…meeting expectations [DOT 16/2/25]

…if anyone ever wonders…not that there’s a particular reason you would…or should…but…should you ever…why I don’t think “the wisdom of the markets” is something to look to for guidance…this would be a pretty big clue

Wall Street banks have rid themselves of almost all the $12.5bn of loans Elon Musk used to help finance his takeover of Twitter, capping a stunning reappraisal of the debt since Donald Trump handed the billionaire a role at the heart of his administration.
[…]
They now hold just over $1bn of the loans after a sale that underlines how Musk’s proximity to Trump has shifted perception of debt that investors had previously perceived as very risky.

…& not that the FT doesn’t know a sight more than I do about what it speaks of…& presumably thereby how…I…want to quibble…or at least unpack a little…because the sort of “very risky” that would be is quite the narrow definition

The lenders turned down offers from investors to buy the debt at steep discounts in 2023 and 2024, betting instead that an eventual turnaround in X’s operations would limit potential losses on the loans.

…the risk is that they’d take a loss…but now said debtor is burrowed like a tick into the heart of the federal government…offers at x>100¢ on the dollar…only a bit…so…not the return banks are used to on debt…which is arguably still a significant loss from their point of view…but breakeven is a wash in that risk analysis of theirs…so they were “wise” not to take the loss the last couple of years…& they weren’t dumb to have done the deals that got that deal over the line…not that milton came up with the idea out of nowhere but we all know the one about “can business afford to be ethical?” got decided way back…& not in our favor…but…there’s a pun of a tech-ish sort in the idea that the problem with twitter (one of them anyway) under elon is “in the stack”

…I don’t have the answers as to who bought that stuff beyond what’s in that one…or what terms the controlling interests in those entities plan to offer the dipshit who’s too busy trolling & brandishing a kid like an unsubtle bulletproof helmet when he has to appear in anything approaching public to realistically be “running” much of anything other than twitter beef…& I imagine it’d take at least a bit of nous to find out…but that’s all business done last week, if I read that right

The appeal of the loans increased further after Musk gave a stake in his artificial intelligence start-up xAI to the company. As well as bolstering the social media company’s valuation, the move provided new security to anyone holding the loans.
[…]
Investors are now waiting to bid on the sale of more than $1bn of unsecured loan, the final, riskiest portion of the deal. That debt will pay out a higher interest rate, but is more exposed to losses if X were to fall into bankruptcy or needed to restructure its debts.
It is unclear how Morgan Stanley and the six other banks will proceed with the sale. The lenders could either market the debt or refinance it with new preferred equity, given the strong demand for other portions of the $12.5bn of loans, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Wall Street banks have sold almost all $12.5bn of debt tied to Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase [FT/archive.ph]

…so those are the same markets that have seen what he’s up to…though if I were feeling charitable I might allow that they hadn’t found out yet if hegseth’s full-surrender-in-advance pitch about the enemy within being the greater threat*…or JD’s taek…that flipped marco’s plane around along with some rhetoric…ok…so that was supposedly on account of the windscreen cracking…but I haven’t seen the pictures so feel free to speculate about whether or not that would have been convenient timing

[* – sidenote: …it’s this kind of thing that gets the US a rep for not understanding irony…pete *IS* the fucking enemy within from a NATO perspective…in the exact mold that fits the thing he claims to be referring to by way of historical reference]

But despite the mid-air scare the news was already firmly elsewhere. In Europe, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had stunned America’s allies with a speech setting out what many saw as a series of concessions Ukraine would have to make to sign any peace deal with Russia brokered by President Trump.
[…]
Critics, including some Republicans in Washington, castigated the speech, saying it gave away all of Ukraine’s leverage ahead of any negotiations. It was, they argued, a US capitulation to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It’s certainly an innovative approach to a negotiation to make very major concessions even before they have started,” said former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relation, a think tank.
[…]
“What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, President Trump,” said Hegseth. However he added he had been “simply pointing out realism” and rejected the idea he had offered any undue concessions to Moscow.

…realism…about the approach of the fuckwit who keeps talking as though ukraine is only in the fight of its life because it willfully chose to defy his assessment that they’d have been better off to roll over when they got invaded because then he’d have been able to get better terms for them from his boy vladdy-p…which has to be some of the most fundamentally deluded shite simmering in that fetid swamp between his fucking ears…all my life I’ve claimed to be a fan of irony…practically an acolyte…but I swear…reality is testing me like the devil with the donut machine & I don’t know that I have homer-ic appetites

European leaders are expected to meet in Paris on Monday for urgent talks aimed at ensuring that their countries are fully involved in any Ukraine peace negotiations.

The US secretary of state’s position contained no trace of laying out limits for Ukraine in the way the defence secretary had done. Then, also in the German city, Vice-President JD Vance said the US could use “military tools of leverage” to compel Russia to do a deal, appearing to contradict Hegseth who had said no US troops would be deployed to Ukraine.

Later in the Oval Office, the fallout from Hegseth’s speech was put to President Trump – along with the commentary of a Republican senator who described it as a “rookie mistake”, like something a pro-Putin pundit could have written.

