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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Here we go again? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-25

We begin today with Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and his understanding that Democrats do have a point of leverage with the mal-administration and Congressional Republicans with upcoming budget negotiations in lieu of a government shutdown.

Over recent weeks I’ve told you several times that while Democrats are shut out of power in Washington and few means of arresting the Trump-Musk spree of criminal conduct across the executive branch they do have two points of leverage: the need for a new “continuing resolution” to keep the government funded by March 14th and the need to raise the debt ceiling at some point in the coming months – the exact date on that isn’t clear. At present Republicans are on course to shut down the government on March 14th. Essentially the Freedom Caucus is holding them hostage demanding not the draconian budget cuts favored by most of the GOP caucus but draconian-plus cuts, the kind that they fear will get their members in swing districts defeated. So they’re coming to Democrats, hat in hand, asking for help. I’ve explained in probably a dozen posts over the last month that this is the line not just on policy and anti-constitutional actions but also a key moment in the drama of performative power between President Trump and the opposition that will have repercussions and reverberations for months and perhaps years to come. There are already plenty of signs the public is turning against Musk’s wilding spree of criminal conduct through the federal government. To put it in the vulgar and rapacious terms that are the only ones that do it justice, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have spent the last month slapping around like bitches the Constitution, federal workers, the Democrats and really the sovereignty of the American people. Democrats have this moment to decide whether they’ll not only arrest the damage but change the tone through the idiom of power. Well, now we appear to be at the crunch moment.

Paul Krugman sees that economic disillusionment with the Trump administration is settling in faster than he expected.

But I expected it to take a while for disillusionment to set in. I don’t know if I set this down in writing anywhere, but I was quite sure that consumer sentiment would be considerably better during Trump’s first months in office than it was on the eve of the election. [...] What happened? Part of the answer is an uptick in the prices of eggs and other groceries, which isn’t Trump’s fault — yet (wait until the deportations of farm workers begin). But given Trump’s promise to drive prices down, voters are being quickly disillusioned. It surely must also matter that Trump, who ran primarily on the economy, has ignored it since taking office, instead going after wokeness (which isn’t a voter priority), threatening our allies, trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico and empowering Elon Musk to wreak havoc in the federal government. So I guess it makes sense that buyers’ remorse among voters is setting in fast. And just wait until people see the real effects of Trump’s policies.

Pew Research Center continues to document the seemingly confused American public’s concerns with the economy.

Roughly seven-in-ten Americans say “the role of money in politics” is a very big problem in the country today – the highest share of any of the 24 items asked about on the survey. The affordability of health care (67%), inflation (63%), the federal budget deficit (57%) and the number of Americans living in poverty (53%) are also among the public’s top concerns. About half or more see the ability of Republicans and Democrats to work together (56%), drug addiction (51%) and the state of moral values (50%) as very big problems in the country today. Far smaller shares of the public see terrorism, racism or climate change as very big problems for the nation – though Republicans and Democrats disagree about the severity of some of these problems.

But...a plurality of the American voting public voted for the richest man in world who endorsed the tacky shoe salesman and contributed over $200 million to his campaign and now has access to a wide variety of confidential information, including text information... but 7 in 10 list the role of money in politics as their biggest concern...

..never mind, I don’t want to give myself a headache.

Seb Starcevic of POLITICO reports that Monday night, the aforementioned richest man in the world reissued his demand for federal employees to tell him their on the job accomplishments for the previous week or their employment will be terminated.

Musk made his renewed demand in a social media post Monday after President Donald Trump seemed to contradict other senior administration officials and approve the directive that the billionaire initially sent out to workers over the weekend. “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk wrote on X. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.” The billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency on Saturday sent an email to federal agencies with the subject line “What did you do last week.” It sowed confusion and fear among workers, especially after Musk posted on X that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation. ”Several agency heads, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, told their staff that they did not need to reply, and the Office of Personnel Management later clarified that responding to the email was “voluntary.”

On the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic says that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot win its war with Ukraine unless the countries defending Ukraine fail to act and those existing alliances splinter.

Today, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, stop and remember what happened on the night it began. I’d had plane tickets to Kyiv that week, but my flights were canceled, and on February 24, 2022, I stayed up and watched the war’s start on television, listening to the sounds of explosions coming from the screen. That night, everyone expected Russia to overrun its much smaller neighbor. But that capitulation never came. Six weeks later, I made it to Kyiv and heard and saw what had happened instead: the hit squads that had tried to kill Zelensky; the murders of civilians in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb; the Ukrainian journalists who had driven around the country trying to tell the story; the civilians who had joined the army; the waitresses who had started cooking for the troops. Three years later, against all obstacles and all predictions, the civilians, journalists, soldiers, and waitresses are still working together. Ukraine’s million-man army, the largest in Europe, is still fighting. Ukraine’s civil society is still volunteering, still raising money for the troops. Ukraine’s defense industry has transformed itself. In 2022, I saw tiny workshops that made drones out of what looked like cardboard and glue. In 2024, Ukrainian factories produced 1.5 million drones, and this year they will make many more. Teams of people in underground control centers now use bespoke software to hit thousands of targets every month. Their work explains why Russia has taken territory only slowly, despite being on the offensive for most of the past year. At the current rate of advance, the Institute for the Study of War estimates, Russia would need 83 years to capture the remaining 80 percent of Ukraine. Russia doesn’t have the resources to fight indefinitely against that kind of organization and determination. Putin’s military production is cannibalizing his country’s civilian economy. Inflation has skyrocketed. The only way Putin wins now—the only way he finally succeeds in destroying Ukraine’s sovereignty—is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to be sick of the war.

Patrick Wintour of The Guardian reports that the probable future German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is calling for more European independence from the United States.

Friedrich Merz marked his conservative alliance’s victory in Germany’s election by urging Europe to make itself more independent from the US – a project that will be music to the ears of Emmanuel Macron but may turn on whether Merz can build a Bundestag majority to lift the so-called debt brake that slows increases in defence spending. [...] It is true that Angela Merkel, a previous CDU chancellor, speculated in 2017 about a growing distance between the US and Europe after a bruising G7 summit during Trump’s first term. But Merz went much further, telling a television audience on Sunday night about his conversations with European leaders to “strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US”. He added: “After Donald Trump’s remarks last week, it is clear that the Americans, at any case the Americans in this administration, do not care much about the fate of Europe.” As if to ram home the point, he warned on Monday: “This is really five minutes to midnight for Europe.”

Ken Dryden (yes, that Ken Dryden!) writes for The Atlantic about why 4 Nations Cup was so important to Canada.

Last Saturday, I was in Montreal for the Canada-U.S. hockey game in the 4 Nations Cup. I knew I needed to be there. A few nights later, I was at home in front of our TV for the final game, which Canada won 3–2 in overtime. I watched every moment, from before the game began to after it ended. I almost never do that. Those games, I knew, were going to say something—about Canadian players, about Canadian fans, about Canada. Maybe something about the United States too. I didn’t know what. [...] ...Being Canadian these past few months hasn’t been a lot of fun. The threat and now the coming reality of high tariffs on Canadian goods exported to the U.S.—and the disruptions and dislocations, known and unknown, that these tariffs will cause—are never out of mind. Even more difficult in the day-to-day is Donald Trump’s relentless and insulting commentary. Canada as the U.S.’s “51st state”; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”; the U.S. using “economic force” to annex Canada, its nearest ally and inescapable geographical fact of life. It’s the kind of trolling that Trump does to everyone, to every country, whenever he wants to, because as president of the most powerful nation on Earth, he knows he can. He loves to watch the weak wobble and cringe, and those who think they’re strong discover they’re not.

Growing up in Detroit, I was a regular watcher of Hockey Night in Canada from the age of 9 and I always wished that they wouldn’t televise the tired Toronto Maple Leafs and would, instead, show the Montreal Canadians and I could see Ken Dryden stop nearly every potential goal.

Finally today:

I’ve said it before and I will probably say it again: One of the best things about being an old Gen Xer is that while my favorite music is from the 1980’s, of course, I do remember much of the music that was released in the 1970’s as it was released.

Roberta Flack is a very intricate part of that 70’s soundtrack. Rest In Peace and Power, Ms Flack.

Here’s Miss Denise’s 2021 diary about the awesome force that was Roberta Flack.

And...I guess that I have to pick a song.

I’m very fond of this one.

Try to have the best possible day everyone!

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