Category: Trump and Trump-hatred

Report from the trenches: The post-Trump de-woked Smithsonian (Vol I)

by philg

We are informed that Donald Trump has attacked America’s museums in general and the Smithsonian in particular. “Will Museums Fight Back Against Trump?” (New York Times, August 22, 2025):

The president’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution and other museums have become an effort to redefine why such places exist.

President Trump has sought to govern with an iron grip the federal bureaucracy, the economy and even the finer details of White House architecture.

He wants to put his stamp on the culture of the nation, too.

The president, once a fixture of tabloids and reality television, is waging a war on the rarefied cultural spaces he says have become too “woke.”

We took our boys (10 and 12) to the de-woked Smithsonian National Museum of American History on October 4, 2025. Just inside the front door, the boys learned that they “belong” in girls’ sports just as soon as they raise their hands and say “we identify as girls”. It’s not a matter up for debate, but simply “fair play” when “transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender female athletes demand equality”. The Smithsonian certainly doesn’t mention that there are any dissenters (“haters”) from this dogma, though, as we would find throughout the museum every sign is translated into Spanish (but not Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Swahili, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, or any of the other languages of migrants who make America great).

There’s a lot of explanation for the womanly skateboarder at right:

Our primary objective was to see the lowrider show (see also Lowriders in Fort Worth for these machines in their native increasingly-Islamic element). Spanish 101: the word for “lowriding” is “El lowriding”.

The de-woked curators remind us that American Hispanics claim victimhood going back at least 75 years:

(The discrimination was so bad that an additional 50 million Latinx migrated to the U.S. during the ensuing years? See also “Inhuman treatment” of immigrants in the U.S.)

If I can get our Honda Odyssey’s batteries to stop failing (the most recent 4-year AGM battery survived for about 1.5 years) it would be awesome to find the paint shop that did this one:

The depth of color isn’t achievable with a wrap, I don’t think.

Father of the Year Daniel Tovar made a lowrider for his daughter:

One hundred percent of the people described and depicted in the exhibit as actually building lowriders of significance had traditional male names and appeared to identify as men (moustaches, male attire, etc.):

(the dapper gentlemen is Sonny Madrid, who founded Lowrider magazine in 1977)

The gift shop, on the other hand, explains that it is actually Latinas who are responsible for lowriders:

To be continued…

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“No Kings” playlist

by philg

For readers who protested today, some lyrics by Elvin Bishop during the first Trump dictatorship (album version on YouTube):

He is the president, but wants to be the king
Know what I like about the guy? Not a goddamn thing
I want to know, how can four years seem so long?
Yeah, Lord have mercy, what the hеll is going on?

Here’s an adapted version performed to the delight of a San Francisco audience after the

A 12-year-old’s comment on the above: “If the guy hates Trump so much why does he look just like him?”

We attended 100 percent of today’s No Kings protests in Jupiter, Florida and, thus, can proudly display the following meme:

I asked ChatGPT for some suggestions of appropriate classical music:

  • Beethoven – Eroica Symphony (No. 3, 1804): Originally dedicated to Napoleon as a “hero of liberty,” until Beethoven tore up the dedication when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor.
  • Giuseppe Verdi – Nabucco (1842), especially “Va, pensiero”: The Hebrew slaves’ lament became a covert anthem for Italian independence from Austrian rule.
  • Richard Wagner – Rienzi (1842): A Roman tribune rises against corrupt nobles and tyranny. (Note that, unlike Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Wagner is in no way associated with National Socialism/Hitler.)
  • Béla Bartók – Concerto for Orchestra (1943): Includes a mocking “interruption” of a Nazi marching tune — a defiant gesture during World War II.

Related:

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The New York Times called for an “uprising” six months ago

by philg

Six months ago, the New York Times told the righteous to grab their rifles and run to the frontlines of “a comprehensive national civic uprising” (see “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.” (April 17, 2025): “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising”)

How’s the uprising going? Have the revolutionaries managed to kill enough fascists to make a difference? Or are Bernie and AOC still our only hope?

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

The NYT said, in the above article, “We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust.” What could account for low levels of trust? The political science nerds in the 2020 paper, below, say “We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.” (i.e., a random assemblage of humans via asylum-based immigration will result in a low-trust society).

Could AI perhaps update this classic “To the barricades” image to show young American progressives wearing Antifa T-shirts and carrying avocado toast?

