<[Event "First Boston Futurity"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1981.04.??"]
[EventDate "1981"]
[Round "4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Kelleher, William"]
[Black "Leverett, Bruce"]
[ECO "C41"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<President Donald Trump is scrambling to get his agenda implemented as quickly as possible, because he fears he may not live through his second term, National Review columnist Luther Ray Abel argued in a new article published on Monday.

"Originally, I was going to title this post 'Let Trump Cook,' i.e., just wait and see before condemning the president for his every misstep from conventional fusionist orthodoxy," wrote Abel. "But I can’t stand the imperial presidency, so I couldn’t honestly demand deference to a man for whom I wouldn’t even vote. And yet there’s an obvious (at least to me) explanation for just about everything Trump has done up to this point: He cannot stand inactivity and will take the fast and dirty route every time."

There are multiple reasons for that urgency, Abel continued — but a key reason is that "Trump is old and was two inches from involuntarily landscaping greater Pennsylvania with his grey matter," referencing the assassination attempt against him during a campaign rally last year.

"While a retired professor friend of mine scoffed at the notion that a handful of assassination attempts have goaded Trump, I’m confident that his lizard brain has computed the probability of surviving his term despite age and act of terror and decided that he will do everything in his power to be remembered as a reformer/martyr," wrote Abel. "Melodramatic much? Yeah, that’s his shtick ... and he has a point. He saw the way Biden moldered until he was so incapacitated that he was loaded in a wheelbarrow and rolled off to Delaware; Trump took a look at that and said, 'Sorry old b******, that’s not for me.'"

Ultimately, Abel believes that the federal courts will rein in much of the chaos Trump is causing — but that is not what's on Trump's mind here as he moves as quickly as possible.

"As Bill Cosby put it in 200 M.P.H., 'Ya gotta burn the gunk out.' Trump is one taking the custom Shelby of State down a side street, burning out the gunk," wrote Abel. "It’s a vile display of smog, noise pollution, and redline abuse, but it’s also necessary. Time is Trump’s enemy, and he’s going to be seven Dukes of Hazzard reruns a day until January of 2029. Best to get comfortable and take in stride some undercarriage and valve-cover components lying in the yard. No one needs Coltrane’s blood pressure.">

<Geoffrey Hinton, the oft-named godfather of AI, has gotten into a row with Elon Musk on the billionaire’s own social media platform over his Fellowship at the prestigious Royal Society’s scientific institution.

The 365-year-old Royal Society is set to hold a meeting on Monday to debate “principles around public pronouncements and behaviours of Fellows,” after thousands of academics co-signed an open letter calling for Musk to be removed for breaching its code of conduct.

Stephen Curry, a biologist who penned the letter, said Musk should be banned after attacking Dr Anthony Fauci and labeling MP Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist,” behavior made all the more serious following his placement at the head of DOGE, which Curry argued hurt the scientific community.

Two members of the Royal Society resigned their Fellowships in protest at Musk.

Hinton, who has been a Fellow at the institution since 1998, is the latest scientist to provide a brutal assessment of Musk on the billionaire’s own platform X and of his unsuitability for a Fellowship.

“I think Elon Musk should be expelled from the British Royal Society. Not because he peddles conspiracy theories and makes Nazi salutes, but because of the huge damage he is doing to scientific institutions in the US. Now let's see if he really believes in free speech.”

Hinton was referencing Musk’s salute to crowds after the inauguration of Donald Trump, which replicated a fascist salute. Musk denied the accusations, accusing critics of a “dirty tricks campaign.”

Hinton’s post on Sunday elicited a furious response from Musk, who is at risk of experiencing the first expulsion from the Royal Society in more than 150 years.

“Only craven, insecure fools care about awards and memberships. History is the actual judge, always and forever,” wrote Musk.

“Your comments above are carelessly ignorant, cruel and false.

“That said, what specific actions require correction? I will make mistakes, but endeavor to fix them fast.”

Musk and new Nobel Prize winner Hinton’s trading of jabs on X marks a turn for the worse in the pair’s complex relationship.

Speaking to the Globe and Mail last year, Hinton admitted he made up an excuse to get off a call with Musk after 20 minutes after the billionaire “started rambling.” Musk had been in touch with Hinton to ask if he would sit on an advisory board focused on AI safety.

