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Shutdown, Clampdown, Clownshow or Horror Film?

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With the United States federal authorities shutting down over a funding dispute in Congress whilst POTUS Donald Trump sends troops into extra U.S. cities and Secretary of Struggle Pete Hegseth claims to be remaking the U.S. army, is it potential to inform clampdown from clownshow?

And that’s not even mentioning growing indicators of increasing threats of conflict within the Center East, Japanese Europe and presumably South America.

I’m going to attempt to apply the lens of deliberate deception, delusion, and dipshittery that I’ve just lately utilized to Israel’s hasbara conflict on its eighth entrance and the European powers’ makes an attempt to manage common opinion to the Trump administration’s current actions, propagandistic, kinetic, and monetary.

Let’s put issues in context earlier than we dive in. Trump and his administration are transferring quick as a result of it’s clear the present monetary bubble could also be about to pop. That’s the type of stress that drives determined strikes.

Philip Pilkington put it properly, quoting from John Authers’ Bloomberg column “Assume an AI Bubble. What Distinction Would It Make?”

Now let’s have a look at staff Trump’s speedy makes an attempt to capitalize on the shutdown.

Trump is main into the shutdown clampdown with bluster, as standard.

Trump’s blather is straightforward sufficient to dismiss, however Russ Vought, one of many extra formidable members of Trump’s administration, is already making use of very focused cuts to make the shutdown damage Democrats the place they dwell.

Vought is Director of the Workplace of Administration and Funds and has immense energy at his discretion.

Vought just lately received the New York Occasions supervillain remedy:

The article has some bits value excerpting:

(Vought) had fastidiously analyzed errors from the primary time period. And he had laid out steps to attain the long-sought conservative purpose of a president with dramatically expanded authority over the chief department, together with the facility to chop off spending, hearth staff, management impartial businesses and decontrol the economic system.
…
Vought has finally begun to place his plans into motion — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration. His efforts are serving to Mr. Trump exert authority extra aggressively than any fashionable president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system.

Now, as the federal government heads towards a shutdown when federal funding lapses on Tuesday, Mr. Vought, 49, is leveraging the second to additional advance his objectives of slashing businesses and purging staff, together with his workplace telling businesses to arrange for mass firings until Congress can strike a deal to maintain the federal government open.

The ultimatum follows a string of achievements for Mr. Vought.
This summer season, he pressured lawmakers to enact his plan to cancel $9 billion for overseas support and public broadcasting that that they had beforehand authorized — an uncommon bow by Congress to the White Home. The brand new legislation claimed one other prize for conservatives: the dying of the Company for Public Broadcasting. And a deal Mr. Vought reduce with Home Republicans helped safe passage of Mr. Trump’s home coverage legislation that slashed spending on Medicaid and meals stamps.

He has spearheaded a push to erase a whole bunch of laws on the atmosphere, well being, transportation and meals and employee security, telling Mr. Trump at an August cupboard assembly that his efforts had led to 245 deregulatory initiatives this 12 months. He has asserted White Home energy over impartial businesses just like the Federal Reserve, championing an govt order that compelled them to submit their regulatory actions to his workplace for approval.

Because the performing head of the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau, the company charged with imposing guidelines to guard folks from predatory monetary practices, he halted almost all the company’s work, and sought to fireside 90 p.c of its workers.

On the coronary heart of Mr. Vought’s plan, associates say, is the intentional engineering of a authorized battle over Congress’s energy to resolve how authorities cash is spent, doubtlessly creating a brand new authorized precedent for the president to dam spending on any packages and insurance policies he dislikes.

The article additionally contrasts Vought’s deliberate strategies with the sheer dipshittery of Elon Musk’s DOGE, which whereas it succeeded in terrorizing many authorities departments and slashing hundreds of jobs, was neither a sustained or well-thought out effort.

Vought can be taking part in hide-the-pea with billions of {dollars} that Congress has appropriated, per Notus:

Throughout federal businesses, the Trump administration’s aggressive slash-and-burn method to federal packages, grants and contracts has repeatedly challenged Congress’ energy of the purse. The administration has claimed it has the discretion to redirect funds to packages aligned with Trump’s agenda — and Republican congressional leaders have largely allow them to do it.

The result: Billions in taxpayer {dollars} have turn into nearly untraceable — a degree of opaqueness in authorities funds that’s elevating questions across the legality of the administration’s actions. A few of these taxpayer funds expire on Sept. 30. In the event that they’re not spent by then, like all funds Congress appropriated particularly for 2025, they disappear.