Had Trump been aware of what Hegseth was going to say? “Generally speaking, yeah, generally speaking I was,” said the president. “I’ll speak to Pete, I’ll find out,” he added.

…now…generally speaking…when people are saying lofty shit like “the purview of the leader of the free world”…I tend to make some assumptions about core competencies…which would make that last answer an obvious lie…right? …if you’re a competent leader of the free world…& your spokesman has headed to europe to make a big speech to the world as the point-man for your pitch to wind up a shooting war in mainland europe that has a lot of places anxious about an escalation to global conflict…you’re going to be more than “generally” familiar with what he’s going to say…stands to fucking reason…the way it stands to reason that pete’s heard plenty of people grunt agreement to the idea that ukraine getting anything it wants is “unrealistic” & the whole thing has been nothing but an unjustified drain on the pocketbook…not a license to keep paying money to the US to replace inventory & offload surplus…in terms of the grown-up table they now have seats at these are at best callow youths…arrogant teenagers…tweens…true representatives of the fifth-grade conception of the world

…with these guys…I buy he didn’t know what the fuck the guy said…less than no idea in advance & even after the fact had to get someone to explain what the problem was the first time he picked up from the question he got asked about it that it made him look bad…&…that doesn’t make me feel better than if it was just another of the tens of thousands of outright lies he’s happily vomited forth from the perch he’s currently shitting on the world from?

On the substance, Hegseth’s speech – alongside Trump’s lengthy statement about an apparently warm phone call with Putin aimed at starting negotiations with Ukraine – sent shockwaves through European capitals, despite Hegseth’s attempts to row back.
[…]
Then there is the question of the way US foreign policy under Trump was being communicated. What happened in Munich seemed to be partly an attempt by his senior officials to interpret and relay Trump’s positions, but that effort resulted in sometimes explosive and often contradictory statements – some of which were then partly diluted or reversed.
[…]
It is not yet clear how much this is the result of a new but ill-coordinated administration still clarifying its lines to take internally, as opposed to a deliberate feature of a presidency less concerned about officials freelancing with rhetoric, even if it sows some confusion, so long as they remain loyal to his final word.

…he was hired to be a fox-news-grade talking head…& he said the shit he would have said to that audience to the one they put him in front of…which is consistent with their rule about always & only talking to those people

…it also makes for an unbelievable shit-the-bed-while-screwing-the-pooch moment for the rest of the world…audience-wise…where the pooch is the dignity & geo-political status & reputation of the US some couple hundred or so years in the making

…so…there’s that?

His appointment was highly contested and scraped through its confirmation process with three Republican senators voting against him, seeing the result tied 50-50 with JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.

…almost as though…the capacity for this sort of thing made him conspicuously unsuitable even before the fact & it’s indelibly clear who foisted him on the thing

Hegseth’s comments were hardly out of line with the president’s position – rather they were an amplification of it to an audience anxious to shore up Ukraine’s negotiating position not weaken it.

The challenge for those affected is that the precise position of US foreign policy is having to be divined. One of its features is uncertainty. This may well be deliberate – Donald Trump using the “madman” theory of foreign relations – often attributed to former Republican President Richard Nixon.

This suggests that being powerful but unpredictable is a way to make allies stay close while coercing adversaries. It would also explain a sense of his own officials going rogue but within the parameters of Trump’s broadly known positions.

But as this theory’s name suggests, it also carries considerable risks of mistakes or miscalculation in an already violent and uncertain world.

…ignore the part where ockham would have that shit in ribbons faster than you can say “cut-throat razor”

Trump’s recent proposals for Gaza – emptying it of its Palestinian population to build the “Riviera of the Middle East” under US ownership – were similarly permeated with confusion and contradiction.

While his officials appeared to try to correct some of what he set out – as only “temporary relocation” for example –Trump later doubled down saying it would in fact be “permanent” with no right of return.

As for Rubio – who wants the state department be the most influential government agency when it comes to Trump’s decision-making – his colleagues’ comments at Munich were already overshadowing his own.

His smaller, replacement plane finally landed in Europe – windscreen intact but without the press pool on board, while most of the headlines were also going elsewhere.

Trump’s mixed messaging over Ukraine hints at ‘madman theory’ approach [BBC]

…the key to the madman approach is…not to be one…like the key to a doomsday-device-based deterrent is to tell your enemy you have the thing…but among the obvious ways the alleged president & confirmed criminal is conspicuously compromised…cognitively is way the fuck up there…& competency is not what he’s surrounded by…rather the sort of people who are blind to the myriad “invisible” bits of slack taken up by the competent…which is why they keep tripping over those when they try to ape them to “go through the motions”…or at least that rubric maps onto the thing like it was bespoke?

Danielle Sassoon can’t be dismissed as some kind of liberal deep-stater. Her résumé suggests anything but: registered Republican; participant in the Federalist Society; former law clerk to two conservative luminaries — federal appeals court judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

When the Trump Justice Department needed an interim U.S. Attorney in Manhattan while it awaits confirmation of the president’s choice to fill the role permanently, it turned to Sassoon, a career prosecutor.

