The Witness Chronicles, 2/10/2025

Dazed and confused

Photo by Anna Sullivan on Unsplash

Trump Appointed Judge Blocks Musk, Republicans Call Him Corrupt

C’mon guys, he is one of yours

In the department of hypocrisy department Republicans are claiming a federal judge appointed by Trump is corrupt because he upheld the law and blocked Musk and his stooges from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system.

This is the newest ‘strategy’ of theirs, to claim a conspiracy every time anyone does the right thing, even their own people. It’s just another twist in the daze and confuse campaign going on in DC.

On Sunday a Democrat senator told one of the network news interviewers that he might be willing to shut the government down if Trump doesn’t back off on the stuff he is throwing at us. Presumably he means the Democrats refusing to pass any budget the Republicans attempt to pass.

Interesting idea, but it assumes the Democrats wake up and realize they have to fight fire with fire, not a reasonable assumption. So far we have seen no progress on the right to even come close to meeting a budget deadline, as usual. They may be 100% behind Trump but that is the only form of unity they have.

I’m sure Trump is quite happy about that because it’s not in his interest to have Republicans in Congress actually governing.

In a somewhat unrelated thing, I canceled my Washington Post subscription today, finally. When Jen Rubin left to start The Contrarian here on Substack, that was the last reason I had to stick with WaPo, given the meddling behind the scenes that Jeff Bezos was doing.

Frankly, the writing and editing had gone noticeably downhill, which is a shame because it had been the most reliable source for news from the Capitol. This leaves The Guardian for formerly old school print journalism and the PBSNews Hour as my mainstream sources, with a little of the network coverage thrown in, if you can stand the barrage of pharmaceutical ads featuring dance numbers and voiceovers listing all the horrible side effects of whatever drug they are pitching.

I’m feeling exceptionally cynical today in spite of the sun coming out, a rare occurrence around here this winter. If I have to count my blessings today, that is one of them, along with the existence of fresh ground espresso. Counting blessings is a bit of a challenge these days if you are a news junkie. It’s pretty universally bad right now and seems to get worse every day.

At this point the biggest thing I am looking forward to is Daylight Savings Time next month and the brighter evenings it brings. But Trump will probably find some way to screw that up too.

In the big picture of life, we Americans still have it easy compared to a lot of the world, but Trump and Musk’s war on USAID still means we are making things even worse out there, as our heartless thugs rip stuff up just because they can. Heartless is the operative term when it comes to these guys and I, for one, am sick of their endless negativity.

Hopefully I am not the only one and the general public starts to get sick of this crap.

Btw, a few days ago I wrote that Congress was getting 1600 calls a day compared a normal of 40. I got that one wrong. It was 1600 calls a minute, which might have been the best news tidbit this week. That’s 768,000 calls per eight hour day, so we know we are not alone in our outrage. The question is whether anyone on the Hill cares. There is not much indication the Republicans do because they are on a mission from God and no one gets to question that, or anything else.

I am a big admirer of Heather Cox Richardson, the historian turned political news activist with her massively popular daily Substack, Letters From An American. She has gone deeper on what is really going on than anyone else covering this administration. It can be hard to read sometimes but practically everything related to the topic is hard to read. But if you are looking for in-depth, well researched information, with an historical perspective, that should be your go to.

You can come here for the cynical disgust.

I wasn’t going to watch the Super Bowl. I’m a Bills fan and my season ended with theirs. And I’m not feeling like the massive worship of consumption the game is really about, plus Trump will be there and I avoid seeing his ugly mug whenever I can. It’s all about gambling these days anyway, something that is bound to cause societal problems eventually.

But I ended up watching it and seeing the Chiefs get stomped, so the evening was not a total waste. And there was no mention or sighting of Trump, which was a nice break.

We really don’t need more societal problems between Trump’s made up ones (DEI, woke, trans, etc.) and the new ones he is creating every day.

I told you I was feeling cynical. But I need to get back to my semi-optimistic self, maybe by the time Daylight Savings kicks in. Working on that.

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Thank you,

Martin Edic