“He’s not going to like that. Because him being the center of attention, that’s what he wants. I don’t think he’s my friend anymore,” Hinton said at the time.

However, Musk and Hinton have long been aligned on the need for AI safety, with both sitting on the hawkish side of the argument that the technology could overpower humanity.

In December, Hinton put his differences with Musk aside to publicly back his lawsuit against Musk’s fellow foe, Altman.

Upon receiving his Nobel Prize in Physics last October, Hinton highlighted his pride for his students at the University of Toronto, calling out one in particular, Ilya Sutskever, after an OpenAI boardroom coup in 2023.

“They’ve gone on to do great things,” Hinton said. “I’m particularly proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman. And I think I better leave it there.>

<Trump is killing the economy, reducing the U.S. government to rubble, and destroying our relationships with our allies. Putin may love it, but it’s a catastrophe for us and much of the rest of the world.

Many of you ask me: Where’s the Democratic Party?

I wish I had a good answer. At a time when America needs a strong, bold, courageous opposition, the Democrats’ silence is deafening.

My old friend James Carville advises Democrats to “roll over and play dead.” With due respect to James, he’s full of @#$%.

Democrats have been rolling over and playing dead too long. That’s one reason the nation is in the trouble we’re in.

If Democrats had had the guts years ago to condemn big money in politics, fight corporate welfare, and unrig a market that’s been rigged in favor of big corporations and the rich, Trump’s absurd bogeymen (the deep state, immigrants, socialists, trans people, diversity-equity-inclusion) wouldn’t have stood a chance.

My simple advice to congressional Democrats: Wake the hell up!

Tonight, Trump will address both chambers of Congress. He has taken over the brains and intestines of Republican lawmakers, who will applaud his stream of lies.

Democrats will do — what? Sit on their hands? Applaud a few insipid things?

Ideally, Democrats should boycott the whole event. Even sitting in the well of the House as if this were just another president addressing just another Congress legitimizes Trump’s coup.

Democrats should not signal to a nationally televised audience that what we’re living through is normal.

If Democratic lawmakers feel they must be there, then make good and loud trouble. Disrupt Trump’s speech. Arrive in Revolutionary War costumes and hold signs proclaiming America is not a monarchy. Wave American flags and copies of the Constitution.

Every time he utters the word “tariff,” hold up a sign that says “It’s a tax.”

When Trump lies — about Ukraine, about DOGE, about immigration, about the tariffs he’s just put into effect, about his plan for robbing working people to give another huge tax cut to the rich — boo loudly. Hold up a “lie meter” for the cameras.

Then walk out en masse.

Show America there’s still life in the democratic opposition, even as America slides toward dictatorship.

The good news is most of America is firmly against Trump (and with Democrats) on the big things. According to polls:

Most don’t want a Trump Republican budget that cuts almost $1 trillion out of Medicaid, food stamps, and child nutrition in order to make way for a $4.5 trillion tax cut mostly for the wealthy.

Most don’t want the richest person in the world destroying departments and agencies that protect our health, safety, financial security, and environment.

Most don’t side with Putin. Most don’t want us to abandon Ukraine. Most don’t want us to turn against our traditional allies that are democracies in favor of a bloodthirsty dictator.

Most don’t want tariffs that drive up the prices they pay for food, gas, housing, and clothing. Most understand that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers.

Most don’t want a government of, by, and for billionaires.

Most believe in democracy and the rule of law and don’t want Trump trampling on the Constitution, acts of Congress, and federal court orders.

Not only should Democrats be making noise (and hay) about all this, but Democrats should not rely on so-called “moderates” (such as Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin) to speak for them. Democrats selected Slotkin to deliver the Democrats’ “response” to Trump’s address tonight.

Democrats need Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, or anyone else with fight in their hearts and rage in their bellies who can make the case that Trump is bad for working people and terrible for America and the world.

What the hell does it mean to be a “moderate” today anyway? When the choice we’re facing is between democracy and dictatorship, where’s the midpoint?

We are in clear and present danger. Democrats must stand up for American ideals at a time when Trump, Vance, and Musk are riding roughshod over them.

The rest of you, my friends, should make a ruckus, too. Call your Democratic senators and Democratic representatives (if you have any) today, and tell them what I’ve just told you. Again, the Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121.

