the death of Eugene Debs in 1926 and the subsequent demise of the Communist Party during the Second World War. 

About as radical as it gets in the United States these days is Bernie Sanders — still hugely popular among the masses — is a “Democratic Socialist” who believes in European style social democracies, such as Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and mostly the other Nordic states. And maybe New Zealand. Those are hardly “radical” states by any historic definition.

So what do these terms actually mean?

Communism is a political and economic ideology advocating for a classless society in which the means of production (factories, land, resources) are collectively owned, and wealth is distributed based on need. Although the idea existed before him, it was most fully articulated by Karl Marx, who based his economic theories on the Labor Theory of Value, or the idea that what makes things valuable is the labor that someone was willing to put into it. (Capitalist systems are generally based on the Utilitarian or Subjective Theory of Value, where things have value based only on what people are willing to pay for it.) 

Socialism is a softer version of communism, and in Marx’s system, a “transitional” phase between capitalism and communism. It is an economic and political system where the means of production are owned or regulated by the community (often through the state) to ensure more equality in wealth and opportunity. Private property and markets are permitted, but the system emphasizes redistribution and public control of essential industries. The former Yugoslavia might be the best example of a functioning socialist state, a planned economy with a vibrant free market.

Marxism is mostly the economic and political theory developed by Karl Marx. Communism and socialism existed before Marx, but (like Freud in psychology), Marx really articulated the modern formulation. His seminal work is Das Kapital, which is really about the exploitation of labor and working class conditions in London. He analyzes history as a struggle between classes, especially the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (working class). It is more of an economic and philosophical framework, and not a blueprint for how modern states should actually function.

Leninism, on the other hand, is a political ideology trying to apply Marxist ideas in turn-of-the-century Russia. (Marx really expected his ideas to take hold in modern capitalist societies, and not a predominantly agrarian and semi-feudal economy with limited industrial development.) Established by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leninism advocates for a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries to lead the working class in overthrowing capitalism. The state must act as a “dictatorship of the proletariat” after revolution to suppress counter-revolution and build socialism. (Of course, in actuality a dictatorship of the proletariat really just ends up being a dictatorship, plain and simple, which is one of the hard-won lessons of the 20th Century.)

Fascism is less of a political philosophy than a designation for a type of authoritarian state. It is generally a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist state that rejects democracy, equality, and individual rights in favor of a strong centralized state, led by a dictator. The prototypes for fascism are Mussolini (who invented the term), Hitler, and Franco. The advantages of fascism are primarily a certain kind of efficiency, such as in Italy under Mussolini when “the trains ran on time.” Fascism is often good for businesses and corporations, where there are few limits or regulations on what businesses can do, and bad for everyone else. Also, fascism almost always leads to war, at least to civil war. It can be distinguished from Monarchism primarily in that monarchs are hereditary, and that monarchs can occasionally be “enlightened” and actually make daily life better for their own people.

Anti-fascism is simply the opposition to fascism. It is not an administrative “system” for how to run a state and is not correlated with socialism or communism (although sometimes people believe in both). During the lead-up to World War II there were many individuals who were passionately anti-fascist, but it has never been a structured movement, especially in the United States. Antifa, in the United States, has no leadership, no fundraising, and no designated membership. They have generally not engaged in political violence (mostly some property damage during the George Floyd protests), but are more likely to have individual activists show up to counter-protest events like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville during Trump’s first term. 

And that’s about it, my friends. These are the terms that Trump and his acolytes so consistently misuse, and throw around as red herrings to try to make us all mad. Name-calling, pure and simple, is Trump’s stock in trade. And for many, many Americans, who don’t really understand what these terms mean, that will be enough.

When I started this post Jimmy Kimmel had just been suspended. Since then he has been (mostly) reinstated after some serious blowback from the viewing public. (The Sinclair Group still has him off the air.)

In any case, let’s review how we got here. Kimmel was taken off the air, in this case over what he said about the death of Charlie Kirk. 

What did he say?

That’s what got Kimmel canned?

That’s what got him canned?

First of all, it’s true. While the MAGA team is working overtime to paint the shooter, Tyler James Robinson, as left-wing and infected with the “woke mind virus,” there seems to be no evidence for that at all. 

