Best Of

Reasons why Trump is genuinely evil, part 347 of lots

NEW — After putting all Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS) employees on administrative leave Monday, I'm told DOGE is canceling congressionally-appropriated grants to state libraries across the entire country. Libraries are getting notice that funding was canceled as of 4/1.

More here: https://www.everylibrary.org/trump_termination_imls_grants

SOURCE: https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3llwdagmsh225

HE's GOING AFTER THE LIBRARIANS. HOW CAN YOU TOLERATE THIS?

Sash! This used to be a library.

I'm not joking. I think Musk is evil to do this. How dare he, and how dare Trump empower him to do this. Bastards, both of them. And that's only because the mods wont let me use the proper word for them.

I'm not sure if it's still there, but there used to be a sign in the Bodleian Library saying "Ask Google and get a million answers; ask a Librarian and get one, correct, answer". I fear that shutting down access to sources of objective truth is one of the standard hallmarks of a tyrant, and in my opinion that is what we are seeing right now. Of course, Joe Redneck will say, "Yeah, we don't need libraries, everything is on line now!" and that is exactly the problem - who controls what we see on line?

As I suspected.

Trump’s team did actually spend weeks calculating the true reciprocal tariff rates for each country, and then he just decided not to do that anymore and based it on trade deficits.

Absolutely absurd.
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1908318822349647872

DOGE, key appointments, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, bombing the Houthis, tariffs ... there's a theme. No strategy or prep or planning or due diligence, all on the whim of a single individual. It's no way to carry on at the best of times and it's downright scary when the individual in question is not only lazy and borderline stupid but doesn't even mean well.

The only saving grace (and it's not much) is that lazy, stupid and malign is preferable to clever, hardworking and malign.

The best feature of autocracies is that they are usually incompetent. Indeed, competent people are seen as a threat to the Leader.

China being a very very notable exception

I'm far from sure that's the case. The Chinese authorities like to *appear* competent, but the signs bubbling up from under the surface are from that. They just try to hide their incompetence better - usually by blaming other minions in the system.

The way they lied, hid and dissembled the seriousness of the Covid outbreak in early 2020, when openness was key, shows that well.

As an example, there is an ongoing military purgre:
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/chinese-army-top-officials-arrested-xi-jinping-military-purge-2695008-2025-03-18

They don't *appear* competent, they ARE competent

They have lifted 1 BILLION people out of poverty in 40 years, without any major social ructions. They have neutralised any threat from Islam. They have established the world's finest largest high speed rail network. Their coastal cities now rank alongside western Europe and the USA in prosperity, even if there is a vast neglected hinterland. Their universities are shooting up the rankings, their companies are some of the most successful in the world, and the biggest. They have stealthily taken Hong Kong without a shot being fired and there is a reasonable chance they will do the same with Taiwan

They have surged to pre-eminence in world trade. They have cleverly undermined the West, in all ways, throughout this, avoiding our wars while stoking discord and rancour within our societies. Do we ever see Muslim countries/groups condemn China, even though China has a FAR worse record on Muslim rights? No, we do not. They condemn the West, because we are perceived as weak, guilty and divided

They have conjured the world's biggest navy, from nothing. They are dominant in Africa and most of Asia. They are turning Russia into a vassal state. And now they are on the cusp of overtaking the West in the foremost technologies of the time. DeepSeek did not come from nowhere. Do a DeepSeek search on "Unitree"

Is their regime perfect? Of course not. Covid was a clusterfuck. And came from their lab. Their demographics are dismal - but this is a worldwide problem that no one has solved. There are many dissenting voices that would love to overthrow Xi and his appalling cronies. The Chinese elite is cruel, brutal and greedy

But, basically competent? Yes, absolutely. What else would you have them do?! They have shown that autocracy can REALLY work, which is why democracy is in brisk retreat as so many developing countries now ape the Chinese model rather than the West

*Might* have come from their lab. We don't know and possibly never will - which would be a shame given the stature of the pandemic as a world event. Still, there are precedents for the cause of huge happenings in history remaining uncertain. And maybe it's no bad thing, come to think of it. Life shouldn't be stripped of all its mystery.

At this point, anyone who still maintains there's a good chance it came from the market and not the lab is a flailing idiot who can't handle information

"'The French Academy of Medicine voted almost unanimously--97% to 3%--to say we believe SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab error and precautions must be taken in the future,' revealed Professor Jean-François Delfraissy in a press conference April 2, 2025."

