more to come

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InDAklMpVao

 

One Trillion Dollars

Evil Jeff Bezos is in the news planning to do some more evil shit so I thought I'd republish this from late last year. Like many of us, I'm just yelling the same things over and over because they are always true and it always makes me furious.

Once again, the answer to all our questions is: Money (and once again, h/t Tony Kornheiser)

 

Just a quick word about Elon Musk and the tussle over whether to pay him a trillion dollars as Tesla's CEO. In the November 6 issue, the New York Times asks the important question: "Would Elon Musk Work Harder for $1 Trillion Than $1 Billion?" (no link, because fuck the New York Times) I didn't read it because I don't give a shit what their answer is because, again, fuck the New York Times.

The question reminded me of something I've thought about for ever. Why do we think that billionaires making less money makes billionaires want less money? Do we do that with poor people? Working people? Do we believe that paying people less per hour makes them want and need more hours or fewer hours? Do we believe that taxing the money above a billion makes billionaires quit at a billion? Or go find a different job?

I'm convinced that the biggest lie in capitalism--among thousands--is that if Big Brain Masters of the Universe don't get their money (including their tax breaks and their public investments and etc.), they'll close up shop and tell everyone else to suck it. 

I think that's extortion, and I don't think it's true.

When it comes to how we think about money, I think there are two kinds of people. One kind of person thinks about the life they want to have and thinks of money as the way to get that kind of life.

The other kind of person thinks of money as a way to keep score in the big game of World's Greatest Human (aka Biggest Asshole).

For the first kind of person, money as a means to a material end might mean feeding your family, a decent car, a home of your own. For lots of people it's being able to pay your medical bills. Send your kids to college. Travel once in a while. You know, normal shit. For this kind of person, if you have enough money you can get the life of your dreams, so you work and save to have that life.

For the other kind of person, there's no such thing as enough money. It's not a means to an end, it's a competition. That means if you make a million and someone else makes two, you're losing. If you make a billion or ten, that doesn't put you ahead in the race against eight billion other people; it puts you behind a couple thousand other assholes. 

In other words, this kind of person can never get enough money because somebody's always got more or they're trying to get more. They're not working for enough; They're working for more, more than anybody else. 

Which is why, if Elon Musk lost 459 of the 460 billion dollars he now owns, he would never ever not in one billion years stop trying to make that 459 billion dollars back again -- and then a trillion more. That goes for the rest of the goddamn billionaires, too.

In the 1980s, people said, "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." That was greedy and selfish, but at least it was tangible. Toys could be played with. Today's billionaires have an empty hole right through the middle of them, and they can never earn enough or steal enough or inherit enough to ever fill it. (h/t Kevin Jarre, 
Tombstone)

We have too many goddamn billionaires, and billionaires ought to be illegal. 

It's hilarious to hear a bunch of middle-aged, middle class folks cry for the billionaires and vote to protect them from the communist socialist leftist antifas. 

I imagine it's especially hilarious to billionaires who shout "look over there!" as they scoop all the money into numbered bank accounts or crypto accounts or whatever else I wouldn't know about because I'm not a goddamn billionaire. 

I don't know a single billionaire, nor do 99.99% of the people screaming to keep our commie hands off the money owned by billionaires. "Be nice! Don't make them mad! They'll quit and take all the jobs with them! They'll stop making new iPhones and bad newspapers and weird trucks and delivering our toothpaste in three hours!" 

What is it we're really afraid of? What would we lose if we lost all the billionaires? 

What would we lose if one morning they all became just millionaires? 

It's stupid that the rest of us do all that screaming for them.

Now there's goddamn trillionaires.

If you want to know why things have gotten so fucked up, follow the money.

Further reading: Why is everything so fucked up?

Politics, à la carte

Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and Zohran Mamdani in New York City. Three vastly different candidates speaking to widely different constituencies, but with one thing in common: They won. How?

