More Wednesday Male Beauty

 

Trump 2.0: Not Ready for Prime Time

Two things in my view stand out about the Felon's cabinet: (i) it has more billionaires than anytime in recent memory, and (ii) many of the appointees were not qualified or competent for their positions yet were nonetheless approved by spineless Senate Republicans.  A third attribute might be the arrogance of many of the appointees.  The consequences of the incompetence of the Felon's appointees was writ large when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, disclosed that he had been included in a group chat with senior officials discussing war plans for a strike against the the Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed militia, in Yemen.  There are so many things wrong with this story, not the least of which is that the chat did not occur through secure government means.  Indeed, on March 18th, a Pentagon-wide advisory went out one week ago warning against using the messaging app Signal, even for unclassified information. While many in both parties in Congress are fuming, Speaker Mike Johnson, ever proving his worthlessness, is shrugging off the whole debacle and the Felon is blaming the journalist for being at fault rather than his unqualified appointees. A column in the New York Times lays into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host with a drinking problem.  Here are excerpts:

I don’t know how Pete Hegseth can look service members in the eye. He’s just blown his credibility as a military leader.

On Monday, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published one of the most extraordinary stories I’ve ever read. President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, apparently inadvertently invited Goldberg to join a Signal group chat (Signal is an encrypted messaging app) that seemed to include several senior Trump officials, including Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth.

A National Security Council spokesman told The Atlantic that the chat “appears to be authentic.”

No one apparently noticed Goldberg’s presence, and he had a front-row seat as they debated Trump’s decision to attack the Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed militia that had been firing on civilian shipping in the Red Sea.

Then, at 11:44 a.m. on March 15, the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” sent a message that contained “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing.”

This would be a stunning breach of security. I’m a former Army JAG officer (an Army lawyer). I’ve helped investigate numerous allegations of classified information spillages, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.

There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and, potentially, criminal charges.

Federal law makes it a crime when a person — through gross negligence — removes information “relating to the national defense” from “its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed.”

It’s way too soon to say whether Hegseth’s incompetence is also criminal, but I raise the possibility to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of the reported mistake. A security breach that significant requires a thorough investigation.

What example has Hegseth set? That he’s careless, and when you’re careless in the military, people can die. If he had any honor at all, he would resign.

A full description of what happened can be found at The Atlantic in a piece by Goldberg.  Here are some excerpts:

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me.

I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. . . . . The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”

I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president. 

It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.

I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “John Ratcliffe” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Waltz responded with three emoji: a fist, an American flag, and fire. Others soon joined in, including “MAR,” who wrote, “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” and “Susie Wiles,” who texted, “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM!

The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was.

Read the entire piece.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Monday Male Beauty

 

Trump and Musk Continue to Threaten Social Security

Donald Trump, a/k/a the Felon, and Elon Musk in my view have several things in common: (i) both are malignant narcissists, (ii) both believe they know everything on any topic, (iii) truth and veracity are unknown concepts, and (iv) both could care less about average working Americans. On the latter point, the Felon gives lip service to caring about his working class and rural base, but when the rubber hits the road, his policies are harmful to his base - other than the very wealthy - and ever policy is motivated by either a desire for retribution or to slash federal spending in order to give trillions of dollars to the very wealthy.  During the 2024 campaign, the Felon stated that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would not be cut - I know, when does he ever not lie - and now he has unleashed Musk on Social Security bringing office closings, restriction on telephone claims and consultations, not to mention fear on the part of millions of retirees.    Historically, tampering with/cutting Social Security has been the third rail of American politics, but Must (and by extension the Felon) seems oblivious to this political reality or, even more likely, he is so arrogant that he simply does not care.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the current situation that ought to be sending off alarms with congressional Republicans despite their otherwise willingness to prostitute themselves to the Felon:

Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush’s second-term honeymoon was ending, and Social Security was to blame. Voters rebelled against his plan to partially privatize the popular retirement program and, the following year, stripped the GOP of its majorities in Congress. The events of 2005 cemented Social Security’s reputation as the “third rail of American politics.” For the next two decades, Republicans didn’t touch it.

Perhaps Elon Musk wasn’t paying attention. Back then, he had yet to vote in a U.S. election (or launch a rocket). Now, as a leader of DOGE, he’s opened an unexpected crusade against Social Security.