And she looked to be on board. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this month, Sassoon excoriated President Joe Biden for commuting the sentences of some 2,500 “supposedly nonviolent offenders,” saying Biden’s actions “undermine our mission to keep Americans safe.”

So when Sassoon felt compelled to resign on Thursday rather than carry out an order to drop the federal corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, the impact, certain to be seismic, was magnified by Sassoon’s conservative profile — and further still by the fact that she was joined by other senior public corruption and criminal division prosecutors.

What’s going on is nothing short of a civil war inside the Justice Department, a battle over whether its lawyers are going to serve as the obedient shock troops for President Donald Trump or as custodians of the rule of law, with simultaneous duties to defer to policy determinations of the incumbent administration and to respect professional standards.
[…]
This episode poses a far graver challenge to the department’s independence than its Watergate predecessor. It illuminates a department divided against itself, with new hyperaggressive, hyperpartisan leaders unwilling to tolerate what they consider insubordination, and a career staff rebelling against the new regime’s massive violations of long-standing norms.

This isn’t a massacre; it’s a mutiny. And a justified one, with acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who ordered the case dropped, in the role of Capt. Queeg. Friday brought reports that Bove had summoned the department’s public integrity prosecutors to demand that one of them file the motion to dismiss.

Meanwhile, the lead prosecutor in the Adams case – summarily placed on leave by Bove – quit instead. “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” wrote the prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, “But it was never going to be me.”

Firing back, the attorney general’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, termed such resistance “further proof of the disordered and ulterior motives of the prosecutors” – this despite the fact that Bove, just days earlier, had said the dismissal order “in no way calls into question the integrity and efforts of the line prosecutors responsible for the case.”

Nice try, but, as with Sassoon, Scotten is no knee-jerk lefty. A former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who served three tours in Iraq, Scotten clerked for then-judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “Some will view the mistake you are committing here in light of their generally negative views of the new Administration,” Scotten wrote. “I do not share those views.”

And so much for the naive notion that there was little risk in slotting Trump’s personal lawyers into top positions at Justice. This crowd – Bove, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and incoming deputy attorney general Todd Blanche – has done nothing since its arrival but express scorn for professional expertise and insist on unquestioning compliance.

…see what I mean?

It is hard to imagine excuses more flimsy or inappropriate for dropping serious charges of public corruption. Bove’s supposed evidence of “improper weaponization” included the assertion that the investigation “was accelerated” after Adams criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies, and was “led” by Williams, a man “with deep connections to the former Attorney General who oversaw the weaponization of the Justice Department.” Bove complains about a website that Williams launched after leaving office “that touts articles” about the Adams prosecution. That’s supposed to invalidate a grand jury indictment?

This isn’t sober lawyering. It’s exploiting the criminal justice system for political ends. Bove effectively confessed as much, saying that “the Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”

Sassoon’s response came on Wednesday in the form of a letter to Bondi. Bove’s proffered reasons for dismissing the indictment, Sassoon said, “are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making.”

…& when they step in shit…they just keep tracking that shit all over the floor

Prosecutors, Sassoon noted, are bound “not to use the criminal enforcement authority of the United States to achieve political objectives or other improper aims,” precisely what Bove was proposing to do. She seized on Bove’s “particularly alarming” analogy of dropping the Adams case to Biden’s decision to free Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for securing the release of basketball player Brittney Griner. “It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment.”

As to supposed “weaponization,” she noted, the case was launched before Williams, the previous U.S. Attorney, even took office, and the timing of the indictment was consistent with Justice Department policy and past practice. And Sassoon dropped a bombshell: Prosecutors were planning to seek a superseding indictment “that would add an obstruction conspiracy count based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.”

In other words, the Trump Justice Department shouldn’t be dismissing charges, it should be adding to them.

…you see…for their audience…you just have to not break stride…it doesn’t matter how witless it makes you or how much it stinks up the joint

Bondi didn’t deign to reply. Instead, Bove, on Thursday, accepted Sassoon’s tendered resignation “based on your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution” and, for good measure, announcing that Sassoon and the two lead Adams prosecutors would themselves be investigated.

Late on Friday, Bove ultimately found prosecutors willing to sign the dismissal motion he demanded, just as Bork eventually fired Cox. That is not the saddest part of this terrible moment. The saddest part – beyond the immeasurable damage to the Justice Department itself – is that the history of the Saturday Night Massacre seems destined not to repeat itself. As it turned out, Cox’s firing wasn’t Nixon’s triumph, but the beginning of his downfall. Lawmakers turned on Nixon; impeachment proceedings began 10 days later.

Now, as Trumpists who rail against imaginary weaponization use that very tactic to reward their allies and silence dissent, where are the Republican officials speaking up against this abuse of power?

A dangerous, damaging civil war at the Justice Department [WaPo]

…maybe if ruth looked where the post left its harris endorsement she’d find those officials she’s looking for…just sayin’…either way…there’s a distinctive pattern showing through, it seems to me

For a few days this month, some of the most valuable datasets in human history vanished from U.S. government websites, often without warning and with no guidance about what would happen next.

To those of us who have gone on record describing the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey as a wonder of the modern world, watching its files disappear from a federal FTP server felt like watching the Library of Alexandria go up in smoke.

