Like rain on your wedding day

The guy who fought for the secrecy of his tax returns all the way to the Supreme Court is now giving unfettered access to the tax returns of everyone else in America to a mostly unknown 25 year old with no IRS experience.

At least this 25 year old is not completely unknown. He has been known to support white supremacy on social media. So we know that.

Tesla hate

I would never buy a Tesla now. In fact, Mrs. Noz and I recently bought a plug in EV and ruled out Tesla from the start. But my answer might have been different 3-4 years ago. Plus, cars are expensive. Many people buy a car and expect to be able to use it for a decade or more. It's not all that long ago that Tesla was an attractive brand for progressive people. So there are many left-leaning people who got a Tesla years ago without realizing that they were putting money in the pocket of a Nazi. Two of my friends are like that.

Which is why some of the hate directed at anyone driving a Tesla can be misplaced. If someone bought one in 2019, it's not clear what they should do now. Most of us can't afford to just trash their car and get another one, and Tesla resale values are tanking. When I see someone driving a Tesla sedan I wonder if I should feel sorry for them. They might see what is happening and feel stuck.

Of course this doesn't apply to Cybertruck drivers. That monstrosity just came out a year and a half ago, more than a year after Elon bought Twitter, when it was already obvious what a monster he is. Buying a Cybertruck is a conscious choice to join team-fascists. Also team ugly. Those things look hideous.

الفهود تأكل وجهي!

 The thing I didn't get about groups like Arab Americans for Trump during last year's presidential campaign is: were they aware that Trump had been President before? I mean, you didn't have to guess what Trump's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict would be. He had four years of open hostility to anything the Palestinians wanted. He moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and shuttered most services that used to be provided to Palestinians. He recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. He proposed a peace plan for the I-P conflict that required massive painful conditions on the part of Palestinians while giving Israel the right to annex large swaths of the West Bank. He declared that Israel's West Bank settlements would no longer be considered illegal by the U.S. All of these were huge breaks from prior U.S. policies, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, that were widely viewed as against Palestinian interests.

Trump's record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was really quite clear. While his recent proposal of U.S.-assisted genocide in Gaza is definitely a step further than anything he has ever proposed before, it is also consistent with both his erratic off-the-cuff style, his disregard for human rights, and his clear devaluation of Palestinian interests that was abundantly clear by the end of Trump's first term. I understand the Palestinian-American community's anger against the Biden Administration since October 2023. But any Palestinian who thought that Trump would be better than Harris on that issue was closing their eyes to reality.

White Meat: Appetizer

In honor of Black History month and as a fuck you to those Trumps who are trying to erase it, go support my friend's film, "White Meat: Appetizer" on Kickstarter. Make America Taste Great Again!

 

EOs are as much bluster as law

Because Trump seems to be treating Executive Orders like they are legal decrees of a monarch, it is worth reviewing what Executive Orders are.

In the U.S. what counts as "law" is really broad. It encompasses a lot of things, statutes passed by Congress, judicial decisions, regulations from administrative agencies, etc. Executive Orders are treated as a kind of law. They can be legally binding. But they are not like statutes or regulations in that they aren't really binding on anyone who does not work in the executive branch of the federal government. At least not directly. An Executive Order is just an instruction to the executive branch from the President, the head of that branch, how to carry out some executive branch function. So, for example, the President can instruct the executive branch of the federal government to start referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" in its communications and publications. So when the U.S. Geological Survey comes out with its next map it will say "Gulf of America" and documents about the Louisiana Coast will start using that term. But that doesn't mean that anyone anyone else has to use that stupid name. It certainly doesn't require Google to change its maps. If Google does make that change, that is on Google.

Also Executive Orders, while treated as legally binding, they are the least binding of any form of law in the federal government. The priority for laws in the federal system is like this: Constitutional Provisions > Statutes > Regulations > Executive Orders. So if an Executive Order says something that conflicts with any other kind of federal law, that other Federal Law would prevail. For example, an Executive Order may say that the federal government should interpret the words "sex" or "gender" to mean the sex assigned at birth, and that would be binding on the federal government... except if there is a regulation from a prior administration that has not been rescinded yet that defines those words differently. (Except, of course, in the Judicial Circuits with Judges who blocked those rules)

Even though Executive Orders only directly apply to people in the executive branch, they can definitely have real-world consequences for people who do not work for the government. How members of the government interpret and apply the law can have widespread consequences for sure. But keep in mind that Trump's Executive Order pen is not as all powerful as he pretends it is.

Trump is ending cancer research...

 ...and most medical research in the U.S. Or at least putting a "temporary pause" on the funding mechanism for most medical research in this country. No one knows how temporary

One big problem with the Trump Administration is that both Trump and many of his appointees have no fucking clue what much of the federal government does.

Ceasefire

I was convinced that Bibi would be a dick and insist on delaying the deal until after Trump gets into office, as a final snub of Biden and a way to curry favor with the new administration. But it looks like it is a done-enough deal to announce and will go into effect on Sunday (the last day of the Biden Administration).

For the past year what each party would agree to was clear, but they just seemed to be irreconcilable. Since January 2024, Hamas has offered to release all the hostages in return to a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdraw from Gaza. Israel has insisted it only be a temporary ceasefire without any withdrawal. It looks like what they got is a partial release of the hostages, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a six-week ceasefire.

In my opinion this is absolutely good news. I even see a possibility that this could turn into a permanent ceasefire because Trump is so determined to get credit for not having a war in Israel on his watch, he is going to put a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to not restart hostilities when the six week period expires in early March. (That would also require Hamas to release the remaining hostages that aren't covered by this deal--I don't know if they would do that without a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.)

I also wonder what this means for Netanyahu's future. Not long ago the Israeli public seemed done with him because of his failure to prevent the 10/7 attack and his criminal case was looking increasingly threatening. But now that he is an indicted war criminal and enough time has passed to dull some of the calls for new leadership, will Israelis rally enough support to him to survive?