Friday @ Fetterman’s Rally

7 Feb 2025

Before the election, there was a discussion between Palestinians and those Americans that supported them. There were two factions, one that supported Vice-President Kamala Harris and those who were planning to vote for Jill Stein or Donald Trump or those who would simply stay home. How have things worked out for that second faction? To call President Trump’s intentions a “plan” is to overstate their coherence and how carefully he thinks things through. Anyway, his current proposal:

Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to the land, Trump said, “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing, much better.”

He thinks it would be a great idea to not have Palestinians return to Gaza, but to find homes elsewhere. I read from people in the second faction that Biden deliberately and consciously supported Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s genocidal policies toward Palestinians. Looking at the different constituencies for Trump and Biden, that never made much sense. Biden’s always been a “finger to the wind” kind of politician. He’s always been concerned about how the public sees him. Biden’s constituency was vastly more pro-Palestinian than Trump’s was. Younger Democrats were very pro-Palestinian, older Republicans were very pro-Israel. Biden’s peace proposal in May was finally adopted in January. Why did it take so long? I’d say there’s a well-over 50% chance that Trump and Netanyahu decided to hold back Biden’s proposal until after the election, precisely to make Trump’s victory more likely. 

Oh, and by the way, Jill Stein’s people are unrepentant. They think getting fascism under Trump was a better choice than getting an allegedly morally compromised Harris.

What exactly has Elon Musk and his DOGE (Department Of Government Efficiency, but of course only Congress can create government departments) team been up to in the US Treasury payments system? No one outside of Musk, DOGE and a few other people really know. The former Governor of South Dakota and current  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s story (obviously a cover story) is that DOGE is merely trying to examine what the government is spending money on and how much of that is Fraud, Waste and Abuse (FWA). But why does DOGE need anything other than publicly-available information?

DOGE is also engaged in setting up false economies. These are acts hat, at first glance, might appear to save money, but in the long run, really don’t.

On Friday evening, the National Institutes of Health announced that it was drastically cutting grant provisions for roughly 2,500 recipients by capping “indirect funding” at 15%, all for a yearly savings of about $4 billion. A person with knowledge of the matter told The Wall Street Journal that DOGE had a hand in the cuts.

NIH work does most of its work in an indirect, long term fashion. DOGE is making America poorer and meaner for no good reason.

Pete Hegseth managed to get through the Senate to become Secretary of Defense. He demonstrates that he has not learned the lesson that many other military people learned a long time ago. It is possible, as the younger George Bush did in 2003, to start up a war using deception (WMDs). But to continue that war through unexpected reversals (taking Baghdad was relatively easy, but the guerrilla war started up around August and was going full force well before 2004) and to be able to adapt to those new challenges requires that the public doesn’t just agree to the war, it must enthusiastically support the war.

Is Russia/Ukraine today an exception?  Ordinary Russians are still supportive of the war, even though military casualties are well in excess of what the US lost during our own Civil War (850k troops and 10k tanks) even though the fighting has gone on for considerably less time. There may be a lot of strains and stresses that outsiders aren’t aware of. As of October of last year, Ukraine had suffered about 10k deserters due to sheer exhaustion. But constant innovation in drones is the sign of a determined and innovative people and the invasion of Russian territory near the city of Kursk boosted Ukrainian morale. Russia has managed to retake about 40% of the territory that Ukraine seized, but in hindsight, the Kursk incursion still looks very good.

How’s farm country doing after they voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2024 election? Not so great. The US government was paying farmers to supply poorer countries with food.  The countries are getting it for free. US taxpayers are covering the growing and shipping of the food. The farmer, for all intents and purposes, was selling his produce to consumers who could pay the price. Trump has decided that that’s not the proper way and so has left farmers who have already made big investments with no reimbursement and poorer countries without food. Again, FAFO. Farmers voted for the guy who’s now screwing them.

During World War II, both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany has “political officers,” people whose function was to see to it that soldiers maintained the correct political opinions. Trump seeding government departments with DOGE people reminds me of that.

RLGardner.net