Texas Christian University geographer Kyle Walker found himself at the center of the conflagration. He created and maintains two nerd-famous software packages that make it fun and easy to access ACS data and Census Bureau maps. When users couldn’t get the data upon which they had built their workflows and livelihoods, they sent up alarms.

That gave him a high-definition picture of just how much of our nation’s infrastructure balances on a few irreplaceable federal databases.

“Any disruption to the ACS — or Census data more broadly — would be massively disruptive to the U.S. economy. I hope that people understand that,” Walker told us. “These data power insights in every corner of the U.S. economy. … Even industry users who are purchasing their demographic data, that demographic data is modeled based on Census and ACS!”

…leap forward…without looking…followed by swift backpeddling

Within a matter of days, the worst-case scenario seemed to have been averted. Officials told data users the files had been taken down to comply with an executive order and would be restored after they were reviewed and approved. Soon, the entire ACS seemed to be available.

…but the devil’s in the details

Amid the whirlwind of uncertainty, David Van Riper at IPUMS, the Minnesota heroes who collect, harmonize and distribute flagship federal datasets, told us the organization has been working with its peers to “figure out who has what so that we can patch together a backup of the federal statistical system” – especially its more obscure datasets and priceless bits of documentation.

Speaking of which, when our friend Federica Cocco, The Washington Post’s econ and business data reporter, asked whether we were backing anything up, we thought of a lesser-known Census Bureau effort: the Household Pulse.

In early 2020, as the all-too-novel coronavirus and its attendant shutdowns shredded the economy, traditional American stats couldn’t keep up. The virus’s exponential infection curve demanded reactions in the space of days, or even hours, but the best federal measures of, say, food or housing insecurity take months or years to arrive.

Our friends at the Census Bureau, who can spend years or decades refining its questions, found a higher gear. By April 2020, they had launched the Household Pulse, an online survey that provided week-by-week data on Americans’ income losses, economic struggles and precarious mental health.

Since then, the Pulse budget has been regularly renewed. It refined its methods and evolved with the news, experimenting with questions about school disruptions, vaccination plans, long covid, stimulus payments, baby formula shortages, gas price surges, natural disasters and inflation struggles.

But we knew it best as one of the few federal sources that asked about sexual orientation and gender identity – questions added early in the Biden administration. And that’s why we worried.

On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on “gender ideology,” triggering a government-wide purge of jobs, initiatives or programs featuring words such as “gender,” “female,” “transgender,” “LGBT” and “nonbinary,” according to our friend Carolyn Y. Johnson. Versions of all those words appear in the Pulse.

So when Pulse files disappeared, we feared the worst.

The Pulse isn’ t the only federal survey to ask about gender identity. The first was probably the National Crime Victimization Survey. That’s understandable. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics wrote in a 2019 manual, “Research has shown that sexual orientation and gender identity are correlated with crime victimization.”

But at 5:10 p.m. on Jan. 31, orders went out to at least one regional Census Bureau office – where the survey is administered – to stop asking people their gender identity or whether they had faced prejudice or bigotry because of it, according to a recent scoop from Roger Hannigan Gilson at the (Albany) Times Union.

We’d planned on charting the similar Pulse questions for a couple years now. But when we checked in early February, the files were already missing.

Luckily, we had most of the Pulse on our hard drive, and we found the rest on the nonprofit Internet Archive‘s systematic backups of federal data. Even more encouraging, less than a week after they disappeared and we started hassling the Census Bureau about it, the Pulse files returned.

So, what does the Pulse actually say, and why do we care about it so much? At first blush, it matches other polls. Recent Pulses show about 10 percent of American adults fit under the banner of LGBTQ, including about 1 percent who are transgender, 2 percent who are nonbinary, 4 percent who are bisexual and 3 percent who are gay or lesbian.

But the Pulse’s secret weapon, the reason we’re so grateful the government produced it, lies in its detail. For the weeks the Pulse asked these questions, we have data for about 2.6 million adults, compared with a thousand or two in many top polls.
[…]
And as the Pulse transitions into its new life as the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey, a panel that follows a smaller group of Americans for a longer period, we’re guessing gender identity and sexual orientation won’t be part of it.

We can’t say for sure, though. The only reply we’ve had so far from the usually obliging public servants at the Census Bureau public affairs office was: “Good Evening Andrew, Here are some helpful links,” followed by a few links that had already turned purple in our browser.

If you work at the Census Bureau or any other federal data outfit, fire off an email or find us on Signal at andrewvandam.01. We’ll follow The Post’s best security practices and honor requests for confidentiality.

We care deeply about the integrity of federal data and would love to learn what datasets have truly vanished, what questions are changing and what’s being axed entirely.

We’ll update this column as we learn more. Our jobs — and the U.S. economy — depend on it!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/14/this-data-may-vanish-under-trump-so-we-charted-it/

…I know it sounds…harsh…not to mention way above my pay-grade…but…these just aren’t competent people…they’re in roles that usually come with that as an unspoken component…& they don’t understand how hollow that lack makes their shit ring…but…it’s clear as bell?

