No question about it IMO.

At this point, I don’t even think they’d bother pretending otherwise. Trump would go on Truth.social and post an unhinged screed that pretty much boiled down to “Serves 'em right.”

And the media wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.

I don’t doubt it for even a second.

Um… yeah. We knew that already.

The point obviously never was eliminating supposed waste.

It was, blatantly, a purge, meant solely to get rid of anyone who wasn’t a Trump sycophant, anyone who was currently or ever had been involved in investigating the myriad lies, scams and crimes of Trump and his cronies and/or anyone who might stand in the way of their future lies, scams and crimes.

Did you really not know that? Where have you been the last few months?

It was a brilliant bit of theater, just like their mass drone response to Israel’s last provocation.

In both cases now, Iran has managed to make Israel, and now the US, look both antagonistic and foolish. Their precisely measured responses really highlight the fact that they didn’t provoke either of these fights, that they have no intention of engaging in pointless bloodshed, but that, if pressed, they can and will respond in kind.

It makes them look like the only adults in the room.

Israel is a rogue state.

And this is why DOGE gutted the Office for Vehicle Automation Safety at the NHTSA.

Even MTG is more principled and rational than Trump.

…Congress to claw back…

That would require courage and determination, which means it’s not going to happen, because those are qualities Congress no longer possesses.

Surely now at least some few of the people in authority who have ignored Trump’s grossly obvious unfitness for office will do something, right?

Right?

This illustrates one of the many oddities about Trump.

With any other president, we had policy debates and stated goals and decisions made and implemented.

With Trump, we just have this string of essentially arbitrary threats, promises and rhetoric, and alongside that is a string of essentially arbitrary policies arbitrarily enacted and rescinded and followed and ignored, and there’s no necessary correlations between any of it.

It’s another of the things that I think Trump does simply because he’s a delusional toxic narcissist, a genuinely stupid person, and emotionally a toddler, and another of the things that the would-be autocrats - the billionaires and the CEOs and the religious right and the Republicans and the rest of the greedy and power-hungry scum - take advantage of him doing.

Exactly as intended.

his chances of raising money and looking like a leader

Note that raising money is the first thing mentioned.

And note that winning elections isn’t mentioned at all.

Which neatly sums up what’s wrong with the DNC.

With any luck, it will kill google.

I don’t see how they can even pretend that it will do anything other than steal website traffic, since the exact point is to provide you with the information you would have gotten if you had gone to the website, leaving no reason to actually go to the website.

So painfully obviously, Google intends to steal the websites’ content in order to steal the websites’ traffic.

Which would seem to me to be grounds for class action lawsuits on behalf of the entire internet, which, if judged fairly, should bankrupt even that foul beast of a corporation.

And ironically enough, that would almost certainly “rejuvenate the internet.” As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a single thing that would do more to “rejuvenate the internet” than killing Google.

In the interest of clarity, I don’t think that Johnson quite qualifies as a hypocrite, since a hypocrite has to have something at least resembling principles, and Johnson appears to have nothing of the sort.

He appears to be an essentially complete, full-time toady, ready and willing and even eager to mouth whatever he thinks will please whoever he’s desperate to please at the moment. I don’t think he’s ever had a thought or opinion of his own in his entire life.

Not that that’s any better or anything - just an observation.

But the Trump administration is refusing to reassure them they won’t be subject to retaliation.

That would be because they will be subject to retaliation.

Trump is nothing if not petty and vindictive, and as with all the rest of his many and profound flaws and failures, he’s molding the rest of the government into his gross and detestable image.

And as with the rest of his brazen assaults on legal and ethical standards, nobody with any authority will do a single fucking thing about it.

I don’t see how it could make any difference.

He’s already an idiot, a delusional narcissist, and a compulsive liar, so it’s not as if he could become even more detached from realitybthan he already is. And his supporters don’t care (and likely don’t even notice), since they’re even dumber than he is.

And it’s not like he"s going to forget his platform, since it’s pretty much just hating immigrants and LGBTQ, dicking over poor people, singing his own praises and scamming as much money as possible, and that’s all as natural and automatic to him as breathing…

Really, there’s just not much cognition going on there in the first place - it’s more in the nature of infantile immediacy and animal instincts - so I can’t see how any loss of it would matter much.

As the proud owner of a Santa Claus beard (though in color and texture, it’s more of a Grizzly Adams beard) I would say that the most important thing is to turn the care over to a professional. Just like your hair, don’t attempt to manage it yourself (beyond washing, combing and the like). Find a stylist who also does beards and go on a regular schedule and have them trim it and maintain it. And they’ll also be able to tell you if you need to do something special to care for it.

And…?

Oh look - a grotesquely incompetent and unqualified Trump appointee. I haven’t seen one of those in… an hour or so. Maybe even an hour and a half.

You’re talking about two different things.

Context was the idea of a government banning certain popular foods

This would mean they’d be against food safety regulations, would it not?

It’s entirely possible to be in favor of food safety regulations and opposed to the government banning foods outright. In fact, I think one could safely presume that those are the positions most commonly held by most people.