Week 24
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Things get ever more chaotic here, and the cats know it. The kittens are relatively unperturbed, but Zooey knows that the boxes and disruption of routine bode ill. Hopefully, in two weeks we will be together in our new place.
I am going to schedule posts for the next three weeks, as a commenter asked me to do. They will be boiler plate unless I can get to them, but no guarantees from here on out. Next Saturday, the piano goes!
This was the week of ICE. Donald Trump rolled out their new concentration camp in Florida with great anticipation that the alligators will eat someone. This is a racist trope that has been around for a while.
ICE was the big beneficiary of the budget bill, getting more money than many national militaries have. What they will do with it is another question. There will be enormous graft. There will be more concentration camps, and more disappearances. There will be more Trump voters saying “I didn’t vote for them to take away my husband/ wife.”
To pay for that bit of entertainment, Medicaid had to be cut, but those folks were undesirably anyhow, so Trump is okay with letting them die. I have also seen talk that the deficits somehow trigger a cut to Medicare too, but I haven’t seen this confirmed. And yes, another Republican record for deficits! Yay the party of fiscal responsibility!
I’ve wanted to write something about the evisceration of science. It’s very emotional for me, having been most of my life. Along with the attack on universities, it’s a gigantic blow to the country and our economy. I wish I had more time to go on about why they are doing this. Part of it is that we laughed at Trump for his brilliance on bleach as a way to kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It works on surfaces, why not in your body?
The m-RNA vaccines are nothing short of a miracle. Research was close to one as a cure for pancreatic cancer, but Bobby Kennedy thinks that woo is more effective, so too bad if you get pancreatic cancer. Or measles, with an older vaccine, which is now spread pretty much all across the country.
There’s a petition objecting to the war on science, and the administration hasn’t punished the signers yet, but when EPA scientists tried something similar, they got suspended.
If you need some cheering up, Estonia is having a once-in-five-years celebration of their music and dance this weekend. It looks like both the live feeds and recordings of previous events can be found here. If that doesn’t work, other clues are here.
The big event, 30,000 people singing together, starts on the upcoming half-hour (10:30 am Mountain Time).
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
As usual, keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. What is actually happening is bad enough.
Caring for yourself and loved ones is resistance too. Post your pets.
184 more weeks to go. What are you doing?
Previous weeks: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8. Week 9, Week 10
Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16, Week 17, Week 18, Week 19, Week 20