“The situation looks much more favourable for Putin than at any point during the entire war over the last three years,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “If the US just unilaterally ends its military and diplomatic support, as well as intelligence sharing, then Ukraine will be in a very tough position. And it’ll be hard to get out of it even if the Europeans get more involved.”

In Moscow, there was palpable joy following Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin.

“A single call can change the course of history — today, the leaders of the US and Russia have possibly opened a door to a future shaped by co-operation, not confrontation,” said Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian sovereign wealth fund chief involved in back-channel talks with the US over prisoner exchanges.

…when your “adversary” is overjoyed & your “allies” crestfallen…well

…though…as vizzini points out at one point…being paid to start a war is a lucrative line of work…&…seems to be what they want to do…for…uh…reasons…that they don’t seem to be able to explain…although lots of not-america is pretty clear about why they want things to go this way on account of how bad it’d go for…uhh…america…so…err…don’t read anything into that…it’s sunday…rest up…monday will be here sooner than we need it to be as it is?

…also…don’t listen to the russian spokesman at the press conference who describes that phone call as an example of how “you should speak to russia”…in the same sentence he said it was a polite conversation between two educated men…so…the dude is conspicuously full of shit…but it did a great job of saying orange-is-the-new-duce couldn’t pander harder if he literally blew the guy

Senior Ukrainian and western officials said Trump and Putin would probably try to secure a ceasefire by one of two significant upcoming dates: Easter, which the Orthodox and Catholic churches will both celebrate on April 20 this year; or May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

“Putin will want [a deal] on a notable day like this,” said a Ukrainian official.

The Kremlin on Thursday said Russia’s leader would welcome Trump to Moscow for the May 9 festivities. The two leaders have floated Saudi Arabia as a potential venue for their next meeting.
[…]
In Moscow, markets reacted with glee. The rouble strengthened 5 per cent against the dollar and Moscow’s main exchange index rose 2.8 per cent to its highest level in nine months.

Pro-war hardliners hailed the call as a sign that Russia’s victory was at hand.
[…]
Putin told Trump he wanted to “settle the reasons for the conflict”, indicating that Russia has not dropped its goal of stopping Ukraine’s ambitions to join the west and rolling back the post-cold war security order.

Moscow is also demanding that Ukraine cede control over four south-eastern regions, none of which Russia fully controls, and expects the west to lift all sanctions imposed since 2014.

“The most important thing for Russia is for Ukraine to have the weakest security guarantees possible,” Gabuev said. “Ideally they want Ukraine to remain a country with no investment potential that’s as weak as possible and tearing apart internally.”
[…]
“Why are we giving [Russia] everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” asked EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

One European official said: “It’s quite extraordinary that the president has chosen to play his hand like this. I don’t think there’s any negotiating position left — he’s laid it all out.”

But any kind of comprehensive deal will require significant input from Nato members and Ukraine. “On the thorny substantive issues it’s too early to say what Trump is willing and able to give,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand. “He’ll need Ukraine and allies on board for those and related issues.”

The delegation Trump appointed to negotiate with Russia does not include his own envoy on the conflict, Keith Kellogg, who had been the most outspoken US official calling to increase sanctions pressure on Moscow and maintain arms supplies to Ukraine.

“It suggests the administration is not going to take Ukraine’s core concerns seriously,” said a former senior US official. “Putin would have seen that as an endorsement of his view of the world and a step towards realising his dream of having really deep friction between the US and Europe.”

Trump’s drive to end the war quickly has blindsided Kyiv. A person close to Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times the Ukrainian president was unaware of Trump’s call with Putin until the American president called Kyiv.

Zelenskyy on Thursday said it was “not very pleasant” to know that Trump spoke to Ukraine’s adversary first. He insisted he “will not accept . . . any bilateral negotiations about Ukraine without us”.

What was imperative, Zelenskyy added, was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan”.

Donald Trump opens the door to Vladimir Putin’s grandest ambitions [FT]

…&…I’m late with this…yet again…but it’s sunday & I can pour another coffee…so you’re out of luck if you thought that’d bring me up short?

…ok…so…speaking of the long & the short of the short straws we’re drawing…some folks…including one I’m related to who has several decades of form in being right in their assessment of things I want them to be wrong about…think the one you need to keep an eye on is JD

JD Vance may not command headlines like Donald Trump or even Elon Musk, but he is the man to watch if you care about the long game in politics.

…they’re with kristen on this one, basically

His vice-presidential assignments seem carefully chosen to position him with an eye toward where America is heading – a strategy that was on full display with Mr. Vance’s remarks on American global leadership in A.I. this week in Paris. He turned heads with his forceful argument that we need to move beyond looking at A.I. as a threat to be managed – the posture taken by his predecessor, Kamala Harris – toward seeing it as an engine of opportunity.

…&…it’s not that I can’t follow their argument…or that I think there’s nothing to it…but

Mr. Vance talks about tech like a guy who doesn’t need kids to help him reset his Wi-Fi password. That’s saying something for a political leader in our country, and is but one facet of what sets him apart from much of the Washington gerontocracy. His remarks in Paris were a sign that one of America’s political parties has a new generation of leadership that is focused on and fluent about issues that will shape our future and not just rehashing the political battles of the past.