At the Mamdani victory celebration on Tuesday night, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke with MSNBC's Antonia Hylton, who defaulted to the Narrative and asked:

A lot of conversation right now about, well, who is the face of the Democratic Party at this point? Is it Zohran Mamdani? Is it Abigail Spanberger?  Who is the face, the soul, of the [Democratic] Party?

It's a crucial question delivered via the perfect metaphor. AOC answered this way:

I don't think that our Party needs to have one face--Our country does not have one face. It's about all of us as a team together. And we all understand the assignment Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible. In some places, like Virginia for the gubernatorial seat, that's going to look like Abigail Spanberger. In New York City, unequivocally, it's Zohran Mamdani.

I think that's exactly right. I think the obsession with a whole-party "Democratic Message" is misguided. It comes from panic over the "Dems in disarray" narrative, the narrative that spawns "who is the face" questions. When asked if they approve of or agree or disagree with some other Dem's actions or remarks, a rep's response can simply be: "I listen to my constituents. My concern is with them."

Democrats don't need to handcuff themselves to each other. The fiction that we do amplifies the power of leadership, suppresses dissenting voices, and gives cover to cowards. Democrats don't need one uniform, focus grouped, processed, packaged "message."  It reeks of contempt to think that all you have to do is come up with the perfect combination of syllables and people will fall in love with you. Instead, Dems have to de-center themselves and listen. Your voters will tell you what they need from you.

Democrats don't need one message for a thousand different candidates. Rather, they need a set of principles. And they need to talk to their voters. This used to be called "retail politics," but it's more than that. It's listening,  too, more than you talk. It's a conversation, and it has to take place face to face. A candidate running in the Texas panhandle will have constituents with different priorities and concerns from a candidate running in New Jersey. That's not just a good thing. That's America.

It's not rocket surgery. Listen to the people you want to support you. Not the money, the people. Promise to work on the things that are important to them and build a record of doing that. Explain your values. Defend them. Stand on your principles. Be on the side of the people you want to be on your side. 

Some of your constituents are going to disagree with you on some issues. Right now, the "Democratic Party" is being advised to twist itself into a pretzel to appease potential/maybe voters on issues from immigration to transgender people to Palestine to choice/bodily autonomy for women. 

And if they disagree with you over vaccines or taxes or choice or school choice, acknowledge them, then educate them. Educate yourself. Do your job. 

And if they disagree with you over some wedge issue that has been super charged by constant propaganda, over immigrant crime or trans kids in sports, explain, tell them the truth. "Here's the science. Here are the facts." "I believe in protecting your rights, everybody's rights."

And don't pretend. People can smell a phony. You don't always have to "read the room" and choose the easiest way to get through without a bloody lip. Instead of asking a bunch of people what they think and then saying you think that, too, let them know who you are and what you believe in. Explain and persuade them if you can. If not, at least you'll have some dignity and maybe they'll figure they can live with where they think you're wrong.

Not a fifty-state strategy, a 200 million voter strategy. Listen to them. Tell them how you'll do some things, how you can't do some things, and why you won't do some things. 

All this to say that Democrats can be just like people: all different and all the same. Keep in mind that your constituents are not voters; they are potential voters. Try thinking of them not as chips to add to your stack (sometimes by bluffing), but as actual humans who need you to do things big and small so they can live their lives in security and peace.

Dems in disarray? Our diversity is our strength. And we're getting stronger every day.

Democrats looking for the right "message," it's you. It's always been you.

It's not everything, but it's one thing.

 

Happy to be out Saturday with a few million of my closest friends. Thanks to everyone who joined in. See you next time!

Save America Rally

When the Nazis came for the communists, I kept quiet; 

I wasn't a communist.

When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a trade unionist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a social democrat.

When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to protest

—Martin Niemöller


Marc Elias, lawyer and voting rights expert, Democracy Docket founder, referenced Niemöller's poem earlier this month and said something that I've often thought about and one thing I don't remember ever thinking about before. Elias reminded his viewers of what is often thought of as the central message of the poem, that "It is important that you stand up not just when it is threatening you..."