As it happens, organizations and researchers who have looked at the question, such as the Cato Institute — which is a Koch-funded libertarian think tank, in case you didn’t know —  have concluded that over the last generation, the vast majority of political violence has come from the political right (excluding the 9/11 terrorist attack). That would be 391 from the right and only 65 from the left.

As for Antifa, the right’s favorite bogeyman, it isn’t a thing. The term originated in Europe in the early 20th century as part of resistance to fascist movements like Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Nazis. In modern times, “Antifa” has been used to describe loose networks of activists, not a centralized group with formal leadership or membership, most of whose activities include protesting, counter-demonstrations, online organizing, and community defense.

That’s it. Antifa activists have not  gunned down anyone.

As for Robinson, we don’t actually know much about this kid, and what we do know is largely conflicting. We know that the kid is 22, that his family is Mormon and conservative Republican, that he was enrolled in an apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and briefly attended Utah State University but dropped out. We know that he was registered to vote as “unaffiliated,” and we know there is no record of him ever having voted. Robinson is said to have had a romantic partner who is transgender, and reportedly objected to some of the hateful things that Kirk had to say about the transgendered.

In fact, Kirk had many hateful things to say about all kinds of people. If you don’t believe me, read what Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in an article for Vanity Fair about Charlie Kirk. 

Read some of the things that Kirk said about George Floyd, such calling him a “scumbag,” repeatedly claiming Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, claiming that Derek Chauvin’s 9-minute knee-on-neck restraint was an “approved police technique” and questioning the legitimacy of systemic racism narratives.

Read some of the other vile things that Kirk has said, including claiming that prominent black women such as Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson did not have “the brain processing power to be taken seriously,” and that they had to “steal a white person’s slot” in order to be respected.

Kirk publicly endorsed the “great replacement” theory, stating that immigration and border demographics are being used to replace white rural Americans.

Kirk claimed that “large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America” and that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” 

But also, “Jewish donors,” were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, Kirk claimed that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”

And of course, most ironically, Kirk was emphatic that it’s “worth it” to have “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” 

And really, that’s just scratching the surface.

And  yet, somehow, it is Kirk who is now being deified and it’s Kimmel who was cast off the air. 

People like Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, keep saying things like “they” (meaning us) “don’t know what they (meaning us) have unleashed.”

Or Steven Miller, who said at the Charlie Kirk memorial on Sunday that “You (meaning us) have no idea the dragon you (meaning us) have awakened.”

“They” of course refers to us, the people who are still sane. And we haven’t unleashed anything because none of us took a shot at Charlie Kirk. That was actually one of “them,” the MAGA people, except that this particular MAGA person was also a whack job.

Steven Miller, in case you’ve forgotten, is Jewish, from the same tribe that, according to Kirk, represent the “number one” funders of “radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.”

Oh boy.

But actually, I think it’s the other way around.

The canning of Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel — and Fallon, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart can’t be far behind — is awakening something in us, the people who are still sane and still understand how the First Amendment works.

I believe there will be a huge backlash from our side. Colbert and Kimmel will find new opportunities, and might combine their talents with Rachel Maddow and others to work on new projects. 

Ironically, Fox News, that world record fabricator of new lies on a daily basis, is still on the air because it does not have a broadcast license (although individual Fox stations do). That alone proves that there are plenty of opportunities in this media environment to have a platform without needing a broadcast license. 

And finally I will note what is already well known, that the specifics for why Colbert and Kimmel were picked on first has to do with two separate media mergers that do require FCC approval: in Colbert’s case the Paramount Global / Skydance Media merger, and in Kimmel’s case the Nexstar Media Group / Tegna merger. That last one is a merger that should be denied on the merits alone, since that would lead to as many as 80% of American  households getting their local TV news from that combined entity. The current rules that say that no more than 39% of households could get their broadcasts from one entity would also have to be suspended, which is a terrible idea.

Congress? Do you have anything to say about this?

(For another analysis see what John Oliver had to say about this on Last Week Tonight.)