…thing is…that relative of mine doesn’t require assistance resetting the wifi password…to connect to the thing…they can even reboot the router…& if they really had to they could reset it to be able to use the default password printed on the back to log in & actually reset the thing…they understand enough about things like encryption & VPNs to lob all sorts of questions my way about “security” vis à vis “the family”…they were around when you had to write machine code on punch cards to make the assembler that would let you write a fucking program…& they were in an industry that takes information security as seriously as you would if it meant not just your livelihood but that of enough other people that if it went down in flames it’d take your reputation & your life as you knew it with it

…but

…with all the respect in the world…they absolutely positively do not “get” the way the internet changed the game…& I literally say that with all the love in the world

…so…I don’t know kristen like that…& I don’t want to jump to conclusions…but I basically can’t read this without that looming in my consciousness…ymmv?

Which is why I was struck this week when Mr. Trump was asked directly if he viewed Mr. Vance as his successor for 2028, and replied that he did not. He praised Mr. Vance for doing a “fantastic job” but said, in his view, it was “too early” to anoint him as the next Republican nominee.

…I guess that reads pretty different to me…to me the guy…at least live, off-the-cuff the way that was…basically operates on the sort of basis we usually associate with things like “animal cunning” or “his gut”…I’m not saying his higher cognitive functions are soup & he’s just got the lizard brain left talking to the brainstem…but the level of redundancies baked into the human brain are truly insane & underestimating its ability to force workarounds with minimal hardware is like not getting how many things windows says hardware is incapable of supporting you can do if you boot the right flavor of linux on the same rig

Scientists research man missing 90% of his brain who leads a normal life
[…that one’s from cbc.ca…in jul ’16 but the update in april ’23 is probably why it came up ahead of the many others you’d find if you look for coverage of this]

…just sayin’…anyway…the instincts he relies upon so hard you assume they’ll be last to go are the feeling when his tail is about to be wedged in a crack he can slip out of…or…the way lizards do…break off with a quick bankruptcy or the right body thrown under the right bus or the right bagman visiting the right squeaky wheel with the usual grease…& the other is understanding the value of his coin…there’s no fucking way in the context the question was asked he’s throwing away that endorsement token…that’d be like capitulating to all vlad’s demands before negotiating…if he were ukraine…but anyway…assume VPJD is heir apparent

A decade ago, after back-to-back elections in which Republicans got blown out among young voters, I wrote a book about the party’s problem reaching millennials. I called on Republicans to show up for my generation in the new places where we got information, to care about being culturally relevant, and to connect on forward-looking issues young people actually care about.

Finally, after years of struggling to appeal to younger voters, the Republican Party led by the Trump-Vance ticket nearly fought the Democrats to a draw with voters under age 30. I confess that 10 years ago I never would have guessed that it would be the re-election of Donald Trump bringing all this to fruition. Even as many young Americans still depart sharply from the G.O.P. on many issues, the improvements Republicans have made with younger voters are undeniable in the polling data I see. Cheered at sporting events, omnipresent on the podcast circuit, embraced by tech luminaries and conversant in topics like crypto, Republicans say they feel “cool” for the first time in a long time.

While the pendulum may yet swing again, as it has before, the Republican Party of yesteryear is not coming back. There is only forward, and there is only onward to what’s next, and Mr. Vance seems clearly to be what is next for Republicans. As a younger American who also happens to be vice president, Mr. Vance has been able to fuse parts of Mr. Trump’s stylistic approach and policy agenda with a sense of the future that is likely to have appeal and staying power with the next generation of Republican voters.

…some would say it’s unhelpfully blithe to be looking to the next administration as though business by then will still be that sort of as usual…but…as an exercise…you can see it…sort of?

Start with the style: Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance exude an unapologetic combativeness that Republicans love. Generation Z has grown up in the era of politics as internet knife-fighting, a skill Mr. Vance has honed and displays on podcasts, social media and other platforms where younger voters get their news.

But even in the realm of traditional media, Mr. Vance relishes going into hostile territory, making offline content that catches fire online. For instance, CBS News’s Margaret Brennan challenged Mr. Vance in a recent interview over the threat or lack thereof posed by Afghan refugees, to which Mr. Vance replied, “I don’t really care, Margaret, I don’t want that person in my country, and I think most Americans agree with me.” The line sparked a thousand “I don’t really care, Margaret” memes, giving voice to younger conservatives’ frustration over feeling scolded for their views. His debate performance against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota did much the same, giving Republicans a taste of what is possible when Trumpian views are channeled through a messenger with far greater focus.

…I don’t happen to be of the school of thought that puts it down to sparing the rod…or even the hiding…check out the richard pryor bit about having to pick your own switch sometime & consider that didn’t save him from setting fire to himself trying to get high in later life…but…I’d be lying if I don’t think some of these kids would have turned out different if life played by letterkenny rules…& that might have sucked a lot more for them…but…they might not like what a utilitarian calculus would say about how much weight that carried on the big scales that aren’t about them…red in tooth & claw & all that…we should be able to do better on account of the whole civilization thing…but…on current form…that’s debatable, frankly…& I’ve lost count of the number of things & people I’d instictively love to bring up short the way a sucker-punch got to be called that…what can I say…I’m a fallen soul

Then there’s the substance, a conservatism with an ear for populism, focused on the issues of the future. Mr. Vance’s time working in the tech industry gives him greater fluency about issues that will define younger Americans’ lifetimes, from artificial intelligence to cryptocurrency and beyond.