Musk recently called the program “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and claimed that it’s rife with waste and fraud. DOGE staffers have gained entry to the Social Security Administration and obtained sensitive taxpayer data, and the Trump administration has cut the agency’s workforce by thousands. Earlier this week, Social Security officials announced changes that could make it harder for retirees to access their benefits. These moves—and Musk’s rhetoric—have frightened voters, who have jammed congressional phone lines and town-hall meetings to register their concerns. And they’ve alarmed GOP lawmakers, who could pay for Musk’s decisions in next year’s midterms.

If Musk wants to meet his goal of cutting $1 trillion in federal spending, he’ll have to do a lot more than eliminate USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and even the Department of Education. He knows the real money is in the three pillars of America’s social safety net: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. “Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” he said earlier this month. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”

Republicans have learned that going after these programs carries a huge electoral risk. Musk, apparently, has not. . . . . Musk has “been quite successful in business, but he is clearly not very popular, and his DOGE actions are making him less popular,” a senior GOP strategist told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid provoking a fight with the president or his wealthy lieutenant. “He will end up being a heavy weight around the neck of not only President Trump but Republicans generally.”

Most elected Republicans have been careful to avoid criticizing Trump or Musk. But as DOGE has continued to assail Social Security, some have started feeling pressure from their constituents.

Trump might be able to claim a mandate from voters to justify some of his early cost cutting; he’s long criticized foreign aid, for example. But during the 2024 presidential campaign, he repeatedly vowed to preserve entitlements, even when some in his party wanted to trim them. Republicans have relied on those promises to try to reassure voters that their benefits are safe.

Musk’s offensive against Social Security, however, has made those claims harder to sustain. And Trump himself has amplified some of Musk’s most specious charges about the program. During the president’s address to Congress earlier this month, he said his administration had identified “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” in Social Security. But the examples he cited—people born in the 19th century supposedly still getting checks—were almost certainly data-processing errors that reflected the program’s antiquated computer systems, not fraud.

The administration’s attempts to reduce fraud could jeopardize legitimate recipients. Beginning next month, people will no longer be able to call the Social Security Administration to file for benefits or update their banking information. . . . The new requirements could be a particular hardship for older beneficiaries who live in rural areas—a constituency that leans heavily Republican. . . . . “If they kill the ability to phone Social Security with questions, that will cause real problems with seniors,” the GOP strategist warned. “This would give Democrats an opening."

Polling backs up the strategist’s claims. In a survey released yesterday, the Democratic firm Blueprint read respondents a list of 20 different facts about Musk and what he has done with DOGE, then asked which ones they found concerning. The four examples that respondents worried about most all involved possible cuts to Social Security. “This is what Democrats need to get through their heads: It’s all Social Security right now,” Evan Roth Smith, Blueprint’s pollster, told reporters during a briefing.

What Trump and Musk are doing now is far different from what Bush proposed two decades ago. His plan called for structural changes to Social Security that would allow recipients to put their benefits into private investment accounts, which Bush argued could yield more earnings for beneficiaries while extending the fiscal solvency of the program. Davis was serving in the House when the public rejected Bush’s idea. He offered a reminder that Trump and Musk might want to consider: “When you move too far, too fast in politics,” Davis said, “the voters pull you back.”

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

Trump Versus the Federal Courts

The Felon increasingly acting as if he is a monarch - or perhaps more on point, a Mafia crime boss - who is above the law and not answerable to the constraints of the federal courts which ultimately determine what the law is and which so far have largely ruled against and sought to block the illegal actions of the Felon and his minions and co-president Elon Musk.  A op-ed in the New York Times by Judge J. Michael Luttig  who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006, looks at the ongoing contempt the Felon is exhibiting towards the federal courts and any judges that do not rubber stamp his illegal actions. Luttig is optimistic that the courts will prevail although, personally, my confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court siding with the rule of law is marginal given that in justices Thomas and Alito we have two unfit members of the Court - Alito seemingly believes he is in the infamous court of Star Chamber when not acting as an inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition - and three of the other justices are questionable.  Hopefully, the desire to maintain their own power and authority may tip the balance and see the Court uphold the legal smack downs the Felon and his regime have suffered to date.  Here are column highlights: 

President Trump has wasted no time in his second term in declaring war on the nation’s federal judiciary, the country’s legal profession and the rule of law. He has provoked a constitutional crisis with his stunning frontal assault on the third branch of government and the American system of justice. The casualty could well be the constitutional democracy Americans fought for in the Revolutionary War against the British monarchy 250 years ago.

