Yup, like I said -Monkey's paw- wish, a wish granted in a manner that makes the wisher regret ever having voiced it.

I agree entirely. Heck, Elons' Muskrats are like a monkeys paw wish granted to small government libertarians. Not only will a lot of what he's trying to pull likely fail in court- if/when he fishes up something important it's the small government libertarian banner he's waving so that's what the public will associate with this fiasco. And even if, by some miracle, the Muskrats manage not to stumble across one of the several major electrified rails buried in the stuff they're blithely rummaging through- everything they're doing will be reversible with the stroke of a pen and every minion they install will be dismissible in the same way they were installed.

That's a curious new assertion- that Ukraine isn't getting the aid and it's being siphoned off elsewhere?

Part of the quandary is that, contra what the Trumpkins say, Putin has given no concrete indication he's interested in even stopping the war on terms that Trump is suggesting (an essential draw). He's still demanding a demilitarized Ukraine which, of course, the Ukrainians would never, ever, agree to even under threat of America cutting off all aid.

Which, obviously, they won't do.

Yup, the joke of course being that Neocons have so beclowned themselves they don't bring any voters of significant numbers- so they're basically libertarians now. The Dems definitely wasted their effort trying to tout neocons support. I can see why they tried, of course, Haley showed such alluring numbers prior to bending the knee- it'd have only taken a fraction of those voters to work and, if it'd worked it, would have been so easy in coalition and policy terms but it didn't work. The lesson: don't listen to neocons, don't waste time on them.

Well let me turn it around- Obama was horrible? Why is it that moderate Republicans didn't vote for him. Oh, wait, some of them did vote for him which is why he beat Romneybot quite decisively.

And the base question remains ludicrous. And, yes, from a liberal standard Romney was the same semi-neocon, blatant republitarian motherfisher that ran the country into a ditch for eight years from 2000 to 2008. I mean, the a-historicness of the whole premise is somewhat insane- these guys drove you our of being a fishing libertarian- they were so bad, but after 4 years of Obama suddenly it would be incumbent on liberals to support Mitt fishin Romney of the House of vulture capitalists because if liberals didn't, ohhh the right will coalesce behind someone worse!

Jay, a point of order, what you're describing: "vote for our horrible guy or we'll nominate someone worse" is not compromise, that'd be what is more commonly known as extortion.

Okay, let's hear it. Name, let's say, five major things you vehemently disagree with the neocons about. Only one of them is allowed to be Trump related and at least two need to be about the Bush Era, 2000-2008.

Agreed entirely which was why I inquired in the first place.

I think the only way Iraq is the answer is if they didn't invade in the first place.

Depressing, another writer lost to twitspace.

2016 was a very different election than 2016- "the Resistance" was driven by a rising tide of the new identarianism that likely peaked in 2020 and has been slowly subsiding. 2024 blew a huge hole in a lot of that identarianisms core conceits and the 2024 election was a very different bird from the 2016 one so the component elements and assumptions are very different. There's a lot more intra-Dem and intra-Left arguing this time around for one thing. It's probably going to be healthy in the mid to long run but it's going to be uncoordinated in the short run.

I see Hanley post on Facebook and follow him on Substack. I'd say he remains very principled and crankily libertarian in the strict original sense which means he's not fond of either of the major parties and, in typical Hanley fashion, saves the lions share of his vitriol for whomever is in power at a given time. So he was utterly scathing on Biden and now is utterly scathing on Trump.

I'm not on Bluesky so I don't know anything about Jason but if he's writing anywhere that isn't twitlike I'd love a link since I've always enjoyed his writing.

I imagine the Trump fatigue is going to be epic in two years. Holy buckets.

Hanley remains a "pox on both their houses" libertarian as far as I've seen and trains his venom on whomever is in the White House at a given time.

Yes, friend of the blog Hanley made a substack directly about how that is exactly what is happening and what Trump and Musk will likely bog down in.
https://jameshanley.substack.com/p/flooding-the-zone-with-lawsuits

In a sane government or a government facing an actual fiscal crisis, benefit cuts to entitlements would be married to spending cuts on right wing shibboleths like defense along with tax increases weighted towards the wealthy and upper middle class which would result in no one being happy and thus everyone ending up accepting it.

Contra your understandable libertarian fantasies if Trump or his Muskrats gets even close to entitlements with these stunts they'll get politically exploded like a toad struck by lightning. Trump is keenly aware of this which is why, when they briefly interrupted Medicare access portals, they promptly backtracked furiously in a frenzy of denials and pledges of fealty to Medicare.

Ah yes, I see your point now, thank you. Yeah, I sort of doubt Musk has a set of replacement plans for various things he might try to axe nor do I think his intention is to try and divert (allegedly) corrupt or grafted funds that Dems aligned groups are (allegedly) enjoying and divert them to their ostensible purpose or to Republican aligned graft groups. Though who knows what exactly he thinks he’s accomplishing crawling around in the organizational bowels of the Federal government. I have my doubts even he knows what he’s trying to accomplish beyond triggering liberals and nosing around where he’s not supposed to be. I don’t doubt he’ll, given enough time, come up with something he’ll want to do with this access and power- if he isn’t evicted by the courts which seems to be an event that’s coming up fast. I’ll also note that I’d take allegations of graft and corruption, coming from this lot, with a Minnesota salt truck sized serving of salt until/unless they file charges and furnish evidence.

