DL Open Thread: Tuesday, March 10, 2025

Trump Plays Wall Street Nitwits For Fools.  Because, who else believes anything he says?:

Yesterday UN Ambassador Mike Waltz announced that the US was moving ahead rapidly to achieve all its war objectives which he listed as 1) destroying Iran’s missiles, 2) eliminating its nuclear program and 3) ending its ability to do terrorism. So much for regime change, it seems and also unconditional surrender, both of which don’t seem remotely in the ballpark any time soon. That was the trial balloon. Then today President Trump followed up on this by declaring that the war is actually pretty much over already.

He told CBS News’s Weijia Jiang that “the war is very complete, pretty much” and that the US is “very far” ahead of the initial 4 to 5 week timeline. “The war is very complete,” he said in case there was any ambiguity about his words. Indeed, in his vaguely genocidal way Trump seemed to implicitly take regime change off the table by threatening either regime change or perhaps genocide if Iran got “cute.”

He said this yesterday at a time the stock market was in free-fall.  Of this I can be certain–Trump’s family was given a heads-up, and bought on the lows. Which reminds me–guess who just invested in drones big-time?:

A golf club company backed by the sons of Donald Trump is merging with drone manufacturer Powerus in a deal designed to take the drone technology company public.

The merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings is the latest in Eric and Donald Trump Jr’s growing investments in the drone sector, following last month’s $1.5bn tie-up between Israeli drone maker XTEND and Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings. Drones have become a major procurement priority for the Pentagon and are widely used in Ukraine, where dense air defense systems near the frontlines limit the deployment of conventional aircraft.

This is the latest in the Trump family’s business moves, carried out even while Trump helms the White House. Ethics experts have raised multiple concerns over the family’s intensified business dealings during Trump’s second term, moving beyond hotels and golf courses and into other industries including crypto, energy and financial services.

Late last year, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social platform, announced a $6bn merger with a fusion energy technology company, agreeing to give the company $300m in cash to continue developing the nascent technology.

In February, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that a member of the Emirati royal family invested $500m into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company. Soon after, Trump announced that the United Arab Emirates would lift export controls and give the country access to 500,000 of Nvidia’s powerful AI chips.

‘Gullicism’ Abounds:

Many Americans believe that vaccines are unsafe, but will jab themselves full of performance enhancers. They think seed oils cause chronic disease, but beef tallow is healthy. They’ll say you can’t trust federally insured banks, but you can trust the millionaires who want you to invest in their volatile vaporware crypto tokens. They think food additives are toxic but support an administration removing all restrictions on pumping pollutants into the air and water. They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.

The coronavirus wasn’t the only epidemic to hit the United States in the past decade. Americans are also facing a bizarre epidemic of gullibility and cynicism—gullicism, if you need a portmanteau—that is drawing people into a world of conspiracism and falsehoods, one where facts are drowned out by a cacophony of extremely loud and wrong voices. Reliable information is both more available and harder to find than ever—and those who spread misinformation have been rewarded with positions of power, platforms they can exploit to further pollute the information environment.

The spread of anti-vax conspiracy theories is just another example of the gullicism that defines our age. The cynicism is highly selective: Gullicists see everyone’s hidden motives—except when they don’t. They are able to reject any claim rooted in actual evidence—whether in science, politics, or history—while embracing the most breathtakingly absurd assertions on the same topics. Indeed, documentation is often taken as further evidence of conspiracy, while assertion (that this or that will “detoxify” your blood or that COVID deaths were exaggerated) is taken as gospel.

This rejection of empiricism makes selling falsehoods easier and contradicting them harder, which creates a fertile environment for anyone with something to sell, whether shady businesses or authoritarian governments.

Trump Holds Congress Hostage In Order To Destroy Fair Elections:

Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to withhold his signature from all bills until Congress passes a GOP-led voting bill that implements voter restrictions ahead of the November midterms. 

“I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, requires individuals to show citizenship documents to register to vote and strict forms of photo ID to cast a ballot. If passed, the legislation would also administer criminal penalties for election officials who register anyone lacking the required documents.

As my colleague Ari Berman wrote in February, the bill would potentially block tens of millions of Americans from voting. Nine percent of American citizens, or approximately 21 million people, don’t have ready access to citizenship documents. The bill may impact millions of US citizens in other ways: tens of millions of women who took their partner’s last name, for example, may not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name could find it more difficult to register.

Slimy Janet Kilpatrick Strikes Again:

The New Castle County Council was already scheduled to vote Tuesday night on a controversial proposal to regulate the booming data center industry that has come to its doorstep, but now a newly filed, last-minute amendment aims to further inflame the debate.

Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, an outgoing lawmaker who has been one of the most vocal supporters of the data center industry, filed an amendment Friday evening seeking to allow major and minor subdivision plans in the county’s development pipeline to be permitted to convert to data center projects without adhering to the new limits.

That proposal could open up plans for warehouses or other commercial or industrial properties to switch to data centers.

It was immediately criticized by supporters of the regulatory measure, including the original ordinance’s author Councilman Dave Carter and the Sierra Club of Delaware.

“It not only guts the proposed legislation, it goes far beyond and gives developers even more rights than they have now for data center development,” Carter told Spotlight Delaware on Monday.

Of course it does.  We’re talking Janet Kilpatrick here.

What do you want to talk about?