Mr. Trump has yearned for this war against the federal judiciary and the rule of law since his first term in office. He promised to exact retribution against America’s justice system for what he has long mistakenly believed is the federal government’s partisan “weaponization” against him.

It’s no secret that he reserves special fury for the justice system because it oversaw his entirely legitimate prosecution for what the government charged were the crimes of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and purloining classified documents from the White House, secreting them at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. He escaped the prosecutions by winning a second term, stopping them in their tracks.

But unless Mr. Trump immediately turns an about-face and beats a fast retreat, not only will he plunge the nation deeper into constitutional crisis, which he appears fully willing to do, he will also find himself increasingly hobbled even before his already vanishing political honeymoon is over.

The bill of particulars against Mr. Trump is long and foreboding. For years Mr. Trump has viciously attacked judges, threatened their safety, and recently he called for the impeachment of a federal judge who has ruled against his administration. He has issued patently unconstitutional orders targeting law firms and lawyers who represent clients he views as enemies. He has vowed to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political opponents. He has blithely ignored judicial orders that he is bound by the Constitution to follow and enforce.

There has been much talk in recent weeks of this constitutional crisis, in which the president has defied and stonewalled the federal judiciary as he has sought to consolidate his power. The Republicans who control Congress have already demonstrated their fealty to Mr. Trump. All that is left to check his impulses is the nation’s independent judiciary, which Alexander Hamilton deemed “essential” to our country’s constitutional governance. A country without an independent judiciary is not one in which any of us should want to live, except perhaps Mr. Trump while he resides in the White House.

Last week, he tossed more matches into the fire he has long been stoking against the rule of law.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump called for the impeachment of Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, after the judge ordered a pause on the deportation to El Salvador of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants said to be gang members.

For good measure, Mr. Trump called the judge a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.” All this because Judge Boasberg wanted first to determine whether the administration was correct in invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport the Venezuelan immigrants without a hearing. It’s called due process, which is guaranteed by the Constitution to ensure that no person is deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Within hours, the tectonic plates of the constitutional order shifted beneath Mr. Trump’s feet. The chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr. — the head of the third branch of government — rebuked the president in a rare missive.

No one wants murderers or other criminals to be allowed to stay in this country, but to rid the country of them the president first must follow the Constitution. Judge Boasberg doesn’t want to assume the role of president; the president wants to assume the role of judge.

At a hearing on Friday, in a further development in this showdown between the president and the judiciary, Judge Boasberg expressed skepticism about the administration’s use of a wartime statute to deport immigrants without a hearing to challenge whether they were gang members, as the government has asserted. “The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” he said.

He also said he planned to “get to the bottom” of whether the Trump administration had violated his temporary order against the deportations.

Mr. Trump seems supremely confident, though deludedly so, that he can win this war against the federal judiciary . . . . The very thought of having to submit to his nemesis, the federal judiciary, must be anguishing for Mr. Trump, who only last month proclaimed, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” But the judiciary will never surrender its constitutional role to interpret the Constitution, no matter how often Mr. Trump and his allies call for the impeachment of judges who have ruled against him.

If Mr. Trump continues to attempt to usurp the authority of the courts, the battle will be joined, and it will be up to the Supreme Court, Congress and the American people to step forward and say: Enough. As the Declaration of Independence said, referring to King George III of Britain, “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Mr. Trump appears to have forgotten that Americans fought the Revolutionary War to secure their independence from the British monarchy and establish a government of laws, not of men, so that Americans would never again be subject to the whims of a tyrannical king. As Thomas Paine wrote in “Common Sense” in 1776, “in America the law is king.

If the president oversteps his authority in his dispute with Judge Boasberg, the Supreme Court will step in and assert its undisputed constitutional power “to say what the law is.” A rebuke from the nation’s highest court in his wished-for war with the nation’s federal courts could well cripple Mr. Trump’s presidency and tarnish his legacy.

And Chief Justice Marshall’s assertion that it is the duty of the courts to say what the law is will be the last word.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty