I’m back to the fake real world where I live. Prime and I spent last weekend in Annapolis amidst old streets, a harbor, boutiques, and sharp-dressed cadets. Dinner with erstwhile commenter JW and his far superior spouse, then a run back north, where I had yet another dinner with db and his clan. Main difference was the geekiness of the conversation (db and I talked extensively about detection limits of perfluorinated hydrocarbons) and a nod to STEVE SMITH (I had my ass-crack violated by a mechanized massage chair that Mrs. JW had just acquired). Anyway, the warm arms of academia were waiting here to greet me. And a looming snowstorm is threatening to interfere with a fun brewery visit with Prime.
Speaking of geeks, more than a few of them were born today, including a guy whose spirit always gives me a lift; a guy who knew what Atlanta was good for; a guy who was on his period; a guy who married Joe E. Brown; the first woman to go to the moon; my favorite economist; a quiet hater of Larry David; and an actor whose career was too short.
Links will be neither too short nor too long. They’ll be juuuuust right.
Swamp fights back. Which of course is inevitable. We’re too far gone, the problems can’t be fixed.
I’m sure this will be judicially rescinded as well.
Well, I did have a SMOD bumper sticker for the 2016 election.
This was the First Plague, right?
As long as he leaves the pudding alone.
And on the theme of returns, this live clip was a delightful discovery. The Old Man feels like he’s back in his college days.
Happy birthday Deirdre McCloskey?
Happy birthday Richard Jewell?
Heh… nice. Old Man made that one way, way too easy (especially given how much he loves Hotlanta and all.).
Margaret Mitchell?
Happy birthday Jasper Newton Daniel?
Happy birthday Elisha Otis!
Nice
Or maybe Billy Cook.
The security guard at the DOE door is stoic AF.
Hopefully if he goes to a bar it will be outside of the normal DC crowd — most of the country would happily buy his drinks this weekend, I think… the DC crowd would likely scream at him.
Sometimes this site really makes me feel like I need to revoke my geek card. Or that I’m an idiot… one of the two.
But glad you had fun, OMWC. Top o’ the morning to the rest of y’all as well.
Yeah, me too. My last chemistry class was in high school, so it’s all well over my head.
I had ChemE roommates and they could’ve been talking Greek for all I understood. Granted, they thought electricity was magic, so the feeling was mutual.
There are processes and procedures! Order must be followed! You can’t just have an executive making policy by executive fiat when the policy result is reducing the size and scope of government!
For a Federal department in DC, actions being taken in DC about data access in DC…. yeah, that makes sense for standing. “I’ll allow it because it is the result I want!”, right judges?
Doesn’t Donald have any friendly judges to overturn the other side’s partisan decisions?
Ya got me…. it definitely doesn’t seem like he does since he pardoned the J6 crowd and pissed off all of the DC Circuit, all of New York seems devoted to taking him down since 2016… we know about the “aloha spirit”, etc.
Less snark, more honesty — I strongly suspect that a pro-Trump wouldn’t be allowed a “counter national injunction” (the judicial ratchet only works to preserve the status quo deep state) so it would have to be someone at the next level up anyway — so you might as well just follow the process to get it there. But that’s purely gut reaction thinking.
I have the feeling that the Old Man is wrong on this, but that it will take going up to SCOTUS to do it.
Then again, I am an optimist. NO BLACKPILL FOR YOU!!!!
Let’s have this out now. If it turns out that any random federal judge can set any policy he wants, let’s get that on the table in short, simple words.
That’s the aloha spirit right there….
We knew there would be lawsuits and motions for injunctions. The sooner this starts, the sooner it will end. Fingers crossed for a circuit split which will fast track the case. Ultimately this will be decided by SCOTUS. I’ve seen it said other places that he was deliberately trolling for lawsuits in hopes of getting a favorable SCOTUS ruling. And, Sotomayor might always retire; I understand her health is deteriorating.
It’s also important to flood the field. It costs very little to craft and sign an executive order, Solicitor General (the ppl who defend the fedgov in lawsuits) are already paid for. The left is going to have to spend lots of their treasure on lawsuits. Make them fight this on a thousand fronts.
Rise of the Machines?
Return of the Ass Crack Bandit.
Don’t even need to click. Perfect
Did it at least give you the courtesy of a reacharound?
Psst, look for the next thread.
Never would have happened if Milei hadn’t slashed the Argentine government to the bone. WHO WILL SAVE US?!?!
Was she? I thought you were going to deep dive us and trot out Ms. Kelton. Granted — I don’t know if that was part of the skit pre-TV days.
Given the dark emotional places most comedy comes from — Happy Birthday Larry David?
Don’t think it’s hate, but I can’t stand the guy.
Happy birthday, Jerry Seinfeld?