…maybe…for a given value of fluency…but…imagine the princess bride clip is here again?

Mr. Vance also has carved out a position on American engagement around the world, one much more skeptical of the value of sending American blood and treasure abroad, that aligns more closely with where younger Republicans — as well as other young Americans — stand on foreign policy. Mr. Vance’s populist economic rhetoric aligns with a generation that has never been strongly persuaded of the virtues of free and unfettered capitalism, that takes workers’ rights seriously, that looks skeptically at elites of all kinds.

…& where not even half say they see his boss favorably going on 90% of that field gives him the nod when asked their opinon of him…playing his current position…which, personally, I think is a big chunk of that lead for him in that run-off…so…call it a soft-90?

Notably, his favorables are almost equally strong for those who think of themselves as “Trump-first” Republicans as for those who think of themselves as “party-first” Republicans.

…that’s not nothing…grade-A windsock that boy

A Trump presidency would have been completely unbelievable to me when I wrote my book about the G.O.P. and younger voters, so I approach political prediction with humility. Republicans do not have a robust modern record of vice presidents becoming their party’s presidential nominee — just ask Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence. And those working under Mr. Trump do not always emerge from the experience unscathed. Four years is an eternity in politics, and if America ultimately concludes that the Trump-Vance administration was a failure, the Republican Party could look to turn the page.
[…]
Mr. Vance has displayed much of what Mr. Trump’s core supporters love today — a thirst for combat, an indifference to criticism, a populist posture — with a clear ability to evolve into what the Republican Party will want after Mr. Trump leaves the stage.

Trump and Musk Pull Focus. But Vance Is the One to Watch. [NYT]

…so…that’s one wager that’s seeing some action…& while I still don’t know the odds on my turning up something like this for the carpetbagging-cataclysm to make @bluedogcollar know I tried

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/15/reform-party-circles-of-influence-whos-who

…& there’s plenty of mud in the waters

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/15/if-the-ai-roundheads-go-to-war-with-tech-royalty-dont-bet-against-them

…just like there’s plenty to corroborate the way I can’t seem to help reading this

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/14/thought-and-cancelled-elections-how-do-jd-vances-europe-claims-stand-up

[spoiler alert: …poorly…like everything else about these people that isn’t their net worth…& I imagine that, too if you have the forensic chops for fine-tooth combing those books…don’t take my word for it…they aren’t subtle about it]

‘The W.T.O. Is Toast.’ What Happens to Global Trade Now. [NYT]

…it doesn’t have america literally written all over the brand name the way USAID did…but…tell me you don’t understand what the WTO has been doing all this time without telling me?

…remember when?

A ‘recipe for extinction’: can the US’s envied nature protections survive Trump and his ‘God squad’? [Guardian]

…I don’t exactly claim to be on speaking terms with god…but…years back there was an onion thing…lemme see if I can find it

https://theonion.com/god-finally-gives-shout-out-back-to-all-his-niggaz

…no…not that one…but close

“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. “Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t. And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called “an unending cycle of violence.”

“I don’t care how holy somebody claims to be,” God said. “If a person tells you it’s My will that they kill someone, they’re wrong. Got it? I don’t care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else’s, ever again.”

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.
[…]
“I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?”

“But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody’s spouting off some nonsense about, ‘God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it’s God’s will,’” God continued. “It’s not God’s will, all right? News flash: ‘God’s will’ equals ‘Don’t murder people.’”

Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an.

“To be honest, there’s some contradictory stuff in there, okay?” God said. “So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it’s God’s will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall.”
[…]
“This whole medieval concept of the jihad, or holy war, had all but vanished from the Muslim world in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason,” God said. “There’s no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. The vast majority of Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists, just like the vast majority of Christians in America are pissed off over those two bigots on The 700 Club.”

Continued God, “Read the book: ‘Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.’ It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some assholes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war crap just to further their own hateful agenda. So now, everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks, Taliban: 1,000 years of pan-Islamic cultural progress down the drain.”

God stressed that His remarks were not directed exclusively at Islamic extremists, but rather at anyone whose ideological zealotry overrides his or her ability to comprehend the core message of all world religions.

“I don’t care what faith you are, everybody’s been making this same mistake since the dawn of time,” God said. “The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don’t even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you’ve been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades.”

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: “Can’t you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism… every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you’re supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It’s not that hard a concept to grasp.”

“Why would you think I’d want anything else? Humans don’t need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you’ve been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!” God said. “The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?”

“I’m talking to all of you, here!” continued God, His voice rising to a shout. “Do you hear Me? I don’t want you to kill anybody. I’m against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don’t kill each other anymore—ever! I’m fucking serious!”

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

…why did that feel relevant…oh, I dunno…take a wild guess?