Your original post was descriptive, not prescriptive, so I confined my critiques to what I saw as flaws in your description.

I think you're looking at it incorrectly Jay on a basic level.

If Trumps -only- opposition were, say, the Democratic Party, or the Librul(tm) media then this "flood the zone" stuff could plausibly work and what you're describing could apply. This would be doubly true if only the Democratic Party, for instance, could materially oppose Trump. This would be triply true if controlling what "present public discourse" or "what we're talking about now" or even "Vibes" constituted victory. I can also see how you, or I, with us both being individuals who are not directly effected by Trumps myriad attacks and who are interacting with them only by the discourse or the vibe might say “holy cow, Trump is winning so much.” I, personally, equate this to various points in Putins early stage attacks on Ukraine when the Russians launched innumerable assaults from many different directions against many different targets. For a little while everyone was like “holy cow the Ukrainians are gong to get owned.”

This is not, however, the case in reality.

Each relevant impacted individual is both able and is incredibly motivated to respond individually to each of the myriad Trump attacks. Individuals who’re being illegally dismissed or sidelined have absolutely every motivation to file their complaints at court against these unlawful dismissals. Every group who’s having their funding unlawfully suspended or cut off has absolutely every motivation and every ability to push back. The court system across the entire country has a lot of dockets to hear these various cases.

The question, really, is if there’s some fundamental flaw in the legal analysis. That the executive has some obscure procedural right to do this astonishing, unprecedented wave of unilateral changes in government or to sanction these deranged and wild antics? The bet on the Trumpian/republitarian side seems to be that when these cases and appeals cascade up to the Supreme Court that some significant number of those justices will say ‘Ha-HAH! The time has come!” rip off their masks and reverse themselves on decades of conservative case law saying “suck it libs, it was all a ruse!”

It's theoretically plausible that such a thing could happen I suppose but I suspect that it won’t. I mean Thomas will do what he’s paid to do. He’s old, he generally doesn’t seem to give a fish. Alito, might maybe, ramble some circular nonsense and throw in with Trump, maybe. But the rest of the younger conservative justices? I don’t know it seems unlikely that they are entirely and on this subject and for this President willing to throw their entire ideology and reputation on a bonfire.

And all this stuff Trump is blizzarding out is predicated on him somehow, eventually, winning. If he doesn’t then he’ll get driven back in a blizzard of losses, punitive damages and reversals that’ll, in the end, cost the Federal Government more money and him more reputational loss than if he’d never tried it in the first place.

Of course, he could try to say “let the courts enforce their powerless rulings” and flat out do a constitutional crisis but that strikes me as un-Trumpian. When faced with concrete resistance he’s always historically folded. When committing his various venal crimes it’s always a sideways sidle, it always is oblique and full of posterior covering excuses and allusions. Flat out defy the courts and say “I’m King now?” It doesn’t feel like his MO.

So right now it seems to me we’re in the opening salvo of a blizzard of nonsense. “OMG there’re soldiers on motorbikes attacking our entrenched positions at 10,000 points across the line of engagement!” That’s right now. But it seems very possible, maybe even very likely that with a little time and fortitude, when the dust settles, it’ll become. “OMG we blew away all those idiots on motorbikes attacking our entrenched positions and now there’re 120,000 corpses on the flat land in front of us.”

And this is without even considering the possibility that Musk and his little platoon of coder idiots accidentally fiddles with the wrong line of ancient COBOL script and causes something integral, and hard to fix, and central to break and 71 million people suddenly wake up and aren’t receiving their social security checks for a couple of weeks. Or months. And that is the thing that all the republitarians exulting about “cutting the gummint the way them elected squishes would never vote to!” are trying to ignore. If Trump finds himself holding a fork that has the business end stuck into the outlet of social security or medicare? There’ll be an almighty ruckus and the smell of burning hairspray and then a shower of spray tan and that’ll be the end of Trump. And it’ll be red state voters who’ll be baying to hang him from a lamp post. Because owning the libs is one thing but if those gummint hands start grabbin at your disability or your social security check or suddenly meemaw or papaw needs to move in with you because they can’t make rent, well, owning the libs is gonna suddenly be a heck of a lot less important to you.

Surprise surprise.

Yeah Dune with all the mystical stuff eliminated just... well it was like a hollowed out eggshell.

Fair enough.

I'll note that the private market has failed to eliminate HIV so I fail to see why we could expect this program to do so.

Sure and if we were arguing about a proposal in Congress or in spending bill negotiations where this was a provision I'd say you're on solid ground but we're talking about an extralegal act of, I don't know, baseless vandalism?

I hear you saying you expect it will be overruled but don't you think it should be overruled?