So, yeah, you. Idiot

https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1907452384135070199

And they merit respect, the French Academy of Medicine. Plenty of serious opinion (in addition to yours) does favour lab leak. Plenty also favours market. And there's a third strand (and here I include myself) which takes the view that there's no clinching evidence either way. I hope it does get resolved one day. I guess we can agree on that at least.

At this point anyone who thinks this is "kinda 50/50" or "we can't really know, so why bother" is so dumb it's not worth engaging. So I am happy to yield. Believe what you like, if it consoles you

You have the "belief" on this one and belief by its nature cannot be reasoned with. So, yes, it is futile to engage on it, but it's ok because I don't think what we've done here so far counts as that. If we stop now (which I sense we have?) we can agree we haven't engaged today on lab leak vs wet market and how there isn't (as yet) any clinching evidence either way.

As one piece of evidence can't be found another in Gaza most definitely can. Definitve evidence has turned up to show the Israelis killed 18 Red Crescent workers when their lights were on and they were clearly marked as medics.. The Palestinians dug up the bodies a week after the Israelis had dumped them in a common grave and a mobile phone was found with irrefutable evidence.

How long is the world going to allow this rogue nation to continue to behave illegally and like savages?

He’s swum against the tide of centrist opinion before and been right… 😳

Thats true. Didn't Brand describe Farage as "a Poundshop Enoch Powell" on BBC Question time?

Still, a stopped watch etc.

Most of the centre-left probably still think Russell “the alleged comedian” Brand is a nicer bloke than Farage.

I wonder what James O’Brien thinks of him now

I'm not sure if this is about political position.

For me, it was crystal clear that Russell Brand was unmitigated, narcissistic shit when he and Jonathan Ross made their deliberately personally abusive phone calls to Andrew Sachs in 2008. They chose to reach into an individual's private sphere and inflict abuse for shits and giggles; that's not acceptable then or now.

It was an action of self-regarding individuals who thought that they had a position meant they could exploit their position, and did not consider the impact of their behaviour, or that the people they were abusing deserved respect.

I don't see much difference their between that and the psychology of carrying out
sexual offences. IMO the difference is one of degree.

If guilty, and we can't comment on that much due to sub judice, Brand was on the same track in his privately abusive behaviour as in his public behaviour. Jonathon Ross, seemingly, was not.

As I suspected.

Trump’s team did actually spend weeks calculating the true reciprocal tariff rates for each country, and then he just decided not to do that anymore and based it on trade deficits.

Absolutely absurd.
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1908318822349647872

DOGE, key appointments, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, bombing the Houthis, tariffs ... there's a theme. No strategy or prep or planning or due diligence, all on the whim of a single individual. It's no way to carry on at the best of times and it's downright scary when the individual in question is not only lazy and borderline stupid but doesn't even mean well.

The only saving grace (and it's not much) is that lazy, stupid and malign is preferable to clever, hardworking and malign.

The best feature of autocracies is that they are usually incompetent. Indeed, competent people are seen as a threat to the Leader.

China being a very very notable exception

They made some of the most ruinous policy errors in world history under Mao. Then had a pretty sensible couple of decades. Xi has changed the dynamic again. I’m not sure that will end well.

CEO Xi is flexible and well advised.
Note his change of stance on the technocrats eg Jack Ma.
He has a strong board of Directors, appointed on merit , who have to retire at the age of 68 to ensure quality succession (except for him of course).

It's similar to a well run multinational. It can make long term plans eg the Belt and Road Initiative, as it doesn't face electors every few years who want short term goodies.

The big drawbacks are rampant corruption, suppression of personal freedom, indifference to the welfare of the masses from those at the top, and probably most important of all - inability for those at the bottom to criticise those at the top.

The ability to criticise freely is such an important function, in the modern State.

You're looking at it through Western eyes that values personal freedom over stability and a growing standard of living.
Many in the East value the latter.

Western values are changing too, and the appeal of a Nietzschean Übermensch is growing.
As a liberal, I watch with apprehension.

Well plenty of Eastern peoples (eg Taiwanese, South Koreans, Japanese, Indonesians) have turned out to favour democracy over autocracy, too. There's nothing inherent in Easterners that makes them favour autocracy, or in Westerners that makes them favour democracy.

In general, democracies deliver the goods more effectively than autocracies do. But, the flaws of democracies tend to be glaring and obvious, whereas the flaws of autocracies are hidden. Outsiders look at the shiny new cities, autobahns, thousands of people goose-stepping in synch, and think how impressive this all is, while overlooking the wretched lives of the peasantry, the concentration camps, the secret police.

