SALON on Trump's Hard Lesson for MAGA True Believers

From Rich Logis' 1-26-25 SALON article entitled "MAGA's True Believers Don't Understand Capitalism — Trump Will Teach Them a Hard Lesson":

There’s the mythology of capitalist meritocracy at work, which is still championed by many people who’ve been failed by both major political parties. Their concerns have been exploited and manipulated by Republicans who have traumatized them into believing that liberalism, rather than capitalism, is the source of their ills; that because of the evil policies of liberals, they keep working harder and harder but never seem to break even, much less get ahead.

Lest there be any confusion: I support capitalism. Entrepreneurship and innovation best advance in free markets.

But still: The rage I felt, even more acutely experienced today among the MAGA faithful, was perhaps warranted but rooted in ignorance. Trump was not wrong when he lamented the once-thriving communities ravaged and hollowed out by outsourcing. But his solution was no solution at all.

Now he has persuaded millions into believing that only he can successfully stymie the global and domestic capitalist forces that he did essentially nothing about during his first administration.

Why didn’t he do anything? Because Trump understands, in his own pedestrian way, that capitalism operates less on merit the higher one moves up in the hierarchy.

Trump is the most devoted “deep state” capitalist in American history, given the millions his businesses have earned in foreign payments. So much for thwarting the globalists. Want an argument for why the über-wealthy should pay more in taxes? If these money-hoarders could have gotten so rich in another country, they most certainly would have. Do we really believe this doesn’t apply to Trump?

Broadly speaking, the two core ideological dogmas within MAGA are: 1) liberalism is almost solely culpable for our national ills (second come the RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, although it’s not close); and 2) Trump is the greatest fixer God ever created.

Most people who voted for Trump — especially the MAGA faithful — want and expect him, and by extension the federal government, to intervene in commerce. According to the classical definition, that would be socialism — or Marxism or communism, whichever epithet we are using today. The confusion is general, because it’s all mythological [...].

[T]he notion that a singular person can serve as an economic savior and, in messianic fashion, usher in utopia, is much closer to a socialist-communist notion than a capitalist one. That surely does not mean the government should play no role in our economy; as mentioned above, the Biden administration oversaw remarkable growth. Trump and the Republicans, however, didn't actually campaign on any policy ideas aimed to increase economic mobility and opportunity. They benefited instead from the profoundly human delusion known as nostalgia.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Trump's Personal Deep State Gives Hegseth a Free Ride

From Jackie Calmes' 1-16-25 LOS ANGELES TIMES article entitled "The Case of the Missing Hegseth Investigation":

For folks who have so harshly turned on the FBI for supposedly targeting Donald Trump over the years, Republicans sure are quick to turn to the bureau when they need a cover-up, er, background check to salvage a troubled Trump pick for high office.

In October 2018, the beneficiary was Brett M. Kavanaugh. Then-President Trump and a Senate Republican majority directed the FBI to investigate sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee to placate Republican senators whose threatened opposition could sink his nomination.

But as I learned in researching a book at the time, the Trump White House told the FBI whom its agents could contact, ignoring willing witnesses with damning information, and gave them just days to finish. The bureau’s slapdash Kavanaugh report, merely summarizing agents’ interviews without drawing conclusions, was enough political cover for Trump and Senate Republicans to falsely claim he’d been exonerated. Democrats correctly insisted otherwise. Yet it was their word against the Republicans’ since the senators-only report remains secret to this day.

And Kavanaugh, comfortably settled into his lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court, voted last Thursday — fortunately on the losing side — in favor of blocking Trump’s sentencing for covering up hush-money payments to a porn star.

Trump isn’t even back in the White House and he’s already replayed the FBI card — call it the Trump card — and again apparently successfully, this time for his manifestly unfit choice for Defense secretary, former Fox News host and former National Guard officer Pete Hegseth. With another incomplete, half-baked and secret FBI background check related to alleged sexual assault and excessive drinking, Hegseth got through his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday without a dissenting voice from the Armed Services Committee’s Republican majority.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Update on Death of OpenAI Whistleblower

From Nic White's 1-25-25 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Bombshell Crime Scene Photos That Cast Doubt On Whether Whistleblower Committed Suicide":

Just 40 minutes after police broke down Suchir Balaji's door and found him lying on the floor of his apartment, they declared his death a suicide.

The tech prodigy, 26, who just a month earlier blew the whistle on OpenAI's dubious methods of training ChatGPT, shot himself in the head. Case closed.

But when his parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy stepped inside his home after his body was carted off to the morgue, the scene didn't make any sense.

Photos obtained by DailyMail.com show blood was pooled next to the bathroom door where his head lay, but also splattered around the bathroom far from the body.

Lying on the bloodstains were one of Balaji's wireless earbuds and two mysterious tufts of what appeared to be synthetic hair, like from a wig.

His home, in a high-end building on Buchanan Street in San Francisco's Mint Hill neighborhood, was also ransacked, 'like someone was searching for something'.

'After seeing there is so much blood everywhere, I don't know how they think it's a suicide, it doesn't look close,' his father, Ramamurthy, told DailyMail.com.

Balaji's parents refuse to believe their son took his own life, insisting it was a 'cold-blooded murder' despite police declaring there was no foul play.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

TRUMP: "The [J-6] Demonstrators Who Infiltrated the Capitol Have Defiled the Seat of American Democracy"

From Jackie Calmes' 1-22-25 L.A. TIMES article entitled "President Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons Broke His Promise to the Nation":

Promises made, promises kept, President Trump liked to crow during his first term, sometimes deservedly.

He’s only days into his second term and already he’s making that claim after a torrent of executive orders. In no case is his boast more justified, if shameful, than for his Day 1 blanket order pardoning 1,583 rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, commuting the sentences of those most responsible — and violent — and dismissing all remaining cases.

Trump vowed at rallies throughout his 2024 campaign that once back in office he’d immediately free “the J-6 hostages.” Yet in keeping that promise, he broke a long-forgotten one on the same subject. He made it not at a political rally but in a videotaped recording at the White House, a day after the seven-hour insurrection was put down and as he faced bipartisan condemnation for his complicity.

The president who’d inspired the mob to try to keep him in power began that evening by calling Jan. 6 not a “day of love” among patriots, as he says these days, but a “heinous attack on the United States Capitol.” And then, still sounding like a normal president, Trump said this:

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

At the time, the only lies in that passage seemed to be Trump’s contention that he “immediately deployed” forces to quell the tumult that directly or indirectly caused the deaths of nine people, including five police officers. Now we know the whole thing was a lie: Trump wasn’t outraged. He didn’t really condemn the “demonstrators” — they were pro-Trump, after all, as shown by the banners on poles that were weaponized against police. He didn’t care that they were lawless or violent despite the carnage he witnessed watching hours of televised coverage alone in the White House, ignoring aides’ and family members’ pleas to intervene.

Most of all, Trump didn’t really believe his rioters should “pay.”

And now, just as Trump has paid no price for his role as the instigator of Jan. 6, he’s wiped the books clean for all the attackers, negating verdicts by scores of juries of their peers.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

THE DAILY GRAIL: The Haunt Project

From Greg Taylor's 10-30-08 DAILY GRAIL article entitled "The Haunt Project":

[Chris] French’s study was set up in order to test these suspicions scientifically. The results will soon be published in the journal Cortex, under the title “The ‘Haunt’ Project: An attempt to build a ‘haunted’ room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound“. From the abstract:

Recent research has suggested that a number of environmental factors may be associated with a tendency for susceptible individuals to report mildly anomalous sensations typically associated with ‘‘haunted’’ locations, including a sense of presence, feeling dizzy, inexplicable smells, and so on. Factors that may be associated with such sensations include fluctuations in the electromagnetic field (EMF) and the presence of infrasound. A review of such work is presented, followed by the results of the “Haunt” project in which an attempt was made to construct an artificial “haunted” room by systematically varying such environmental factors.

79 volunteer participants were recruited through websites and email lists, and each spent 50 minutes alone in the ‘haunted room’ wandering around. During this time they were asked to record any unusual sensations, as well as when and where they felt them. Conditions varied on a random basis – some were given nothing at all, some EMF, others infrasound, and the real guinea pigs got both. All participants were informed in advance of the possible EMF and infrasound exposure, and also told (as part of the ethical requirements) that as a result they might experience “mildly unusual sensations”.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Trump Pardons Proud Boys

From Nathan Layne, Ned Parker, Peter Eisler and Joseph Tanfani's 1-21-25 REUTERS article entitled "Trump's Pardons Will Embolden Proud Boys, Other Far-right Groups, Say Experts":

A day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, America’s far-right celebrated. Some called for the death of judges who oversaw the trials. Others partied and expressed relief. Some even wept with joy.

Several experts who study extremism said the extraordinary reversal for rioters who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy, will embolden the Proud Boys and other extremist groups such as white supremacists who have openly called for political violence.

In a few pen strokes, Trump reversed the largest U.S. Justice Department investigation and prosecution in history, as he attempted to rewrite what happened during the violent riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As he took office for a second term on Monday, Trump continued to claim, falsely, that the 2020 election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner. He has described the riots as a peaceful “day of love” rather than a melee aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election [...].

Another Proud Boy told Reuters the pardons would help recruit more members. "A lot of people stayed away from us after there were arrests,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now they are going to feel like they are bulletproof" [...].

Some political extremism experts said the pardons would incentivize pro-Trump vigilantes to commit violence under the belief they’ll receive legal immunity if they act in the interests of Trump. “They are going to feel they can do whatever they want,” Julie Farnam, who was the assistant director of intelligence for the U.S. Capitol Police during the Jan. 6 riots, said of far-right groups. “They’ll feel like they can because there is no leadership in the United States that tries to stop it,” said Farnam, who now runs a private investigative agency [...].

One of the most famous rioters, Jake Angeli-Chansley, who became known as the “QAnon Shaman” for wearing a horned hat in the Capitol, took to the social media platform X to celebrate after the pardons. Sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021, he was released from federal custody in 2023.

“NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHAFU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Musk Boots Ramaswamy

From Adam Wren and Holly Otterbein's 1-20-25 POLITICO article entitled "'Everyone Wants Him Out': How Musk Helped Boot Ramaswamy From DOGE":

Elon Musk has already achieved his first cut at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency: his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk’s preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them. An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise.

Just 69 days after Trump announced the team, Ramaswamy is now leaving DOGE and planning to announce a run for Ohio governor next week. Musk’s ability to ice out Ramaswamy, who for a variety of reasons had irked some Republicans in Trump’s circle, is the latest sign of his influence in the incoming administration. And it presages an encore of all of the infighting that marked Trump’s first term...

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Biden Commutes Sentence for Leonard Peltier

From Colleen Long, Zeke Miller, John Hanna, and Steve Karnowski's 1-20-25 AP News article entitled "Biden Commutes Sentence for Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier, Convicted in Killing of FBI Agents":

Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier will return home nearly half a century after he was imprisoned for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents. President Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence Monday following decades of community-led advocacy calling his imprisonment an example of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans.

The White House said Peltier, who is now 80 and of declining health, will transition to home confinement. The commutation is not a pardon for crimes committed, a decision some of Peltier’s advocates welcomed since he has always maintained his innocence. But the last-minute move as Biden left office angered law enforcement officers who believe he is guilty.

The National Congress of American Indians celebrated the “historic” decision in a statement saying the case “has long symbolized the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Quote of the Day

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

"The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about 'new politics' and 'honesty in government,' is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

"McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

"Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

--Hunter S. Thompson, FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72, 1973 

DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE

Recommended Viewing: If you want to watch Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm's 2016 documentary entitled DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE on the Criterion Channel (for free), simply click HERE!

David Lynch, Quinoa, and the Frog Moths!

David Lynch on Cooking Quinoa:

David Lynch's Frog Moth Story (Adapted to Stop-motion):

David Lynch, R.I.P. (1946-2025)

In honor of the late great David Lynch, here are some photographs of a Twin Peaks-themed gingerbread house (or, more accurately, a gingerbread Red Room) my daughter constructed on Christmas Eve, 2023...

 

 

POPULAR MECHANICS on China's New Invisibility Cloak

From Brandon J. Weichert's 12-6-24 POPULAR MECHANICS article entitled "China Invented a New Invisibility Cloak. What Does That Mean for the Future of Warfare?":

[T]he Chinese military has worked to take invisibility cloaks out of the lab and into the clouds. As of 2018, the Guangqi Advanced Institute of Technology was allegedly producing more than 100,000 square feet of electromagnetic materials every year. These were created for China’s fifth-generation warplane, the Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon,” according to defense analysts Jeffrey Lin and P.W. Singer.

The Zhejiang University research team designed their invisibility cloak for a fast-moving drone, so they had to ensure that it could conceal a large, moving object in any weather and any environment, be it air, water, or land.

The scientists had to overcome the significant obstacles faced by past invisibility cloak experiments. For one, the metamaterials used in previous designs struggled to bend electromagnetic waves consistently into a single spot to maintain invisibility. So, the researchers developed a new three-dimensional metamaterial to manipulate incoming waves and ensure that the cloak remains invisible in any context.

With the help of artificial intelligence, the cloak adjusts to changing conditions like a chameleon: on-board sensors gauge factors like the frequency and angular velocity of incoming radar waves, then AI processes this information and directs the drone to manipulate tiny structures on the metamaterial’s surface to guide the waves. Unlike other cloak concepts, the researchers say the intelligent system could theoretically work in real time without human intervention.

In indoor tests simulating land, sea, and air environments, the cloaked drone’s electric field strength was, on average, about 90 percent similar to that of its background. This indicated that it tended to blend in significantly better than a drone without an invisibility cloak, which was only up to 45 percent similar in electric field strength relative to the background environment.

Zhejiang University’s new cloak technology has not been applied to Chinese warplanes because it’s intended for use (at least initially) on China’s massive, growing fleet of drones. Cloaking a drone, or a swarm of drones, with real invisibility would be a decisive advantage for China in any possible conflict with the United States or its allies in the Indo-Pacific region.

That goal may still be far off—invisibility cloaks still run into several challenges. For instance, invisibility cloaks struggle to precisely guide incoming radar waves from a wide range of frequencies.

But researchers around the world are continuing to perfect these devices, with the goal of reliable invisibility cloaks that can shroud vehicles, equipment, and even people in combat settings. Even a decade ago, the Chinese government was funding more than 40 different research projects on invisibility cloaks.

These shrouded drones could completely rewrite the rules of modern warfare.

To read the entire article, click HERE.