NOTUS tried to hint the cash appropriated for greater than 100 authorities packages to know the place taxpayer {dollars} are going, solely to hit lifeless ends repeatedly. Information is outdated or conflicting, businesses have been obscure of their explanations, and in lots of circumstances, there’s no publicly accessible proof that appropriated cash is being spent in any respect.
…
The Authorities Accountability Workplace has opened greater than 40 investigations into whether or not the administration is illegally withholding funds in violation of Congressional directions. GAO has already discovered that the Federal Emergency Administration Company, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, the Division of Vitality and the Division of Well being and Human Providers are among the many many businesses violating the legislation.
…

The Trump administration is “actually pushing the bounds of what the chief can do with out the consent of the legislative department,” Appropriations Chair Susan Collins informed The Wall Road Journal in July.

She escalated her language on the finish of August, when the White Home made clear that OMB Director Russell Vought supposed to pursue a controversial methodology of withholding funds referred to as a “pocket rescission.”

Now let’s have a look at Secretary of Struggle Pete Hegseth and his try to remake the Pentagon through jawboning.

It’s simple to dismiss Hegseth’s large speech as ridiculous tradition conflict nonsense:

this speech is about fixing many years of decay, a few of it apparent, a few of it hidden, or because the chairman has put it, we’re clearing out the particles, eradicating the distractions, clearing the way in which for leaders to be leaders. You would possibly say we’re ending the conflict on warriors. I heard somebody wrote a ebook about that.

For too lengthy, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the fallacious causes, primarily based on their race, primarily based on gender quotas, primarily based on historic so-called firsts. We’ve pretended that fight arms and non-combat arms are the identical factor. We’ve weeded out so-called poisonous leaders below the guise of double blind psychology assessments, selling danger averse go alongside to get alongside conformists as a substitute. You title it, the division did it.

Silly and reckless political leaders set the fallacious compass heading and we misplaced our manner. We turned the woke division. However not anymore. Proper now, I’m looking at a sea of People who made a alternative after they have been younger males and younger girls to do one thing most People is not going to, to serve one thing better than your self, to battle for God and nation, for freedom and the Structure.

Hegseth’s obvious anti-woke drive has gotten the same old nameless bitching to the press, and from sufficient vital gamers that we should ask how unified the U.S. army is behind Trump’s initiatives, from the Washington Put up:

Army leaders have raised critical considerations concerning the Trump administration’s forthcoming protection technique, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed management as Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth summons high brass to a extremely uncommon summit in Virginia on Tuesday, based on eight present and former officers.

The critiques from a number of high officers, together with Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers come as Hegseth reorders U.S. army priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competitors with China, and downplaying America’s position in Europe and Africa.

However there could also be extra vital issues occurring behind the scenes, issues that aren’t surfacing through outraged leaks.

Larry Johnson quoted a non-public correspondence from Yves that explains what could also be happening:

…it’s ludicrous to have referred to as so many senior guys in for such a foolish agenda. A stern memo and/or video classes would have accomplished.

So the large stoopid assembly, IMHO was to cowl for a smaller gathering that needed to be accomplished in particular person. And the place whoever was summoned could be a giant inform as to what the main focus was.

Johnson expanded on that notion:

In addition to the huge US naval drive parked off the coast of Venezuela, we are actually listening to that US tanker plane are flying to the Center East through England. We noticed the identical phenomena within the days previous the June 24 assault on Iran.

If the Trump administration is planning a coordinated assault on Venezuela and Iran, the commanders of USCENTCOM and USSOUTHCOM could be concerned. Whereas the plans for such assaults might have been mentioned over a SVTCS (i.e., Safe Video Teleconferences), these classes normally have dozens of straphangers watching. If you wish to maintain shut maintain on such planning, you do it in particular person. If the CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM commanders had been referred to as to Washington alone, the chances are excessive that somebody would have reported this. With the presence of the US naval drive off the coast of Venezuela and the motion of US plane in direction of the Persian Gulf, this seemingly would have attracted undesirable consideration.

Trump’s statements on his home army deployments are additionally alarming, from the Chicago Solar-Occasions:

“I informed [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] we should always use a few of these harmful cities as coaching grounds for our army, Nationwide Guard, however army, as a result of we’re going into Chicago very quickly,” Trump stated. “That’s a giant metropolis with an incompetent governor. Silly governor. Silly.”

Trump once more criticized crime in Chicago, regardless of violent crime and homicide charges having dropped within the metropolis, saying, “They want the army desperately.”

Mobilization of the Nationwide Guard has begun in Oregon, which Trump referred to as “a conflict zone.”

Trump then addressed whether or not the army might retaliate in opposition to protesters, saying, “I say they spit, we hit.”

He additionally informed army leaders that he signed an govt order to determine a Nationwide Guard fast response drive final month “as a result of it’s the enemy from inside.”