Then he talked to and about people who have ignored the present crisis, have pretended it's got nothing to do with them, who have been telling themselves that everybody does this shit and "It's just politics," people for whom opposing the Trump regime has been too onerous or pointless or scary, and Elias asks, "Are we just too early in the poem?"

If you haven't been in the fight because you think it's about someone else and it's their fight, please take a look around and see how deep into the poem we are already, and think about what the end of it looks like. 

It's already too late to stop some troops from invading some of our cities, to stop some thousands of people from being kidnapped and disappeared into gulags here and abroad, and too late to prevent some hundreds of families from being devastated.

It's already too late to protect some hundreds of students from being damaged, detained, and/or deported because of their political views.

It's already too late to keep some tens of thousands of public employees from losing their jobs, too late for some kids who have already died because food and medicine was halted or withheld, too late to dodge state censorship, too late to avoid tariff inflation, too late to keep the Justice Department from becoming Trump's private vigilante enforcer. 

But it's not too late for the rest, the people who haven't yet been fired or kidnapped or silenced or killed. It's not too late for the people who are about to be thrown out or priced out of their health insurance and the healthcare it pays for. It's not too late to push back, to oppose this regime and the destruction of our democracy.

If you haven't been in the fight up until now, maybe because it's a lot of work and you think it hasn't touched you yet, it will. Look closer and I think you'll see it already has. 

If you haven't been in the fight because you don't know what to do, there are lots of lists out there if you look. Here's some of the things we've been doing:

• Call the electeds whose job it is to fight for us. You might say this is pretty old-fashioned, but these are old fashioned people with thinking stuck in 1980. It just might work with them.
• We can stop giving money to politicians who won't fight and give it to those who will.

We can stop supporting 

• Companies who are in on it, who give to inauguration committees and buy up meme coins. 
• Companies that print lies because the truth is too dangerous and the lies are so profitable. 
• Companies that smile and say "Thank you, Sir. May I have another?" just so they can hold on to their little piece of what they used to have and have betrayed so completely.
• Companies who accept contracts to build concentration camps, and who buy slaves from them to come pick their strawberries.

• We can stand outside federal buildings and ICE motels and detention facilities and shout.
• We can shout and whistle and video the goons when they show up.

There are lots of people writing good stuff about how to resist and, ultimately, build an opposition.

And you know what else we can do? We can MARCH! 

Trump seems poised to invoke the insurrection act over a rebellion that does not exist. It is fabricated, a fever dream of the Borg collective that includes Noem, Miller, Homan, Bondi and of course, Trump. Maybe Trump thinks it's a rebellion against the United States of Trump. Nevertheless, he thinks he's the king, the country, the world, and he thinks he can do whatever he wants to protect himself from those who disagree and oppose him.

That, of course, means more military troops patrolling more U.S. cities, making arrests and canceling the First Amendment. That won't mean we will lose the ability to protest. It means we will have lost the right to. But we haven't lost it yet. Even though the Trump regime is trying to take it away, and some of us are content to give it away, it's not gone. Not yet. 

So come on out. What are you waiting for? If you hate everything that's going on right now, come out. If you have one pet peeve, one thing about the way the Government is behaving that really grinds your gears, come out. If you have heard that we're all antifa or Hamas, BLM terrorists, Marxists, whatever, and you don't want to take Mike Johnson's word or Stephen Miller's word for it, come out and see for yourself. 

If all you are hearing is that this is a "Hate America Rally," a dangerous free-for-all full of dangerous people, first of all change the channel. 

First, don't be scared. If you can't do that, at least remember that they are ten times more scared than you are. You can tell from the overheated screeching and name-calling. They have staked everything on this authoritarian takeover. They know they are wrong and we are right. They know what their lives will be like if they lose. Ask yourself, "Why are these guys, Mike Johnson and the rest, pro-King?"  