Well, it’s very interesting to watch the Republicans tie themselves into knots trying to blame the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Democrats. At the outset it should be noted that agree with him or disagree with him — and I disagreed with him on almost everything — Charlie Kirk is exactly the kind of guy who should not have been assassinated, if we want to have any kind of civil discourse. Kirk put himself squarely into the civic debate, daring people to prove him wrong. And that is the forum in which he should have been (and often was) defeated. Not by shooting him in the neck.

It should also be noted that of the two people who tried to take out Trump last summer and the guy who did take out Charlie Kirk, none of them was a Democrat. 

• Thomas Matthew Crooks is a registered Republican; 
• Ryan Wesley Routh is “unaffiliated” although he has sometimes voted in Democratic primaries; and now,
• Tyler Robinson is the son of a Mormon family all of whom were Trump-supporting MAGAs. Robinson was also registered to vote as “unaffiliated,” although there is no evidence that he ever voted.

So none of them are Democrats.

All of that did not keep Elon Musk from exclaiming on X that “The Left is the party of murder.” Ignoring for the moment that the left is not a “party,” it is also, of course, factually untrue. 

And then we got these kind of posts on X:

Oh boy.

I will say that I was impressed with the use of the word “stochastic” here, although it wasn’t quite used properly.

But the American Reichstag fire?

For those of you who don’t know, the Reichstag fire is universally regarded as the event that precipitated the changeover in the early NAZI regime from an arguably legitimate regime into a clearly illegitimate regime. The Reichstag fire occurred on February 27, 1933, when a 24 year old Dutch communist set a fire in the German parliamentary building, doing significant damage. Although the best evidence is that Marinus van der Lubbe acted alone, the NAZI’s blamed the communists as an organization, which precipitated the signing of the Reichstag Fire Decree a couple of weeks later. That was the beginning of the end for civil liberties under the new regime.

In other words, the Reichstag fire is not the kind of event I would be touting as what is needed in the United States of America in order for us to move forward politically.

Actually, the way that the killing of Charlie Kirk is much more likely to be used is the way that the NAZI’s used Horst Wessel. Wessel was a young man who was an early supporter of the NAZI party. Aside from being a militant street fighter, Wessel also wrote a song entitled “Die Fahne hoch” (“Raise the Flag”), which later became known as the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

In any case, on January 14, 1930, Wessel was shot in his Berlin apartment by Albrecht Höhler, a member of the Communist Party, during a dispute reportedly linked to both politics and personal entanglements involving his landlady and a former prostitute. Höhler had been brought in as “muscle” to help evict Wessel and his companion. Although he was shot at the beginning of 1930, Wessel did not actually die until February 23, after he contracted sepsis while in hospital.

The Nazis quickly turned his death into propaganda. Wessel was elevated as a symbol of youthful sacrifice for the Nazi cause, and his song became central to the movement’s identity.  The “Horst-Wessel-Lied” eventually became mandatory at Nazi ceremonies and was often paired with the national anthem.

That is the political danger that I’d be on the lookout for. Mythmaking for Charlie Kirk that is completely disproportionate to his actual character and accomplishments.

What’s going on with the current Texas redistricting is crazy. And you can thank the Supreme Court for that. In what may be the 3rd worst modern decision behind Citizen’s United v. FEC and Trump v. United States we have the 2019 case of Rucho v. Common Cause — a case you have likely never heard of — which held that questions of extreme partisan gerrymandering are non-justiciable political questions, so the courts had to keep hands off.

Even though a previous court had already decided in Baker v. Carr that questions of redistricting were justiciable by the United States Supreme Court.

But let’s back up for a moment.

First of all, redistricting is something that is required by the Constitution after the decennial census in order to be able to draw districts that have an equal number of voters apportioned therein.

What normally happens is that the census is taken every 10 years — I  myself worked on the 1980 decennial census — and within the next year or two the state legislatures redraw the districts based on their own population. The number of the 435 congressional districts gets reapportioned between the states at that time. Texas, with its growing population, went from 36 to 38 districts for the decade from 2022 to 2031.

That’s when redistricting happens.

After the census.

This is the way it has worked since the Reapportionment Act of 1929.

And now, at Donald Trump’s urging, Texas is trying to change the rules.

Unilaterally.

Because of the Rucho case, there is nothing really out there to stop Texas from doing so.