Morning old man.
This is kinda the opposite of a birthday? Don’t know how many here saw it but Virginia Halas McCaskey died at 102. She was owner of the Chicago Bears and the daughter of George Halas.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2025/02/06/virginia-mccaskey-bears-obit-dies-102-halas
Judges certainly have a lot of say in how the Chief Executive runs the branch he is in charge of.
Someone else here already said it — but there’s always the counter-precedent on the Executive side of Mr. Andrew Jackson….
To be fair, Roberts the simpering little bitch has had about 80 opportunities to rein in the national injunction game, but would rather see the entire federal court system reduced to a banana republic laughingstock before giving the appearance of deferring to a Republican administration or the nose picking rednecks who voted for it.
100%
This idea that any single judge anywhere in the country has absolute control over the entire federal government is crazy.
And now that we are in the era of everything being partisan and the law being irrelevant, it is somewhat suicidal.
It seems that we need a functioning legislature to properly delineate the boundaries of the judiciary, which has created a role for itself as some sort of god-emperor who allows the peasants some degree of control, so long as they generally do what the judges have decided is proper and good.
Setting themselves aside as completely immune from legal consequences and oversight was a dangerous thing to allow.
Even SMOD has a problem honoring election promises in a timely fashion, it seems…
SMOD collected a bunch of campaign contributions, then went on vacation.
All part of its “Belt and Antipodes” initiative.
Hey OMWC.
Could you expand on your perspective on detection limits?
I am tired of explaining the lack of updates on isotopic recovery control charts on PFAS testing.
Tired of spiking at high levels compared to MDL’s
AAAAAHHHH! Stop making me feel even dumber!
You could figure it out, if it was something you were truly interested in.
Its deep in the weeds about my work.
Dont get me started on QSM 6
There are people here that no so much more on other topics. I have no idea what they are talking about.
Probably, though I wouldn’t bank on it. 2nd order diffeq’s are why I changed undergrad majors… so there are some things that just will not penetrate my thick skull (and that was when I was much younger).
Intended as just light-hearted teasing — don’t let me actually stop a discussion.
I think the published detection limits are bullshit. And mostly voodoo extrapolative thinking.
I’m not even comfortable with the MDL’s they give us for PCDD/PCDF, PCB, and PAH.
/still not really a chemist
The key is hyphenation, followed by a deep skepticism of the Japanese group who claim detections at 5 orders of magnitude better than everyone else. I use LC-MS, he’s been experimenting with more exotic chromatographic methods. Solid-phase extraction preceding detection seems to be popular and incredibly prone to false detections…
Of course the Japanese are better at detection, their eyes are built for squinting!
ZING!
Stop that.
Hey buddy?
“Revenge move” my ass. If he’s not competent to stand trial for mishandling the material, he sure as shit isn’t competent to get anything new.
And why should ex-Presidents (or ex-any-government-official) not have clearance revoked as soon as they’re out the door anyway? “Oh… we might want to consult with them!”… if you do, you can issue a new clearance, jackwipes.
Admittedly I’m biased because I work in operating systems — but security should always be least permissions needed for only the time they are needed. That’s pretty f’ing fundamental. None of this “let ex-CIA make bank as media consultants / board members / whatnot” crap. Revoke and prosecute leaks. And stop classifying everything while you’re at it. rant rant rant
I’m sure it’ll be undone judicially, but using that report as a justification for pulling those clearances is hilarious. Hard to argue that the poor senile old guy who was immune from prosecution for the same crime with which you charged his political rival on account of he was too confused to realize he had classified materials stored in his garage for a decade needs access to classified materials and briefings after leaving office.
*So* glad I hovered first before being tricked onto another goddam Guardian frothing.
I hovered first
Gay!
‘If you genuinely think Trump is a fascist, go and have a lie down’
Since we’re all friends, we’ll let the eurocuck conveniently ignore that little flap where communism killed 100 million people on two continents in half a century, but still…
“since”? Yeah… Stalin… then Mao… then Pol Pot… then the Un family… possibly Xinnie the Pooh (certainly the Uighurs and the Chinese Catholics the Pope keeps selling out likely think so..).
Someone really, really doesn’t want to face the uglier sides of human nature in an industrialized age of oppression.
But they meant well.
“Totalitarian control. Messianic dictatorship. A cult of racial superiority. Paramilitaries crushing the left at home. A Darwinian military struggle for supremacy abroad. The worship of war and violence. The mechanised attempt to murder all of Europe’s Jews.”
Sounds like an Islamist government to me, with a few minor edits (they’re not limiting themselves to Europe’s Jews, and the cult is more religious than racial). What they lack that the European fascists had was competence.
But enough about the communists.
“A federal judge early Saturday blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.”