During or after Trump’s speech tonight, call the White House and tell the operator that you disagree with what Trump has said. White House operators keep track of positive and negative responses. (The White House switchboard is 202-456-1414.)

Have no doubt that we are the true patriots of this nation. We are the voices of democracy, freedom, social justice, and the rule of law. We are the people.

<Despite its chest-beating rhetoric, President Trump’s regime is actually brittle and fated for ineffectiveness, collapse or both.

Americans may be startled by the all-encompassing nature of the regime, but it’s nothing new. History has seen many examples of regimes consisting of an all-powerful leader who makes all the decisions and who is surrounded by sycophantic underlings ruling over weak institutions and using their positions as platforms for self-enrichment.

Such regimes aren’t just run-of-the-mill dictatorships, as dictators don’t always enjoy untrammeled authority and obedience. In fact, Trump’s second administration resembles totalitarian political systems characterized by omnipotent rulers who claim to know everything about the totality of human experience, who aspire to supervise, guide and mold that totality. Unsurprisingly, totalitarian leaders often have revolutionary agendas intended to change everything according to the leader’s taste.

Such regimes look strong, because omnipotent leaders usually project a powerful, masculine image as exceptionally wise, fearless and capable rulers. In reality, their systems suffer from a fatal flaw, one that also serves as the central organizing principle of the regime: hyper-centralization.

The most important contribution to the theory of totalitarian decay belongs to the brilliant Harvard University sociologist Karl Deutsch. In a seminal article published in 1954, Deutsch constructed an ideal-type “totalitarian decision system.” A key function of such a system is “unity of command and of intelligence,” which “requires some machinery either to insure a single source of decision, or a set of arrangements or devices to insure consistency of decisions among several sources.”

Deutsch went on to show how such a system necessarily had a “limited capacity of centralized decision-making.” The result is that the system would be “overloaded with decisions with which it can no longer cope, except at the price of either intolerable delays or an increasing probability of potentially critical mistakes.”

“In the long run,” according to Deutsch, “there is thus perhaps inherent in every totalitarian system of government a tendency either toward overloading of its central facilities for the making of decisions, or toward an automatic corrosion of its original centralized structure and its disintegration into increasingly separate parts.”

In other words, hyper-centralized systems result in poor information, bad decisions, a weakening of the totalitarian ruler and the insubordination of subordinates — followed by the system’s collapse....>

<....Disregard the social-science jargon and notice that Deutsch’s model nicely describes the Trump administration. The putatively omniscient and omnipotent president occupies the apex. Just below him are a score of fulsome yes-ministers too terrified to provide him with correct information or disagree with his views. Existing governmental institutions are being eviscerated by Elon Musk, leaving their remaining employees in exceedingly vulnerable, atomized positions that encourage buck-passing, kicking the can down the road and many other dysfunctional behaviors that merely compound the structural inability of the system to make decisions efficiently and effectively.

The president’s seeming disregard for truth may be due to the fact that he is being told what he wants to hear and not what actually is. How else can one explain such whoppers as Trump’s claim that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is at 4 percent and not, as polls show, over 50 percent? Or that Ukraine “started” the war with Russia? Sycophants court the ruler’s favor, and they know full well that being the bearers of bad (or accurate) news can get them into trouble.

Unsurprisingly, Deutsch’s model is also an accurate description of Vladimir Putin’s regime. And, as the theory leads us to expect, Putin has managed to devastate the Russian army and economy in just three years, even as he believes, perhaps sincerely, that he has made Russia great again.

The first few weeks of Trump’s rule have already involved enormous blunders. Insulting scores of allies —Canadians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Europeans and Ukrainians — was surely unnecessary, even if one grants that Trump’s absurd demands were justified. Appointing himself chairman of the Kennedy Center may be too much of a challenge for any president, even as it makes perfect sense in terms of his self-image as absolute ruler. Placing all his foreign policy hopes in Putin’s basket is asking for the Russian to make Trump look weak and silly.

Just as Putin has been a disaster for Russia, so too Trump will be a disaster for America. Fortunately, although hyper-centralization may sound like a good idea for a man who believes he is ushering in a golden age, it doesn’t work. Unbeknownst to them, both Trump and Putin are fated to find permanent residence on the ash heap of history.

