Some of you can't access Facebook. So, here is this article by science fiction author Connie Willis

Everything Trump Touches Dies--Including the Super Bowl

February 9, 2025
By Connie Willis

Yesterday was the Super Bowl, and Trump, as usual, made it all about him:
--He claimed he was cheered, and there was definitely the sound of cheering (faked?) on Fox, but cell phone videos posted to the internet seem to show that he got more boos than cheers.
--More proof he was booed is that he posted a nasty Truth Social thing about Taylor Swift being booed. (She did get some boos, but they seemed to be more about the Chiefs than her, and she took it in her stride. Unlike someone we could name.)
--Still more proof--the cameras never panned to Trump again, and he left before the third quarter was finished.
--He may also have left because his team was losing. Badly. He had loudly announced the Chiefs were going to beat the Eagles, but they lost big-time. --40-22.
--Trump immediately went home and posted that he was getting rid of the penny. Everybody was shaking their heads over this, but I think it’s because there’s a mint in Philadelphia and he was trying to punish them--Philadelphia Eagles? Get it?
--Ron Filipkowski: "While Musk runs the country, Trump had a productive weekend naming himself Chair of the Kennedy Center, picking the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, cancelling pennies, demanding Google Maps rename the Gulf of Mexico, importing only white people from South Africa, and saving plastic straws.
--As usual, the best thing about the Super Bowl was the ads. My favorites were the Dunkin’ Donuts ad with Ben Affleck--"You shoulda paid to get Matt"--, the Hellman’s reprise of that scene in When Harry Met Sally, and one for Hexclad with Gordon Ramsay, Pete Davidson, and aliens. You can watch them all here:
people.com/super-bowl-2025-com…
A federal judge has ordered Musk and his "kids" to cease and desist accessing data at the Treasury Department AND to destroy all copies they may have made, but Musk is sounding like he has no intention of obeying that order:
--In several tweets, Musk teased that he might ignore the judge’s ruling.
--Musk reposted a user who told him to defy the judicial rulings: "I don’t like the precedent it sets when you defy a judicial ruling, but I’m past wondering what other options are these judges leaving us..." Musk responded by saying that was so true. This morning he replied to a user who said that judges could be impeached by Congress. Musk: "It’s time."
--Musk is calling for the impeachment of the judge.
--MAGA is screaming at Trump to ignore the judge’s ruling. One example, from John Jackson: "The response from DOJ should be the legal equivalent of FU."
--So is Vice-President Vance: "Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power."
--Dem Rep Dan Goldman: "It’s called the rule of law, J.D. Vancee. Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other (separation of powers.) The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law. If you do, then you won’t have problems.”
--Aaron Rupar: "This is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders."
--All of them are acting like the separation of powers and checks and balances and judicial review parts of the Constitution don’t exist. As Steve Vladick pointed out: "The point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that whether acts of state are legitimate can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them.
--Stephen Miller went on Sunday morning TV to rant about "radical left judges" being unconstitutional. "That ruling is an assault on the very idea of democracy itself!"
--And a White House spokesman this morning officially called it "judicial overreach."
--There are lots of indications the Trump administration is not implementing the court order.
--Rob McGraff: "We have reached the "who’s gonna MAKE me" stage of the Muskocracy."
--George Conway: "They are not going to obey court orders, they have decided that they’re going to push the boundaries on executive power.l..The courts have no mechanism to enforce their orders other than through the U.S. Marshals Special Service, and that’s through the DOJ, thus through the executive branch. The reason why we obey court orders is because the executive branch complies with court orders. If the executive branch does not comply with court orders and makes a point of saying that we will not comply with court orders, the rule of law, as far as the federal government is concerned, is over."
--Steve Vladick: "The way an executive branch that respects the rule of law objects to a district court ruling it doesn’t like is to appeal it, not to imply that the ruling just shouldn’t be followed."
--And now today the judge has issued an order to Musk and DOGE to immediately obey the previous restraining order. The judge has instructed OMB to take every step necessary to restore funding for the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act, the NIH, and other agencies.
In other coup news:
--Trump removed the appointees overseeing the service academies, the Boards of Visitors, claiming they have been "infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues."