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Titania McGrath on the Israel-Hamas deal

by philg

From the Islamic Republic of Britain:

Separately, I’m amazed that Donald Trump was able to address the Knesset today. I get jet lag just thinking about a trip to Israel. #NotMyPresident is 79 years old. How does he have the energy?

In case the author is arrested and imprisoned and all of her content memory-holed, a screen shot:

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Remember that Tylenol is the best thing for a pregnant person and his/her/zir/their baby

by philg

New York Times:

President Trump, speaking at the White House, gave direct and unproven medical advice contradicting decades of research about vaccines and the use of a common painkiller in pregnancy and infancy. … Medical experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, stressed that acetaminophen is safe.

StatPearls/National Library of Medicine:

Acetaminophen toxicity is the second most common cause of liver transplantation worldwide and the most common cause of liver failure in the United States. Responsible for 56,000 emergency department visits and 2600 hospitalizations, acetaminophen poisoning causes 500 deaths annually in the United States. Notably, around 50% of these poisonings are unintentional, often resulting from patients misinterpreting dosing instructions or unknowingly consuming multiple acetaminophen-containing products.

I recently purchased some acetaminophen. The CVS brand expired nearly a year after the Tylenol-brand Tylenol. Maybe it would be worth paying more money and accepting the shorter expiration date in exchange for a U.S.-made product? The CVS bottle said “Made in India”. The Tylenol-brand bottle said “Active ingredient made in India.” When did Americans forget how to make common chemicals such as this one?

Note that if you’re worried about acetaminophen toxicity you could take sugar pills the next time that you’re in pain. According to “Lack of Efficacy of Acetaminophen in Treating Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis; A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-Controlled Comparison Trial With Diclofenac Sodium” (2015) and “Acetaminophen for Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review on Efficacy” (also 2015), a placebo will work just as well as Tylenol (“All included studies showed no or little efficacy with dubious clinical relevance”).

From the manufacturer in 2017:

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An importer’s view of the tariff situation

by philg

From a friend who imports stuff from Europe…

As we all sit and think about the tariff decision today, let us all remember why this is being litigated in the first place. Anyone who has read a contract knows that the first part quite often contains definitions.

The law that is the Administration’s basis for the tariffs said that the President could “regulate” trade in certain circumstances. “Regulate” was not defined. So most of this was about whether the word “regulate” included tariffs.

All of this could have been avoided if any of the mediocre (or worse) lawyers in Congress had defined the word “regulate.” Instead billions of dollars of tariffs have been collected and industry has been put in turmoil because the idiotic mediocre lawyers in Congress could not define their terms.

So the next time you ask for these utter fools to pass a law to save the country, please remember this moment.

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Democrat economists hate Black women (NYT)

by philg

The New York Times:

Years before Lisa Cook became President Trump’s latest target in his effort to exert control over the Federal Reserve, she wrote about her experience as one of a relative handful of Black women in a field long dominated by white men.

“Economics is neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women,” she and a colleague wrote in a New York Times opinion essay in 2019. She added, “But if economics is hostile to women, it is especially antagonistic to Black women.”

What is the overwhelming political identity of those who are hostile to women in general and Black women in particular? “Political Affiliations of Federal Reserve Economists” (2022):

According to a new analysis of voter registration data, Democrat economists at the Federal Reserve outnumber Republicans 10 to 1. The imbalance is even larger among economists in leadership positions, among younger economists, and among female economists.

Previous studies look at the political ideologies of the broader economic profession. For instance, Langbert, Quain, and Klein (2016) report that Democrats outnumber Republicans 4.5:1 among economics faculty at 40 leading universities. In addition, Langbert (2020) finds a ratio of 4:1 among members of the American Economic Association (AEA), 4.1:1 among academic AEA members, and 2.5:1 among AEA members working outside academia and government. Earlier, Klein and Stern (2006) estimateds the ratio at 4.1:1 among public sector economists and 1.4:1 among private sector economists. McEachern (2006) shows Democrats outnumber Republicans 5.1:1 among AEA members in terms of political contributions.

I find that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among Fed economists is 10.4 to 1. The lack of political diversity is especially pronounced at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (48.5:1). Economists at regional Reserve banks range from 3:1 (Cleveland) to 12:1 (San Francisco). The lack of diversity is also noteworthy in leadership positions (22.25:1). Economists who are 40 years old or younger at the Fed are more likely to lean left (20.33:1), as are female economists (27.5:1). This suggests the Fed is likely to become even less politically diverse in time.