The other bit of good news is that, since both men are at the cores of the hyper-centralized systems they have constructed, those systems are unlikely to survive in their absence. There is hope for a restoration of democracy in America, and perhaps even in Russia.>

<On Fox News with Sean Hannity, Vice President JD Vance blamed the Biden administration for “throwing money and ammunition” at Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022 and claimed that “the only guy in town” who has a strategy to end the war is President Donald Trump.

Hannity interjected that if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had only accepted Trump’s minerals deal, things would be different.

[Note: The Trump administration paused all aid to Ukraine on Monday after not securing a minerals deal with Zelensky during his visit this week in Washington, DC. Vance insists that Zelensky “insulted” Trump and refused his “plan for peace.”]

Emphasizing the transactional nature of Trump-era diplomacy, Vance told Hannity: “If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually insure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine. That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

The “random” countries that have pledged continued support for Ukraine are NATO members which, as Vance says, have not been at war for decades — a fact often hailed as one of the great achievements of NATO, an alliance established in the aftermath of two devastating world wars that devastated Europe.

Vance’s statement struck a sensitive nerve, as NATO nations have sent military troops into wars in the the last “30 or 40 years,” including the longest war ever fought by the U.S. military, which began when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in a post-911 effort to protect the U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks originating there.

While the U.S. sent by far the most troops into Afghanistan, NATO countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada also sent troops.

[That war in Afghanistan, fought for 20 years before a U.S. withdrawal saw the Taliban swiftly regain power, is generally viewed as a failure by Democrats and Republicans alike, costing the U.S. trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Boasting about having fought it recently is “not the flex” Vance thinks it is, as one commenter opines.]

According to NATO: “For nearly 20 years, NATO Allies and partner countries had military forces deployed to Afghanistan under a United Nations (UN) Security Council mandate. NATO Allies went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, to ensure that the country would not again become a safe haven for international terrorists to attack NATO member countries. Over the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan.”

Vance’s statements dismissive of the power, participation and history of European allies have stirred anger among NATO nations, some of whose citizens are resurfacing and sharing photos of coffins of British and Canadians troops who were killed “supporting America’s war in Afghanistan through our support under NATO Article 5.” As one replied: “But JD Vance says that this never happened. He never even said thank you.”

(The latter comment presumably reflects Vance’s demand, during the contentious recent White House meeting, that Zelensky say “thank you” more often to the United States and to the Trump administration.)

In February, NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska stressed the importance of continued support to Ukraine during a ceremony marking three years since Russia's invasion.

The former Defense Minister of Northern Macedonia, which became a NATO member in 2020 while Donald Trump was POTUS, noted that in 2024, NATO Allies pledged 40 billion euros of security assistance to Ukraine, but actually delivered over 50 billion, over half of which came from European Allies and Canada.

Shekerinska also noted “the importance of continuing support in order to bring a just and lasting end to the aggression against Ukraine, emphasizing the need for robust security guarantees and the vital role that Allies will need to play.”>

<Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) told MSNBC in passing that the Republicans he's hearing from are being "overwhelmed" by the flood of angry calls and emails from constituents back home.

Republicans are being confronted by voters who are angry with the massive government staffing cuts and broad spending freezes ushered in by the new Donald Trump administration.

As Trump delivers the State of the Union Address on Tuesday evening, a political analyst panel questioned whether he will talk about Elon Musk and his slashing of government jobs and services. Dent said that's a terrible idea.

"As a political matter, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to be highlighting Elon Musk, given that his numbers are much lower than the president's," he said. "And from what I'm picking up — the intelligence I'm getting from a lot of congressional Republican offices, many of the calls and complaints they're receiving — and they are overwhelmed with complaints — are about Elon Musk and DOGE and access to Social Security numbers to the Treasury."

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force was established not by congressional legislation but by a Trump executive order.

"I mean, so Elon Musk has become, I think, quite a liability for Republicans," Dent continued. "So, highlighting him makes absolutely no sense to me. And you know, if the Democrats are smart, they're just going to keep focusing on economics and inflation or they're going to talk about Elon Musk and DOGE and the national security situation, and then clam up.">

<Republicans have proposed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that are all but impossible to make permanent with the party's slim majorities in the House and Senate. So now, Senate Republicans may use what one budget expert calls "weird accounting" tricks to push through cuts that are controversial even to some in their own party, and which could have huge implications for future policymaking.