The Texas democratic representatives who fled the state aren’t going to be able to keep their Republican colleagues from enacting this scheme, and Governor Greg Abbott — proof positive that you can be both disabled and a complete dickhead at the same time — from signing it into law.

So now California and New York are threatening to retaliate. With artificial intelligence and very detailed data on who is registered to vote where, any state can draw up districts in which they maximize the chances for one party over another, virtually disenfranchising most of us, regardless of which side we’re on.

There is an obvious fix for this, one that everyone should be able to get behind: a Constitutional amendment that requires districts be drawn as close as possible to existing municipal and country boundaries, so that the districts reflect the natural and actual composition of the people who live there.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. That would make way too much sense. And try getting that through our hyper-partisan Congress.

Oh, and fuck the Supreme Court.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill — and of course it passed this Cickenshit Congress, even if by a narrow margin — should really be called the One Big Cruel Bill. This is where we’re at in the United States of America.

Here’s a summary of the Senate version of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1), which the House had to accept without making any changes in order to avoid a conference committee.

🏛️ Major Tax & Budget Changes

• Extends Trump-era 2017 tax cuts permanently, including corporate, small-business (Section 199A), and expensing provisions.
• Child Tax Credit adjusted to $2,200 (down from $2,500 in earlier versions) .
• Senior tax break increased to $6,000.
• SALT deduction cap raised temporarily to $40,000 for households under $500K, reverting to $10K after five years.

💊 Healthcare & Medicaid Overhaul

• Massive Medicaid cuts: ~ $930 billion over 10 years, deeper than House version (CBO estimates ~11.8 million Americans could lose coverage over the next decade).
• Work requirements expanded, including for parents with children over 14.
• Provider tax for Medicaid phased out more aggressively—shrinking from 6% to 3.5% by ~2031.
• Rural Hospital Fund: $50 billion allocated to support small facilities.

🇺🇸 Immigration & Border Security

• Border and ICE funding ramped up, including:
  • $46.5B for wall construction;
  • $45B for detention;
  • $30B for ICE hires.

🌞 Energy & Environment

• Rollback of clean energy tax credits: subsidies for wind, solar (and EV credits) scaled back or tied to domestic content—limited viability after 2028 investors.com.
• Nuclear energy incentives restored: Production credits extended through 2032–2033

🛡️ Defense & National Security

• Defense & immigration budgets near $150B each.
• Missile defense (“Golden Dome”): $25 billion including hypersonic and space-based interceptors.

📊 Fiscal Outlook & Political Fallout

• The current U.S. federal debt ceiling (set at approximately $36.1 trillion) is increased by $5 trillion (vs. $4 trillion in House version).
• Deficit impact: CBO estimates +$3.26 trillion as opposed to the current CBO projection of a $1.9 trillion deficit.

And this is all happening in an environment where companies like Tesla, General Electric, Amazon, General Motors and T-Mobile paid as little as 0.4% on their earned income. 

Large pharmaceutical firms — including AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol‑Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer — did not pay U.S. corporate income tax on their 2023 profits. They effectively shifted profits offshore and had zero domestic tax liability. 

Nearly 10% of S&P 500 companies reported zero income tax expense in 2023.

A recent GAO report found that 34% of large, profitable corporations paid zero federal income tax in 2018.

It’s not just the corporations. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Carl Icahn & George Soros have paid little or no income tax over the last handful of years (and they land on both sides of the political aisle).

How greedy can we get?

By now it’s absolutely, crystal clear that in this world economy, none of this money is going to “trickle down” to the rest of us.

And with respect to health care, many Americans are at risk of losing health insurance under the Medicaid with, the CBO projecting 10–12 million will lose Medicaid coverage by 2034—and combined with ACA changes, up to 17 million uninsured 

Why are coverage losses likely to happen? Well here’s why:

1. New unrealistic work & documentation requirements in Medicaid.
2. Frequent eligibility reviews & red tape.
3. Reduced federal funding for Medicaid.
4. Rollbacks to Obamacare marketplace support.
5. Expiration of enhanced premium tax credits leading to ~5 million losing marketplace coverage.

What are some of the consequences of all of this?