We are informed that if Republicans were eliminated (liquidated?) the U.S. would become a paradise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yet it seems that the discrimination that has kept and continues to keep qualified Black women from assuming leadership positions at the Fed has been almost entirely perpetrated by Democrats.

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Washington, D.C. is safe and also people from places that are safer are entitled to asylum

by philg

The righteous recently have complained that Donald Trump is trying to reduce crime in Washington, D.C. where the murder rate is only about 27 per 100,000 in the most recent statistics, down from 40 per 100,000 in 2023. That’s almost perfect safety, we are told, and therefore Trump is plainly motivated by a combination of racism (AP, below) and a grand plan to transition to full dictatorship.

The same people who say that D.C. is perfectly safe tell us that people from Colombia, Guatemala, South Sudan, Venezuela, El Salvador, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan are entitled to asylum in the U.S. (and four generations of welfare if they want it) because their home countries aren’t safe. What do their home countries have in common? All have murder rates lower than Washington, D.C.’s (Wikipedia).

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Logically consistent Democrats

by philg

From Trump Assassination Attempt #1, one year ago: Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting?

I’m still baffled by the Democrats who say that Donald Trump is Hitler 2.0 and yet won’t wish him dead. But at least some are logical.

For example, here’s a 2/28/2025 Facebook post from a Democrat (my late mother’s cousin) who previously explicitly compared Trump to Hitler and who makes the logical inference:

Comments from her friends:

  • …but then we’ve got Vance, who is no better.
  • Today is not soon enough
  • Echoes from a house in PA!
  • I keep hoping for an aortic aneurism.

Another post from the same Facebooker:

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Losing my bet on why Elon Musk would leave government

by philg

In mid-January, a colleague and I disagreed on when and why Elon Musk would leave the U.S. government. He said that Donald Trump would get into a fight with Elon and fire him. I said that Elon Musk would quit after he realized that it was impossible to cut federal spending because the enemy is mostly us (i.e., Americans who want the world’s largest welfare state, as a percentage of GDP (we were #2 behind France before the coronapanic enhancements)). We made a friendly bet that I would win if Elon hadn’t been fired by the end of February 2025.

Isn’t it my colleague/friend who lost the bet? Elon was still in Washington, D.C. at the end of February. That’s true, of course, but the fight between the two guys has become so personal that I think it is also fair to say that my friend was correct and I am the loser of the bet.

Which of these two is correct? Neither Elon Musk nor Donald Trump (nor anyone else) has a crystal ball and, therefore, neither one can be proven correct or incorrect. They have different assumptions about future GDP growth, apparently. I am a pessimist so I agree with Elon Musk. Given that the U.S. has turned itself into a shelter for tens of millions of humans from the world’s least successful societies (latest example: Mohamed Sabry Soliman plus his wife and five children; previous example: “Maryland father” Kilmar Abrego Garcia) I don’t see how we are going to have significant per capita GDP growth (even immigrants who earned as much as native-born Americans wouldn’t solve our fiscal problems; see “immigrants age too” in Aporia). But Trump the Optimist could turn out to be right, e.g., if the AI boom turns out to be real.

Although I agree with Elon on the likely deficit trajectory, I disagree with him on what is at stake. Congress isn’t locked into any particular tax or spending policy. If the GDP growth forecast by Donald Trump does not materialize, Congress and President AOC can work together to raise taxes, e.g., a 20 percent federal value-added tax plus a $1/mile fee to travel on interstate highways. Congress and President AOC could eliminate the current unlimited charitable deduction, which is enabling Bill Gates to deprive the U.S. Treasury of at least $40 billion in capital gains taxes as he sends all of his accumulated wealth to deserving Africans (DW). Congress could even, in some alternate universe, cut spending! Congress could say, for example, that no more than 10 percent of Americans can be on welfare (means-tested housing, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, or Obamaphone) at any one time. The safety net would then be for unusual situations, not for the average American. (Of course, this is a fantasy!)

Related:

  • “The Medicaid program is the largest single source of health care coverage in the United States, covering nearly half of all children, over 40% of births” (source); i.e., nearly half of Americans are born via welfare and continue on welfare (imagine a circus with a “safety net” into which roughly half the performers fall)
  • If All Lives Have Equal Value, why does Bill Gates support shutting down the U.S. economy? (before sending hundreds of $billions taken from US/EU consumers to Africa, Gates contributing to harming Africans via trade reductions for coronapanic)
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