In order to pass the budget bill with a simple majority and avoid a filibuster by Senate Democrats, Republicans would have to rely on a process called budget reconciliation. One of the requirements of budget reconciliation is that bills cannot add to the national deficit beyond the budget window, in this case 2034.

But all of the tax cuts and other budget items that Republicans have proposed would be so costly, there's no way to do it within that structure, says Kent Smetters, an economics and public policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. So Senate Republicans have said when they extend the 2017 tax cuts set to expire this year, they can say it costs $0 to do so because the tax cuts are already "current policy." This so-called current-policy baseline is a major change from the metric that Congress has traditionally used.

Of course, that's not how budgets work. Even if Republicans claim they cost $0, the tax cuts and other proposed budget expenditures would add trillions to national deficits, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM).

"If I have a subscription for eight years to Sports Illustrated, and then I tell my wife, Well, I'm gonna renew it for another 10 years, but it's not gonna cost us anything, because I already have one," says Smetters. "It's kind of a weird accounting to do that, but that's essentially what they're going to try to do."

The House budget reconciliation resolution calls for $1.7 trillion in net spending cuts—which could likely come from Medicaid and SNAP—and $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts, leading to a $2.8 trillion increase in deficits over the next 10 years. That's where the weird accounting comes in: By not counting the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts—which comes to around $4 trillion over the next eight years, PWBM projects—Republicans hope they can then also afford to add in some more of President Donald Trump's stated policy objectives, like not taxing tips or Social Security payments.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), endorsed the new "current policy" approach last week, saying it "recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue," according to NBC News.

"They're saying, 'Well, this is our current law…so it's not like this is really costing us more money.' And there's a lot of intellectual problems with that," says Smetters, noting that Democrats could use the precedent for things that Republicans could object to in the future, like extending the lapsed Enhanced Child Tax Credit. "This is almost the nuclear option on budgeting right here. It's pretty darn close to that."

Even other Republicans are taking issue with the GOP's math. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), told the Wall Street Journal that the idea is akin to fraud. "Am I giving you enough inflammatory language?" Schweikert said. "I can actually go much further."

According to Penn Wharton's calculations, the wealthy will benefit much more than middle- or lower-class Americans if the budget plan goes forward. The largest increases in after-tax income would go to the top income quintile, while everyone else sees "much more modest increases in after-tax income." In the event cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets are used to help offset the tax cuts, the least wealthy Americans may actually lose ground financially in the long term.

This situation could arise since the House's budget resolution doesn't specify exactly where spending cuts will come from; it is more a framework for spending cuts than an actual bill. Instead, it says certain committees must identify where they can make cuts. The bill calls on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to identify $880 billion in cuts, and for the Education and Workforce Committee, which oversees school funding and child nutrition, to nip $330 billion in spending. Meanwhile, Republicans have called on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP and farm subsidies, to identify $230 billion in cuts.

The upshot, says Smetters, is that low- and middle-income Americans who depend on those programs could see their benefits reduced over the rest of their lifetimes. And that reduction would wipe out any potential tax cut they could see long term. Exactly what the committees decide to cut is scheduled to be unveiled later this month.

<What is that awful smell?

Why NOW???

Fredthebear suspects this is yet another mythical game composition from <perfidubious>, well-known for his massive ego, abundant dishonesty, trash posting for the sake of posting to "achieve" the most CG posts (an unknowable record of litter likely held by his pal the z troll master with untold number of sock puppets constantly in operation for decades), and pile upon pile of database dumping in his personal forum. If this game had actually happened, we'd have heard the crowing about it last century and forevermore while Curdo was still living, as Alan Shaw Alan Shaw has never failed to repeatedly self-promote on this website.

perfidubious is a flaming liberal who does not have an honest bone in his miserable body. This is likely Al's version of Barry Soetoro /Barrack Hussein Obama's long form "birth certificate" finally produced 2 1/2 years into being president, but the document was badly photoshopped (and used a long dead man's Social Security #) and now once again being investigated under a legitimate department of justice.

Let's have a real, reliable source. Prove FTB's suspicion wrong.>

<[Event "16th World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1988.07.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Pozarek, Steven J"]
[Black "Ash, Robert"]
[ECO "E97"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "First Boston Futurity"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1981.04.??"]
[EventDate "1981"]
[Round "4"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Thibault, James"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James"]
[ECO "B22"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]