• Combined with Medicaid losses, total uninsured could reach ~17 million within the next few years.
• Rural communities rely heavily on Medicaid; cuts threaten closure of 300+ rural hospitals due to unpaid care and less funding 
• Low-income families, seniors, and disabled individuals lose essential access to care—forcing reliance on expensive emergency services 
• National health costs may rise, with uninsured patients shifting costs onto insured taxpayers and commercial insurers.

I’m to the point where I say fuck it, let’s close a bunch of rural hospitals, let’s throw a bunch of people off of Medicare and out of their nursing homes.

Again, this may be the only way that the fever breaks. Let’s have a MAGA supporter discover that his mother was thrown out of her nursing home, which closed anyway, and now he can’t find any of the (mostly African) health care workers to assist because they either self-deported or are too scared to show up at an elder care agency.

Let’s see how Fuckface and his cohorts feels about it then.

The moral arc of this country has been twisted into knots, especially among those who identify as evangelical Christians. In the long run this is going to drive massive numbers of young people out of the churches, as the cognitive dissonance required to believe while seeing how people are actually treated exceeds the capacities of many young minds.

There is no intellectual way to defend this stuff anymore. There just isn’t.

The question arises, why is it so much worse for Iran to have nuclear weapons than it is for India and Pakistan to have them?

And the answer is that the reasons are not obvious. There are arguments to be made on both sides, but none of them is decisive.

Let’s backup for a moment and acknowledge that there are nine nations currently known to have nuclear weapons. 

• First, the big kahunas: the United States (5,244 total, 1,770 deployed) and the Russian Federation (5,580 total, 1,674 deployed).
• Second, China (about 500, but rapidly expanding).
• Then, the Europeans: the United Kingdom (about 225, up to 120 operational) and France (about 290).
• Then, India (about 270 warheads) and Pakistan (also about 270).
• Then, Israel (an estimated 80-90 warheads, never confirmed by Israel).
• Finally, North Korea (about 50-70 warheads).

There is also a separate question of delivery systems, but we’ll ignore that issue for now.

India and Pakistan have been in a low intensity conflict (mostly about the Kashmir region) since both of their founding in 1947, punctuated from time to time by more intense conflicts. These occurred in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Their warheads are mostly trained on each other in acts of mutual deterrence, and there is almost no possibility that either country would use their warheads against anyone except each other.

Israel has never formally acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons, but the general belief in the intelligence community is that they have around 80–90 warheads, with possible delivery systems by ballistic missiles, aircraft, and submarine-launched cruise missiles.

It’s a formidable deterrence, and could wipe out large portions of Iran.

So, why all the hysteria about Iran developing nuclear weapons?

I mean, I’m not personally excited about Iran developing nuclear weapons, but then I’m not personally excited about any country developing or possessing nuclear weapons.

Why all the hysteria about Iran?

Yes, Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state. So it would be breaking a treaty. Not good, but Iran is hardly the first nation in the world to break a treaty. Was there ever a treaty that the United States signed with native americans that we didn’t break? (Asking for a friend.)

Yes, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt have hinted they might pursue nukes in response. Again, not good, but hardly unprecedented. (See India and Pakistan, above). And mostly speculative at this point. For one thing, it’s very expensive to develop nuclear weapons.

Yes, Iran has a history of hostile rhetoric toward Israel and supports non-state actors like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Also not good, but what does that have to do with nuclear weapons?

It would be one thing if Israel didn’t have nuclear weapons, or the capacity to deliver them to Iran. Israel has, in fact, been kind of dishonest about their own nuclear weapons program. It follows a policy of “nuclear opacity” where it deliberately neither confirms nor denies having nuclear arms or the nature of those arms.

If that weren’t enough, the historian Heather Cox Richardson also disclosed this morning (based on reporting by the NY Times) that Trump decided to unload the 60,000 lb bombs primarily because of how Netanyahu’s war on Iran was “playing” on Fox News.

“The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved.”

Good Lord!

And for arranging a one-day cease fire (which did not hold for even a single day) Trump wants to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize, something he has been obsessed with ever since Obama won a (largely undeserved) prize. (Obama won his prize in 2009 for — as some commentators have noted — “being President while being black.”)

And there it is, ladies and gentlemen, our current President at work.