Imagine what Thomas Paine and his buddies might have thought in this moment. Imagine what they would have done. Never mind, we don't have to imagine. "No Kings" is about the most American idea there is. 

Wherever you are in the country, there is arally within driving distance. (Click here for a map and more information.) Now is the time to stand up and stand against the king and for the country we want to be.

If you've heard about Stalin, or Mussolini, or Hitler and wondered what you would have done at the time, you're doing it now. If you're in downtown L.A., I'll see you there. You know what to do.

***

And don't forget: As of this writing we can still vote. In California, Prop 50 allows the legislature to temporarily redraw congressional districts in response to Republican gerrymandering. It levels the playing field for the time being. Voting now makes voting later meaningful--even possible--in 2026 and in 2028. Please vote. Act now, before it's too late.

Because, as the saying goes, you can't vote out a dictator. 

One good thing.

In my last post, which was a while ago, I wrote: : "There is a real, if messy, pro-democracy movement in the United States. The official leadership of the Democratic Party just isn't part of it. We need new management."

Some things have changed since then, and some things haven't. Democratic leadership did rise to this particular occasion by (so far) refusing to strike a shitty, illusory deal, and instead allowing  Republicans to shut down the Government and at least symbolically "defund" the murder mayhem machine. True, the regime is stealing funding approved by Congress for other purposes and redirecting it to their Secret Police and other favored horrors, but that's them breaking the law. As I've written before, there is value in forcing them to break the law in order to do the things they want to do.

Also, I still think the "health care health care health care" strategy is limited and could, under a more strategic regime, box the Dems into providing votes for a phantom deal. However, it is working right now and the Government is "unfunded" as we speak. It's not a perfect plan, but anything that makes dictatorship more difficult for them is worth doing. Sand in the gears, resist at all levels, make it hurt. And we know it's causing Mike Johnson and Republicans at least some pain because the Republican shutdown has got them pretending to care about someone else's pain, in this case the people they are not paying and the people they are throwing out of their jobs altogether.

So let's put this to rest right now: Every single one of the firings we are seeing was written on Project 2025 stone tablets well before Trump2 stumbled into the now-gold-plated office. 

Democrats should reset their talking points to include: 

1. Republicans run the entire Government. If Government isn't running, it's the Republicans not running it. 

2. Republicans blaming Dems for the firings of workers or shuttering of agencies or impending plane crashes is fucking ridiculous. The destruction they are visiting on the country--including the illegal firings--was inevitable once Trump was re-elected.

Republicans and so-called Conservatives have been working on and planning to and salivating over gutting the federal government for years. Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 was in the works in 2022, and its little brother, Trump's Agenda 47, oozed out of the cesspit the next year (Go back and take a look if you have the stomach for it; yes, he did in fact tell us exactly what he planned to do. Anyone pretending they "didn't vote for this" is either lying, delusional, or too stupid to live free. And anyone pretending that the pretenders aren't pretending should not be listened to). Grover Norquist joined Ronald Reagan's "Government is the problem" team in the 1980's. Point is, this is a decades-long project and Dems got nothing to do with it.

There is literally NOTHING any of us can NOT do that will keep them from doing what they want to do, intend to do, have already planned to do anyway. They will never stop. We will have to DO THINGS to stop them. 

And any Democrats wobbling over ridiculous Republican accusations (every accusation is a confession) or soggy "Won't Democrats pay a price?" questions from NewsBots or pointing fingers at other Dems for being too much or not enough, should be fired into the sun and replaced with humans who understand the war we're fighting and the battlefield on which we're fighting it.

So we have done this. We have called and written our leaders and they have, so far, stood strong in this one battle. We'll see about tomorrow.

Throw the bums out.

There is a real, if messy, pro-democracy movement in the United States. The official leadership of the Democratic Party just isn't part of it. We need new management.