UK refuses to release details of Peter Thiel’s meeting with former minister [FT]

Can We Please Stop Calling These People Populists? [NYT]

MI5 lied to courts to protect violent neo-Nazi spy [BBC]

…something, something…faithful…something

Seeking God, or Peter Thiel, in Silicon Valley [NYT]

…what’s god got to do with it?

This Obscure Law Is One Reason Trump’s Agenda Keeps Losing in Court [NBC]

…the exceptions are the rule now, after all

Trump’s feared DOJ enforcer has a secret: He, too, investigated Jan. 6 [NBC]

…which isn’t one that takes the “of law” suffix, you see

Trump, Musk and America are headed for a very rude awakening [WaPo]

Graphic: Track grocery price trends [NBC]

Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy [NYT]

The Two Things I’m Hearing in Europe About Trump’s Ukraine ‘Negotiations’ [NYT]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/14/one-day-everyone-will-have-always-been-against-this-by-omar-el-akkad-review-a-cathartic-savaging-of-western-hypocrisy-over-gaza

…so…maybe it’s just that I got out of bed the wrong side & I’m…cranky…cranky seems like a good word for it…maybe the secret sauce isn’t pervasive incompetence to the point of not knowing what the fuck you’re even doing

Elon Musk’s DOGE website has been defaced because anyone can edit it [The Verge]

…well…ok…so…that does very much look like that’s exactly what that was…but that’s just one…weird…oh…wait…you mean…this website?

DOGE, which President Donald Trump created to purportedly root out waste in the federal government, launched its website on Wednesday night with a feature allowing users to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” People can navigate through all federal agencies and offices for details about their head counts, budgets and average ages of employees.

…because…if it’s *that* one…from the super-transparent “agency” that’s more by way of the never-never than congress…& apparently won’t be offering up the baseline of federal transparency reporting requirements…because the rhetoric has its fingers crossed behind its back about that shit…well…then I have some sad news

The website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies.

…they can duplicate the small print…they just can’t…I dunno…read?

But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community.

“DOGE just posted secret NOFORN info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed,” said one Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from senior leaders.

…he did say nobody bats 1,000…I don’t know that many who get a negative number on that metric…but…I’m not a baseball fan…maybe that’s normal for a guy who thinks the hall of fame should just be him because he can overwrite the actual player name on the jerseys providing you post it on xitter? …doesn’t seem like how I’d expect it to work…but that’s not my department

NOFORN stands for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” meaning information in this category can’t be shared with any foreign governments, international organizations or foreign nationals without specific authorization.

NRO appears to be the only intelligence agency with its data publicly available on DOGE’s website. The U.S. intelligence community is composed of 18 organizations, and HuffPost searched DOGE’s website for details on all of them. None of the others had any data.

Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Reconnaissance Office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, has a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Posts Classified Data On Its New Website [HuffPo]

…I put it to you that this is not what competent actions look like

The National Nuclear Security Administration workers were among hundreds of employees in the energy department who received termination letters.

An email obtained by NBC said the letters for some NNSA employees “are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel”.

…unless they’re…whatchamacallit…tip of my tongue…saboteurs…that’s the one…for those it would be almost supremely competent, I guess

Last week, nearly 10,000 federal workers were let go, according to multiple US outlets.

That figure was in addition to the estimated 75,000 workers who have accepted an offer from the White House to leave voluntarily in the autumn.

The nuclear security officials who were laid off on Thursday helped oversee the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. That included staff who are stationed at facilities where the weapons are built, according to CNN.

Attempting to reach the workers, the email, which was sent to current employees, said: “Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails.”

Trump is working to slash spending across the board, abroad and at home, and going so far as to call for eliminating the education department. He is getting help from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who, through an effort called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), has sent workers to comb through data at federal agencies and helped implement the “buyout” offer.

Last week, the Trump administration ordered agencies to fire nearly all probationary employees, those who had generally been in their positions for less than a year and not yet earned job protection. That included the NNSA staff members.

Altogether, the move could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of people.

US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago [BBC]

…think of it like this…you know how interviewers & lawyers that people say are good at their jobs will tell you at the slightest provocation never to ask a question you don’t already know the answer to…especially not in open court/live on air?

…well…maybe don’t fire people when you don’t know what they do for an agency you likewise don’t comprehend the brief…let alone scope…of…because it screams “incompetent fuckwits at the helm” really fucking loudly…& you clearly are too far away from ready-for-primetime not to fucking crumble if we tell you the scary shit that you don’t seem to have seen in the background that perked up & started licking its lips when you started your sideshow-bob-&-the-sea-of-rakes tribute act on the world stage

…this shit ain’t like video games, boychik…just because you stepped into the pre-ground makes-hard-mode-novice-friendly user profile like you’re used to don’t mean it’s just you that’s embarrased by how obviously you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing

…good thing it’s sunday…or that sort of shit might have really put a crimp in my day…still…if any of y’all do happen to talk to a god…you can tell them from me that the absentee landlord routine is so old at this point the wheels are falling the fuck off & they need to hold up their fucking end

…I’ll go find some sort of musical penance & we’ll call it a deal?