I thought President Trump, right at the beginning of his Presidency, was going to solve the war between Russia and Ukraine and was going to bring to an end the war between Israel and Hamas. Isn’t that what he had promised. Instead we had the news that American warplanes and submarines attacked three key nuclear sites in Iran early Sunday, bringing the U.S. military directly into Israel’s war with Iran.

Oh boy.

Some of us remember that this problem had been virtually solved at the end of the Obama administration after John Kerry helped to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which significantly, was not an agreement between Iran and the United States, but between Iran and the “P5+1” countries — China, France, Russia, the U.K., U.S., plus one — in other words, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The deal was finalized in Vienna on 14 July 2015. The JCPOA was aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions.

The main terms of the agreement included:

1. Uranium Enrichment Limits
   
   • Iran agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67% (well below weapons-grade).
     
   • Iran could possess no more than 300 kg of enriched uranium for 15 years.
     
2. Centrifuge Reductions
   
   • Iran reduced its number of installed centrifuges by two-thirds (from ~19,000 to ~6,000), and only ~5,000 could be used to enrich uranium.
     
3. Reactor Modifications
   
   • The Arak heavy-water reactor was redesigned so it could not produce weapons-grade plutonium.
     
4. Inspections and Monitoring
   
   • Iran agreed to extensive IAEA inspections, including continuous surveillance of nuclear facilities.
     
   • The IAEA could access suspected undeclared sites with advance notice.
     
5. Sanctions Relief
   
   • In return, the U.S., EU, and UN agreed to lift nuclear-related economic sanctions, giving Iran access to international markets and billions in frozen assets.
     
6. Snapback Provision
   
   • If Iran violated the terms, sanctions could be reinstated (“snapped back”) by a UN process without veto power by Russia or China.
     

The deal was not perfect, and critics argued among other things that it delayed rather than eliminated Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

So fucking what? You can’t negotiate away ambition. Something is better than nothing.

Since he had not negotiated the deal himself, Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in May 2018, reinstating sanctions. Not surprisingly, the deal fell apart.

I’m not quite sure what prompted Israel to go ahead and launch an unprovoked and unilateral attack on Iran, but that was the decision of Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel. It’s not our fight.

And yet, here we are.

Some Republicans like Rand Paul, Mitt Romney and John Cornyn, as well as (gulp) Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Matt Gaetz — do I now have to be in agreement on something with that demonic crew? — are opposed to our involvement, so at least there is some pushback within the Republican ranks themselves. 

Nevertheless, a majority of Republicans still have not noticed that Trump has failed to live up to just about every promise he made on the campaign trail. He hasn’t even deported more undocumented immigrants than Biden or Obama. It’s just that for the ones he has deported, it’s been in a much more lawless way. 

I don’t know if I can wait long enough for the fever to break and for some large portion of Trump supporters to finally recognize the fraud behind the curtain in Oz.

With Elon Musk’s recent departure from DOGE and his status as a special government employee, I don’t think any sane person is sad to see him go. Musk will, of course, be forever remembered as the person who completely ruined his reputation in two easy steps. Twitter and DOGE; that’s all it took. From Boy Genius to proto-fascist in less time than it has ever taken anyone else.

Now in the duration of its existence there has been a lot of conflicting information about what DOGE actually accomplished. DOGE, about which Musk claimed that he would identify $2 trillion in savings, didn’t get anywhere close. Beginning with the boy geniuses at DOGE not understanding how COBOL works — and thereby misidentifying everyone who did not have a birth date in the Social Security system as being 150 years old — on through to the many revisions of their own published data, DOGE has actually been a spectacular failure. Musk claims to have identified $175 billion in savings — which would be 8.75% of what he promised to find — but people don’t even believe that number. 

I could do better than that myself in a single day. Don’t believe me? I can prove it to you right now.

How would we get from here to there?

• You could double the staffing at the IRS and have them go specifically after high income earners (including corporations) who are suspected of cheating on their taxes. 

That would still leave us $812 million short of closing the deficit this year.

Eliminating debt, however, is not the kind of thing one can achieve in a single year. It would take years and years and years of consistent and persistent effort. We’d at least be moving in the right direction.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is my proof that I could have done a better job in a single day than Musk’s entire team of incels was able to accomplish in the 4½ months they’d been at it.

I’ll take my paycheck now, please.