I've been working on this for awhile. Then there was this over the weekend:

SCHUMER: I hope and pray that that Trump will sit down with us and negotiate BASH: And if he doesn't, I'm just confirming that you'll vote no. Is that correct? SCHUMER: We are hoping that he will negotiate with us BASH: And if he doesn't? SCHUMER: We must get a better bill than what they have

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 21, 2025 at 6:13 AM

Are you kidding me? For the love of everything we once thought was holy, get rid of this fucking bum--and all the other bums, too.

For years, we in the "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party, aka "Democrats," have been disparaged by Establishment Dems, aka "we got ours." We've been taken for granted, insulted, and publicly ridiculed by Rahm Emanuelites who figured we'd have no choice but to shut up and support "the lesser of two evils." I guess they forgot that staying home is a choice, too (see 2016 and 2024).

Anyway, I fervently hope that in the coming brawl over leadership and the direction of the Party... Pause. I hate that phrase. It is such a weasel way to say you kinda believe in something without holding yourself accountable for ever making it happen or even really trying to. "We're the Party of equal justice" is a slogan. It is not the same thing as saying "We are going to pass police reform and if we don't pass it, we'll bring it up again and again until we do." And it is nothing like actually doing it. That's what "the direction of the Party" should mean, but it's not what they mean.

So, no more "direction of the Party." Maybe "purpose of the Party." Or maybe it's better to focus on "purpose of the office holder," because that's really what the fight is about. Anyway, I hope that in the coming brawl between the "Simmer down; it'll all work out" Establishment Dems and the "tooth and nail" Dems over leadership in the Party, and I pray to Vince Lombardi there is one, we finally get the leaders we deserve and  the country desperately needs: leaders who recognize the moment, understand the peril, and are prepared to fight for our survival. 

As many have said, the divide in the Democratic Party is less about specific principles and more about the stomach to fight for them. In this breach there is an opportunity for new and more ferocious ideas not just about tactics but objectives. What is the purpose of our institutional leaders? Are they functionaries obsessed with scratching out another term? Or are they in office to serve us, their constituents, and prepared to do things--even really hard, risky, important things-- for us? I'd argue that's the essential question. All other questions--about policy and tactics--flow from it.

Dems and their consultants want to argue over whether to focus on inflation or immigration or Ukraine or Elon Fucking Musk for fuck's sake. There are so many outrages that many Dems see a juicy opportunity to choose their preferred violation and complain that other Dems are focusing on the wrong one. That's a sucker's game. 

All of the outrages are one thing. This is not a zero-sum engagement. Everybody can pick their battles, but it's the same war. With Trump, each single act is just a dot. Step back and it's one picture and that picture is dictatorship. You either have the guts to fight everywhere all at once, or you don't.

As Bryan Tyler Cohen put it, "We are sick and tired of being the party of strongly-worded letters. We are sick and tired of putting up with half-assed fights that ultimately end in capitulation because of norms or the parliamentarian or the filibuster." We can't afford this anymore. 

And there's this, from Mehdi Hasan, responding to Establishment Dems who whine that "Just because they don't play by the rules doesn't mean we shouldn't." Hasan's answer? "No, that's exactly what it means."

Also from Hasan: "You can't play this whole moral high ground game [where] Well, you know, they're going to do this stuff but we're going to stay pure. Doesn't work like that. You do that and you lose. And it's worse than just losing; you do that and you abandon your constituents who need you."

And in the process, I would argue, you repudiate the very values you are claiming to uphold by failing to fight to defend them.

You never see that shit stopping Republicans.

It's ludicrous to think that, in the face of dictatorship, decorum and bipartisanship have any value except as shields for the spineless. We're protesting in the streets. We're boycotting. We need leaders who will match our desperation and use every tool available to stop the march of tyranny. We need leaders who say, "We're doing it. Stop us if you can." Time to use this power for good.

The present vintage of Democratic leaders, Establishment Dems, are not prepared to engage in the necessary form of combat.