--Musk’s "kids" gained access to highly sensitive personal data over the weekend at the CFPB, including bank records and credit records.
--There are now two separate lawsuits against what Musk is doing at the CFPB. And the CFPB has sued Russell Vought over his shuttering of the agency.
--Altogether there have been 42 cases filed against Musk and DOGE in 18 days, 11 wins for the rule of law, and a federal injunction blocking Musk from Americans’ private data.
--The entire student loan website has disappeared.
--Musk announced he wants to eliminate Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America completely.
--Trump said yesterday during his pre-Super Bowl interview that Musk found "irregularities" in the U.S. Treasury bills and the U.S. may not be obligated to pay them. "Maybe we have less debt than we thought." The White House is already frantically walking that back. (If the markets think we’re going to default on our U.S. Treasury bills, the whole world economy will crash.)
--rugbymom: "The global economy is so intertwined, you pull a thread anywhere, and all sorts of impacts pop up in unexpected places."
--Less than 3% of federal employees have taken Musk’s so-called "buyout." In the ordinary course of things, 7% leave the federal government.
--Note: Somebody online referred to Musk as "the Grand Vizier," and I think that’s what I’m going to call him from now on. (See Kismet.)
--Five former Treasury Secretaries are speaking out against Musk and the "corrosive effect" he is having on democracy. "While significant data privacy, cybersecurity, and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming." They said what he is doing is definitely unlawful.
--The mastermind behind all of this may actually be Stephen Miller, (who I call Nosferatu) who during the Biden administration drafted a plan that would "seize control of the federal government while testing the bounds of executive authority."
--The Geogre: "The lesson that Vought and Trump are teaching us:Criminals get one free punch to the face and then the police get called...and then the indictments come."
In FAFO news:
--Alaska, a state that went for Trump in the election, is VERY upset about the renaming of Mt. Denali back to Mt. McKinley. It’s making front page news in the state.
--The group Blacks for Trump is furious that Trump got rid of Black History Month. They say they feel "completely betrayed."
--A Trump voter went on Facebook to say he was worried that his father might be deported. His father is an undocumented immigrant who works at a farm in northern New Mexico. (Surely he knew that before the election.)
--A Trump supporter who posted racist and anti-trans posts and who gloated, "Today the Golden Age of America begins right now," is now very upset because his daughter worked for USAID and has been fired and stranded in South Africa with no way to get home.
--Trump supporter Andrea Walther thought that Trump would shield Venezuelans from deportation. She said the overwhelming majority of her friends and family supported Trump, including her father, who’s now at risk of being removed from the country.
--Sometimes the FAFO is very swift. A guy at this weekend’s Phoenix Open did the Nazi salute, shouted "Heil Hitler!" and "88" (a Nazi symbol), shouted that Mexicans should have their "throats sliced," and called the female official who confronted him "a dumbshit bitch." He was ejected from the Open, banned, jailed, and fired from his job, all on the same day.
--FAFO isn’t restricted to people from the United States. Canadian Conservative Premiere Doug Ford was caught on a hot mic saying, "On election day, was I happy this guy won? 100% I was. Then the guy pulled out the knife and fucking yanked it on me."
--The biggest FAFO people are of course the people who voted for Trump instead of Kamala because they didn’t think she defended the Palestinians enough. They are now finding out--with a bang--that they have elected (and yes, it was them!) a person who wants to do "ethnic cleansing" and then put up hotels and golf courses where there once was a country. Yesterday, in his pre-Super Bowl interview, Trump said that Palestinians will definitely not be allowed to return to Gaza.
--But the problem is there’s a lot of FALN (Fuck Around Learn Nothing) where these people find themselves the victims of Trump and Musk but are still blaming "the government" and Biden.
Best Cartoon of the Day: The GOP as football players in a huddle, saying "Here’s the play--we start offsides, pardon our own penalties, appoint our own refs, deport their linebackers, sack anyone who played for Biden, and claim we won the 2020 Super Bowl."
Funniest thing of the day, from the Borowitz Report: "Donald J. Trump tightened his grip on the American arts scene on Monday by naming himself principal ballerina of the Kennedy Center Ballet...He said he was disgusted to discover that all of the company’s current ballerinas were women, a state of affairs he blamed on DEI. Trump’s takeover...has surprised millions of Americans, who previously thought that the worst thing that could happen to the Kennedy brant was JFK’s nephew strapping a dismembered whale’s head to his minivan."