“We’ve got to deal with it earlier than it will get uncontrolled,” Trump stated.

Tyler Hicks at Inkstick wrestles with whether or not or not the U.S. army is ideologically prepared for the type of clampdown Trump is envisioning in his piece “‘Let’s Go Bash Some Skulls’: Contained in the Militarization of Trump’s America:”

“The American proper conceptualizes their political enemies and the Democratic Get together as a strong hostile overseas insurgency,” says (a California-based army officer referred to as Michael). “Now with the clear path to escalation they’ve already been on, I undoubtedly see a response the place they take this Nationwide Guard and ICE vitality and pivot it in direction of folks of left-leaning beliefs.”
…
Kris Goldsmith, an Iraq Struggle veteran who based Job Pressure Butler to analyze and counteract extremist teams, says the “MAGA-fication” of the army has been an ignored pattern. When the Nationwide Guard deploys to US cities, “generals aren’t fucking on the road holding a protect or baton,” Goldsmith says. “The younger individuals who could be in these positions grew up within the period of Trump, many enlisted whereas Trump was president, and all of them enlisted within the final 10 years realizing that Trumpism exists and that it’s a political drive.”

Michael, the army officer primarily based in California, has seen that “MAGA-fication” up shut and private. He worries sending the Nationwide Guard to extra cities poses critical dangers, particularly since, in his expertise, army personnel are “softened on the concept of abusing their fellow folks.”

Trump and Hegseth have been cultivating a brand new outlaw warrior ethos within the U.S. army, as chronicled in an formidable multi-part collection in The New York Occasions journal referred to as “America’s Vigilantes: A 4-Half Investigation of the Tradition of Impunity within the U.S. Particular Forces.”

All 4 components are value studying:

However I’ll restrict myself to quoting the NY Occasions’ 5 take aways from the collection:

  1. The Particular Forces’ tradition of rule-breaking emerged from the pressures of an unconventional conflict.
  2. Particular Operations commanders ignored proof of what might need been one of many worst conflict crimes dedicated by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
  3. The Military’s aggressive prosecution of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn reveals the way it might pursue Inexperienced Berets, if it selected to.
  4. This wartime tradition of lawlessness has reverberated in a wave of home crimes dedicated by troopers with Military Particular Operations.
  5. The operators’ vigilante ethos has been embraced by leaders like Trump and his protection secretary, Pete Hegseth.

    6. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox Information host, rose to prominence partially by his vociferous protection of Golsteyn and different service members accused of conflict crimes. “They’re not conflict criminals; they’re warriors,” he stated in 2019, shortly earlier than Golsteyn and others obtained a pardon from President Trump.

    Within the present administration, Trump and Hegseth have pushed to loosen authorized restraints on the armed forces, each overseas and in the USA, and to increase the position of the army at house. They’ve purged the army’s high attorneys, deployed active-duty troops to patrol American streets and licensed deadly strikes on these they designate as “narco-terrorists,” abstract killings that consultants say violate worldwide legislation.

Trump and Hegseth’s remaking of the army has not but reached all the final officer corps, nonetheless.

Brig. Gen. Alan R. Gronewold, head of the Nationwide Guard unit at the moment deployed to Portland performs a bit of little bit of Hamlet in a letter reported by Ken Klippenstein, who additionally factors out the troops are not below the command of Oregon governor Tina Kotek:

“I do know a few of you might have sturdy emotions about this mission. That’s okay. You’re residents first, however you’re additionally service members who took an oath to help and defend the Structure and comply with the orders of the President and the Governor. That oath doesn’t include an asterisk that claims, “solely after I agree with the mission.”

“I’ll be trustworthy with you — I do know this isn’t simple. Some folks in Oregon received’t perceive or received’t help this mission. Some would possibly even be hostile about it. However we’ve been by powerful conditions earlier than. We’re professionals who do our duties, no matter the way it’s obtained.”

Klippenstein has additionally been beating the drum over Trump’s alarming Nationwide Safety Presidential Memorandum 7, a nationwide safety directive figuring out “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence.

To date NSPM7 has been ignored by Democrats in Congress and downplayed by the media, however I agree with Klippenstein that it’s extra alarming than the Government Orders Trump has been issuing at file charges.

It appears clear that Trump 2.0 is a really totally different, and all-together extra harmful and alarming entity than Trump 1.0 ever was.

In my subsequent piece, I’ll have extra on Workforce Trump’s makes an attempt to capitalize on the shutdown and all the things else, plus the indictment of James Comey, Pfizer’s performs their get-out-of-tariffs-not-quite-free card and extra.

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