The Wildly Expanding Government That Wasn't

Has federal spending "surged" under Obama? Not really, no. But I'm sure that won't let the various GOP contenders continue to claim it has. #ddtb

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The Obama Spending Non-Surge
It's the depressed economy, stupid.

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***Dave Does the Mastodon

13 hours ago

In unrelated news, plans have been announced for a "Triumph of the Will" marathon at Kennedy Center later in 2025 ...

#notreally #yet

13 hours ago

The least of current threats to democracy from #Trump right now, but a highly emblematic one.

"Donald Trump said that he will oust board members of the Kennedy Center, while naming himself as its new chairman."

While POTUS can appoint trustees, the by-laws don't allow him to appoint himself chairman. Though no doubt that if he can fire trustees and stack the board with his cronies, they will happily name him to that role. Maybe even raises a statue to him.

https://deadline.com/2025/02/trump-kennedy-center-board-1236281969/

18 hours ago

#uspol #lgbtq #missingchildren

As "save the children" is pivoted by the #Trump regime into "save the children we want to be saved."

This is #evil

#ncmec

https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-and-dont-say-gay-come-for-the

18 hours ago

It's also worth noting that a number of #Trump 's bestest buddies -- #Putin, #Xi_Jinping , the #Saudi rulers -- have profoundly bad records on religious freedom (including toward Christians) -- far, far worse than "Boo-hoo, evil anti-Christian laws mean I can't fire gay people for being gay."

Lack of mention about dealing with *that* "anti-Christian bias" tells you it's not about #ReligiousFreedom, but about #power.

#ChurchAndState

19 hours ago

#Trump 's siccing #DoJ on "anti-Christian bias" sounds fine, but I expect that translates into dangerous "If Christians (only the right kind of #Christians, mind you) don't get to do whatever they want, regardless of the law, but with your tax dollars, they are being religiously oppressed" nonsense. Or worse.

#ChristianNationalism

https://www.comicsands.com/trump-christian-nationalism-bias

20 hours ago

Via my son:

#pinky #brain

3 days ago

#USA under #Trump: winning hearts and minds!

"America's adversaries cheer Trump admin's #USAID teardown"

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/05/trump-usaid-musk-doge-russia-iran

4 days ago

" #Trump [again] suggests permanent resettlement of #Palestinians from #Gaza "

Pssst. Hey, Donald. The official term is #EthnicCleansing . Yeah, I know, that sounds bad, but, hey, since it's official US policy to keep #Netayahu happy ...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5126689-trump-palestinians-resettlement/

4 days ago

Amidst all the other very legitimate sturm und drang going on, it's good to grab a few moments of happiness.

The first trailer for #Fantastic4 just dropped, and it looks pretty fantastic.

#MCU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzMo-FgRp64

5 days ago

#uspol

I'm old enough to remember when Obama indirectly naming some "czars" to coordinate activities led to a near-Constitutional crisis with the #GOP about overreach.

Now some guys the President likes can, without any sort of legal authority, go into any government agency they want and do whatever they want there. And anyone there who tries to "resist" will be prosecuted by a supportive US attorney.

This is not an elected government.

#ElonMusk #trump #doge

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/03/martin-supports-for-musk-doge/

5 days ago

Among the other things the @internetarchive does: make archives of government websites at the end of each presidential term.

#internetarchive #memoryhole

https://blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/end-of-term-web-archive/

5 days ago

Hey, remember when we were sending people to prison for violating #classified information laws?

And then #Trump showed that with enough money and a loud enough mouth and a friendly judge you appointed you could get away with screwing around with classified information.

And now government workers are being punished if they *don't* give up classified information to unauthorized Trump / #Musk apparatchiks.

And it's just going to get worse.

https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-classified-information-usaid-security-35101dee28a766e0d9705e0d47958611

6 days ago

USpol LGBTQ

"CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed."

("If we don't officially talk about them, they don't officially exist. If they don't officially exist, then we can ...")

Remember these words. Use them whenever you can. Don't let them, or the people they reference, be forgotten.

#LGBT #Trump #censorship #Orwellian

https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction

6 days ago

Cool collection of #photos, made during the #CivilWar, of the last survivors of the #RevolutionaryWar. All the things they'd seen...

#History

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/6830970866/how-two-brothers-tried-to-photograph-the-last-survivors-of-the-revolutionary-war

1 week ago

And now the "T" in #LGBT is being erased from federal websites. Because of course it is.

The concern had been, with a hostile administration, protections being taken from #trans folk. Now it seems the idea is to remove that entire identity. To make them unpersons.

This is evil.

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The views expressed by me on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, my church, my party, my candidate, my community, my wife, my friends, or, on occasion, myself.

Views expressed by others are, well, theirs. I reserve the right to delete them, but it’s usually better to let the marketplace of ideas hold sway, even if some packages are long past their expiry date.

Stuff I link to? Sometimes it’s because I agree with it. Sometimes because I disagree with it, but want to point (mockingly, in some cases) to my sources regardless; I have a liberal arts background; I believe in citations. And linking to stuff is what the Internet is about.

The Wildly Expanding Government That Wasn't

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