This notion that SocSec numbers are “sensitive personal information” is just stupid at this point. Not only are you required to disclose it for any number of purposes, I think its pretty safe to say that every single person’s SocSec number has been circulating on dark web identity theft sites for years now.
Of course, DOGE is operating under the aegis of a government department now, data services. How a government IT department can be banned from seeing data is, I guess, an exercise for the reader.
You see Counsellor, judges are wise in ways mere mortals can never understand. Judges understand the great truth of our legal system. Of course that truth is that loyalty to one’s party gets one appointed to the bench, and possibly promoted to the higher level benches, but it is still the truth.
Yep. Well said.
Yeah, I had to dial mine in on a freaking phone “menu” of an insurance company the other day.
Their need for that information is left as an exercise for the reader, I guess.
The ‘training’ for handling PII is a 30 minute online course.
Oh and my military personnel file…I have ever social sec # of my squadron because it was used for everything and not blacked out or just last 4 of some nonsense.
Low-hanging fruit is low hanging.
Seriously, this is most slam-dunk issue they have right now.
Trump is just picking one 80/20 issue after another, parking on the 80% side, and letting the leftists and Dems beclown themselves on the 20% side.
It.s absurdly easy and effective. The fact that it took Trump to adopt this tactic shows you how cucked and useless most Repubs are.
So much this.
Even after he showed the way, they could not follow the plan.
The only politician I have seen who understands is Canadian Pierre Poilivre – the guy who eats the apple while being interviewed and answers questions like “people are wondering…” with “what people?”
The big pileated woodpecker made a visit to our bird feeder this morning. First time I’ve seen him this winter.
Immaculate consharktion
To quote Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way”—and that’s certainly the case for the newest member of a Louisiana’s aquarium who was born with no male involvement.
The swell shark pup, “Yoko”, hatched in January from an egg lain in a tank occupied only by two female sharks, neither of whom had encountered a male in more than three years.
I have no idea if it’s a swell shark or not. Most of the sharks that I’ve encountered were on the assholish side.
I know in some species the females can hold onto the sperm for extended periods for just such purposes. Wonder if that’s what happened here….
You know who else held on to sperm for an extended period?
Lewinsky?
Kommiela?
Rod Stewart?
Most of the sharks I’ve run into have been pretty cool.
Good thing you’re not a Jet.
Sometimes… SugarFree just didn’t go far enough. The reign of Dark Cracky we didn’t even know about (though we speculated).
“We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history.”
‘Former”?
Baby Bush?
Technically true? As well as being an active cocaine addict, he’s also a former cocaine addict?
I don’t think so, ‘slinger. “Former” means “used to be, but not any more”.
The Once and Future Addict.
+1 Mitch Hedberg
First thing I thought of as well. “I still do, but I used to, too”
For her own sake, I hope Ms. Li doesn’t have information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of…well…you know…😳
The amount of social media freak out by members of my family and friend group has been insane over the last week. A week ago I was in a house with many of my good friends. They all were talking about the end of birth control, special education, and the evil Mr.Musk.
Thankfully they are not unreasonable and recognize that arguing with me on the subject would be stupidity.
My canned responses to most arguments of this kind were, “ just because I don’t want the government to do something, doesn’t mean I don’t want it done.”
Still, for them the end is here.
The lamentations of their women are sometimes annoying no matter what Ghengis said.
Everything old is new again:
I think democratic control of the governor’s office in Kentucky is on its last leg.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/07/kentucky-gov-andy-beshears-80000-taxpayer-funded-european-vacation-raises-questions-outrage/
Get him out before Cocaine Mitch gives up the ghost!
How does a state with two GOP senators (well, 1 1/2 maybe?) and five GOP out of six representatives end up with a D governor??
Kentucky has a long history of electing Democrat governors, and the prior Gov. Bevin was … kind of special.
I saw that guy yammering on the news this morning – I guess he’s out there doing damage control 🙄
OMWC. I love a good electric piano. Great musical selection this morning.
For years, I have been asking how the news is being controlled. I’ve been asking what the actual command and control mechanism is, and who is pulling the strings?
Well, now we know, thanks to the work being done shutting down USAID and a few dedicated leak reporters.
We now know that it was being funded through a slew of non-governmental organizations funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars out of USAUD, prominently featuring the clinton global initiative. They have traced a half a billion through one organization so far.
Half a billion.
Wonder why we live in a propaganda state? Well, now you know a half a billion reasons.
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1888072129327083979?s=19
Brian Kennedy in the replies summed it up:
George Orwell was a prophet.
USAID funded a GLOBAL propaganda media network the world has never before seen.
This is Operation Mockingbird on steroids. Over 4,000 media outlets!? They paid off everyone. They controlled “news” everywhere.
