Reflections from the Heart of the Empire: Speed Bumps

Plus pink poodle makes daring escape attempt!

• A Federal Judge ruled that President Trump does not have the authority to fire National Labor Relations Board members, which, he really doesn’t.

  • Trump will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court and lose, quite possibly by a large margin.

• The US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration must pay the fees of USAID contractors for services already rendered.

  • That’s not really much of a much—in fact, it sounds like basic contract law to me—but the most cultish Trump supporters are doing a really good imitation of cultist shitlibs by calling Amy Coney Barrett a Marxist for voting with the majority.

• A group of labor unions filed suit against Elon Musk’s DOGE, seeking an injunction against him and his minions accessing private personal data of every American in the Social Security system.

  • Given Federal privacy laws, they may well succeed.

• IOW, Trump & Musk & Company will not have it all their own way.

• Trump gave a speech to Congress, and the Democrats responded by trotting out this proud ex-CIA agent, Elissa(how perfect is that?) Slotkin, for whom Liz Cheney campaigned, to tell us all that Trump Bad because Ronald Reagan would not approve of his foreign policy, which is kind of weird because Reagan did sign treaties with Gorbachev back in the day.

  • Here’s the video just in case there are any masochists in the audience. If you are one, you’re welcome. If you’re not, be warned that watching it video may induce nausea, vomiting, and the destruction of nearby breakable objects.

• The Genocidal Maniacs of Jerusalem have cut off food to Gaza. Again. But Slutkin Slotkin didn’t mention that part of Trump’s foreign policy because she’s a Certified Vampire of the Empire and is all for it.

• Over 250 people have been killed in fighting between minority Alawites and the shiny brand new former Al-Qaeda (but we’re not supposed to think about that part) Syrian regime.

  

• Quote of the week:

If (the Ukrainians) don’t want to settle, we’re out of there, because we want them to settle.—Donald Trump

• Yes, about that endorsement, Donny Boy. Dos XX is a fine Mexican beer enjoyed by millions of Americans and slapping a tariff on it will not play well, especially in places like Texas where beer is traditionally cheaper than soda pop because it’s better for you.

  • And you’d better give up on any Muskian or Bezosian ideas about cutting Medicaid or Social Security benefits. Talk about pissing off your own voters.

• Ukrainian nationalists celebrated the 75th anniversary of the death of Roman Shukhevich, a Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Poles and Jews. Not a good look.

  

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that if the Europe finances the Ukraine War, it will ruin Europe.

  

  • But it will keep the MIC grift flowing for awhile, and that’s what’s really important. Just ask this upstanding paragon of virtuous grift.

    

  • Hmmm. Merz does look familiar. Oh!

    

• French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France has shifted to a “wartime economy” because he has delusions of enhancing the glory of France by making it the Protector of Europe.

  • Funny how anyone who has ever aspired to that title always ends up invading Russia and losing everything.

    

• Venezuela thinks it can achieve a détente with the Trump Administration. Given that the US Empire-backed opposition has collapsed, that Trump has bigger fish to fry and it’s easier to get all those Venezuelan immigrants to go home if Venezuela cooperates, and, most importantly, that Chevron wants to deal with Maduro, it is certainly possible.

• It looks like a new civil war may be about to break out in South Sudan.

• China has a space station with a woman astronaut on board and everything, and still hasn’t invaded anybody since 1979.

• In spite of all of the outcry from American liberals and NGO beneficiaries about the destruction of USAID, it seems that the reaction of many Africans is

  

• Finally, police in Garfield, New Jersey, rescued a pink poodle who had decided to go for a swim in the Passaic River for some unfathomable canine reason. Who would dye a poodle pink, anyway? Oh.

  

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

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