Yeah, except I have travelled widely in China and they don't have wretched lives. Sorry

Also, the Chinese "peasantry" has largely disappeared. The idea there are hundreds of millions labouring away in dismal misery in the paddy fields is simply ludicrous

It is an ubanised society. There is much discontent, as there is anywhere. Humans are naturally discontented

Is China successfully delivering greater prosperity? Yes. And in cities that are crime-free and clean compared to many western cities

The argument is not whether Chinese living standards have increased impressively, since 1976, (obviously they have), the argument is whether this proves that autocracies do a better job at raising living standards than democracies do - where I would say the evidence shows that they do not.

Autocracies are not even better at waging war (which is the metric they usually want to be judged upon), than democracies are.

Intuitively a well run autocracy (Singapore, UAE) will be better at managing the economy than a well run democracy as it has the advantage of consistent long term planning and investment, but a typical democracy is better than a typical autocracy. More importantly a badly run democracy can quickly turn course whereas a badly run autocracy is far more likely to fall into a viscious circle and further decline that is hard to move on from.

David Davis's point about the crucial bit of democracy being the ability to change its mind.

On infrastructure we manage to change our mind a bit too often.....

"Amanda Spielman is a bad leader, an inept person, and has done enormous damage to the education of children not I think because she meant to but because she was profoundly ignorant, not especially intelligent and incredibly arrogant. You can see why she was a friend of Dominic Cummings."

This is the stuff of HIGNFY.

Are we to take the rest of it seriously?

A little bit of comedic high jinx doesn't detract from the fact that Spielman was wholly unsuitable to her role and Johnsonian era corruption has seen a vile, self-serving nincompoop on the cusp of being elevated to the House of Lords.

These personal vendettas are becoming a thing. If they're not funny they sound mean spirited. We've become adept in this country at creating monsters and it's not one of our attractive qualities.

Did the UK invent the stocks?

That is not the problem in the U.K. The problem is that we have, for far too long, had low expectations of those in charge. We have tolerated - and far too often rewarded - the incompetent, the malign, the self-serving, the dishonest, the unprofessional. We have allowed people in charge of public services to put their personal interests first or to treat the public sector as something to be plundered for profit without in return providing the quality of service we ought to expect. We have refused to hold leaders meaningfully accountable for their actions and failures to act. We have covered up gross incompetence and malfeasance and done everything possible to avoid providing effective compensation for those harmed by this.

And the result is that we have second and third rate public services, leaders who think only about what they can take rather than what they can give to those whom they are meant to serve and when any of this is pointed out to those who fail us we have to endure a load of self-pitying whining and laughable excuses. If anything works in this country it is down to those who do try to behave professionally and with some degree of responsibility and honesty and who, frankly, do not get properly recognised or rewarded.

Pointing this out is not putting people in the stocks or being mean-spirited. It is necessary and long overdue if we are even to begin changing this for the better.

We should expect and demand better.

I blame, to some extent anyway, Margaret Thatcher. I well remember her suggesting that graduates achieving highest grades should not enter public service but commerce, suggesting that the pursuit of profit was more important than public service.
As Ms Cyclefree points out, it isn't.

When I worked in the NHS there was a period in the mid 90's when some Trusts discouraged their staff from attending conferences, on the grounds that Trusts were competing, and discussing improvements at conferences would benefit competitors.

And Good Morning, one and all.

When Ted Cruz is the voice of reason...

Republican senator Ted Cruz warned of a potential “bloodbath” for his party in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s tariffs send the US economy into recession.

The senator from Texas also predicted a “terrible” fate for the world’s largest economy should a full-blown trade war erupt and Trump’s tariffs, as well as any retaliatory measures on US goods, stay in place long-term.

Republican lawmakers have begun to worry about the effects of Trump’s tariffs on the economy and their party’s prospects for keeping control of both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Their concerns grew as Americans watched about $5.4tn of stock market capitalisation evaporate over a two-day Wall Street rout.

On Thursday, Republican Chuck Grassley introduced a bill in the Senate, alongside a Democrat, to reassert Congressional control of tariff policy. Under the proposed law, new levies would expire in 60 days unless approved by Congress, and there would be a mechanism for lawmakers to cancel tariffs at any point.

https://www.ft.com/content/00ee505e-57bb-4272-8b51-09ebb67dc5ee