To call them feckless and incompetent is to let them off the hook with a punchline or a shrug. They don't just shrink from fights, they hide from them. Sometimes they actively undermine them. They don't see this as a fight for the nation but as a turf battle over power and consulting fees. It is about self-preservation, not service. 

As Nicolle Wallace put it, "How do you get the leaders to respond to the members who are responding to the public?" And, Democratic "leaders seem to be marching to their own drum." 

Pressure. Jeffries doesn't match AOC and Schumer doesn't appear to live on the same planet as Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Get rid of the bums at the top. We only survive if the collaborators are replaced. 

In the meantime, they will only do even part of the part-right thing if the pressure from constituents exceeds the pressure from donors and future employers and their lobbyists. Now is the time for pressure. The Government has become a murder machine. Shut it down. Defund the Government.

Make Establishment Dems have to make the choice for a change. Let them have to compromise and vote for the lesser of two evils. Let them have to figure out whether they can match the fire and fierceness of their constituents, or step aside and go hide under the bed. Let the heroes take over.

It's past time. It could be the last time we have the chance, at least in my lifetime. 

Defund the Government.

I rarely post anymore. It's depressing shout-writing the same things over and over again. And I've only been doing it for a couple of years. My stomach aches and my heart breaks for writers like Sarah Kendzior, Driftglass, Elie Mystal, and so many others who have been telling the truth to a deaf world for decades.

So,  because all the years are running together and it's (almost?) too late, and because I can't face the prospect of coming up with a new way to say we're dying, and because I'm too craven to admit it, I'm re-posting this from 2024 which includes a warning from A.R. Moxon (emphasis mine):

Either they get their way, and society is no longer accessible to most of us, or they don't, and everyone including them gets to access society. Therefore, I think they shouldn't get their way or be treated as if they should. These are people who intend to destroy whatever they need to in order to rule over our lives to secure their own personal enrichment and comfort, and are so confident in their success that they announce their intent. They do not care about you, and they certainly do not care about your good faith efforts beyond the extent to which they make it easier for them to seize control. They will never give you credit for working to find their rationales reasonable. They will never return the benefit of the doubt you extend. Our mission is not finding ways to work with them. Our mission is finding ways to sabotage their efforts and to keep their targets as safe from them as we can.

Almost. Too. Late. Of course it is too late for thousands of people fired for preposterous reasons or no reason at all, and it is too late for perhaps thousands ripped from their homes and families and sent to secret prisons here and abroad, and it is too late for the kids who have died because their food and medicine was withdrawn. It is too late for many, many people.

But it is not to late for lots of others who are not yet imprisoned, or prosecuted for speech, or thrown off Medicaid or had their Medicare reduced or their Social Security "impounded." It's not too late for the communities whose hospitals have not yet closed. It's not too late for those about to lose their jobs because of tariffs or for those who will be forced to feed their kids or pay the rent because of inflation.

And even though it's too late for more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and pressuring Israel to stop the destruction of Gaza and the ongoing assault on the West Bank will no doubt require regime change in the U.S., it's not too late to stop further funding of genocide there.

Defund the government. The pain we feel will be real, not like the synthetic discomfort of those who refuse to act on our behalf as they protect their privilege and serve their biggest donors. We can be sure that the regime will divert resources, preserving favored programs and policies at our expense. They will punish us for as long as they can, as long as they can afford to. But it cannot last forever, unlike the punishment and shame that accompanies capitulation.

The future looks bleak but it isn't yet written. We can still do one thing if we can get the witless, gutless Democrats in what used to be called "Congress" to do it: We can stop the money. By which I mean, they can stop the money. If only. 

We are, all of us, now divided not left from right or conservative from progressive, but those who will act to save the country from those who, for whatever reason, will not. 

"Until we do the good things the Republicans fascists want to stop and stop the bad things Republicans fascists want to do, the existence of the Democratic Party United States is purely theoretical. If we don't do them soon now, that existence will be merely allegorical." 

Or "historical," and we all know what they are doing to history. 

Fight or flight? Where you gonna go?