Powerline,
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/02/the-week-in-pictures-mar-a-gaza-edition.php
Cheers!
So what is our consensus on the Gaza thing?
My immediate reaction was that it was just a rhetorical trick to reframe the question. Moving the Overton window from “should hostages be released, Hamas retaking control and firing more missiles, etc.” To “no, the US cannot have Gaza… Egypt and Saudi Arabia will set up a protectorate” or somesuch counter offer.
He put “Egypt and Jordan take millions of refugees” on the table.
Completely short circuiting the prior list of priorities.
At least, that is how it looked from suburban south Florida on first blush
For me, it looks like a pure negotiating tactic to push Saudi Arabia into the mix, with a side order of laser pointer of outrage for the Team Blue and establishment Team Red cats. No seriousness to the proposal at all, but shock therapy can be hilarious.
He said no US troops would be involved, so, negotiating tactic.
Maybe he thinks if he can get the rich Arab states to invest in Gaza, then they will be less likely to tolerate Hamas type terrorists blowing stuff up.
Yeah, Mar-a-Gaza is not a serious offer.
But it gets things that need to be said out in the open, also including Egypt and Jordan publicly rejecting support of any Gazans.
Engelmayer, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also said anyone prohibited from having access to the sensitive information since Jan. 20 must immediately destroy all copies of material downloaded from Treasury Department systems.
That’s interesting. Unfortunately for you, the cat is out of the bag.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the lawsuit, said DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s data raises security problems and the possibility for an illegal freeze in federal funds.
“This unelected group, led by the world’s richest man, is not authorized to have this information, and they explicitly sought this unauthorized access to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on, payments for health care, child care and other essential programs,” James said in a video message released by her office Friday.
James, a Democrat who has been one of Trump’s chief antagonists, said the president does not have the power to give away American’s private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.
That’s “noted Constitutional scholar” Letitia James, to you.
lol Now we have to pay attention to Congress doing something?
Where was New York Attorney General Letitia James to tell us this when Joe was out there legislating left and right?
How does Letitia James have standing here, but the states in Murthy v. Missouri don’t?
The lady that works at the gas station near my place was just telling me “I’ve been thinking about you and praying for you and I just hope you can live your life they way you want and not have to move somewhere bad” (we’ve developed a casual rapport over the last few months and I told her about my job). And I burst out in tears. It’s the first person in weeks that I felt hasn’t been judging me and laughing at me. Only warmth – no sarcasm or nastiness.
Did Trump revoke Obama’s security clearance, as well?
Also, labor unions and advocacy groups have sued to block the payments system review over concerns about its legality.
Purely in their well known roles as civil society advocates, mind you.
This one popped into my head the other day.
The cat is out of the bag, and all the frantic scrambling in the world won’t make it go away.
Capriciously attempting to rein in the administrative state is bad
At the center of these challenges is the question of whether the president’s actions are directing federal agencies to violate a key standard established nearly 80 years ago in a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act.
The law was drawn up as a way to protect against agency overreach and actions that might be deemed “arbitrary and capricious.” Groups are using it to challenge presidential policies by targeting the administrative agencies tasked with carrying out Trump’s will.
——-
The APA was signed by President Harry Truman and received bipartisan support after a decade-long effort by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Concerned with a burgeoning “administrative state” after the New Deal expanded the role of executive agencies, Republicans wanted judges to review and curb the executive branch’s growing influence.
Democrats saw administrative action as an efficient means for advancing public policy since it doesn’t need to go through Congress. They wanted to use the act as a road map directing agencies to set consistent, effective policies.
The ratchet only goes one way, established as law.
I read that as the exact opposite of how they are arguing to use it. Agencies can’t just make new laws or regulations by themselves…. not “the president has no oversight over agencies”.
Sorry I missed Dunham last night, Mo. i was hanging with the family in Carmel, IN and…uh…I ended up having a seizure in the woods and had to be rescued to hospital. I’m ‘totally’ fine, but damn the auras seizures have are remarkably difficult to explain. My Mental and physical acumen are I’m a bit hazy but I’m about 85-90% ‘there.’
Now we’re having a family lunch. Alligator is included along with typical oysters and shrimp. This’ll get a happy meal. If I can’t get my vet clinic gig next week, I have an appointment with vocational rehab on Jan 20. That *may* prove fortuitous to my employment quagmire. *May not. Any advice at all is greatly appreciated.
O wish you all the best on your endeavors and future struggles. The quagmire is far to tempting, and I sure-as-fuck don’t wanna me an intelligent, fit, 47-yearold fuck-stick who still lives with this parents. Onward. Upward. Always. I shall overcome. On way or another. From an atheist, bless you all.
Hi all. Is the Bee dead?
Down for me. Attack? Pr just a screw up?