IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — ‘Newsom-Proofing’ California Has a Nice Ring to It
Archive for 2025
February 14, 2025
REAGAN’S ‘TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD’ ASSESSES TRUMP: Donald Devine was Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985. Trust me, and I worked for him for nearly three years, he earned that moniker.
Today in National Review, Devine provides a finely detailed, historically informed and politically wise evaluation of Trump’s first three weeks, which he describes as “the most well prepared and best performing presidential transition in history. It had the earliest and largest number of cabinet nominees and staff, the most thoughtful and earliest announced executive orders and agency guidance, and a president ready to lead.”
As an example of Devine putting Trump’s federal workforce reforms in historical perspective, consider his assessment of the controversial “Schedule F” proposal:
“There has been much confusion about Trump’s first term Schedule F requirements, now labeled ‘policy career’ managers. These are mid-level careerists who have a major influence on agency policy. President Joe Biden had eliminated Schedule F by portraying it in the media as overruling the merit system.
“In fact, there is no general merit exam, and there has not been one since my day. All Schedule F did, and policy career does now, is restore Carter’s special responsibilities and oversight for mid-level career managers, which had been repealed after union pressure post-Reagan in the 1990s.”
Much more here that puts Trump’s early moves in much-needed context.
I WANT TO CARRY ONE IN MY SLEEVE LIKE A RIVERBOAT GAMBLER: The Classics: Eliot Over/Under Derringer.
IT’S PROBABLY NOTHING:
Washington DC searches for "lawyer' have increased 400% (data from Google trends) pic.twitter.com/CxeSJ0VKgG
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 13, 2025
I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE THAT MY NEPHEW IN THE ARMY HAS HAD TROUBLE GETTING FED: Over $151 Million Taken from Soldiers’ Paychecks for Food Costs Spent Elsewhere by the Army. “The Army is repurposing more than half of the money it collects from junior enlisted soldiers for food, according to data reviewed by Military.com. The numbers suggest that a large portion of those funds are not going toward feeding soldiers, a diversion of resources coming at a time when troops increasingly struggle to find nutritious food on base. The money is collected in what amounts to a tax on troops — taken from their Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) payments, roughly $460 per month that is automatically deducted from the paychecks of service members who live in barracks and is intended to help cover food costs. For junior enlisted troops who earn about $30,000 annually, the cost can be consequential. . . . It’s unclear what specifically the additional funds taken from soldiers are being spent on, but they do not appear to be going toward feeding soldiers.”
Feeding the troops properly should be a top priority, and whoever’s behind this should end up in Leavenworth.
Or at least do this:
Ground every Army VIP air transport and every GO loses their chef and valet until this is unscrewed. https://t.co/uPEYBaHm5c
— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) February 14, 2025
LOL, “CURRENT JUSTICE OFFICIALS” ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT “BRAZEN POLITICIZATION.” Where were they for the last 16 years at least?
Related:
Every single one of these lawyers who is now resigning 1) did not heroically resign after any of the many Biden outrages; 2) knows they will get their toes shrimped by the regime media and their social circles; and 3) will walk into hugely lucrative jobs within days.
They have…— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 14, 2025
GET IT PASSED WITH ONE BIG, BEAUTIFUL VOTE: Republicans Take First Step in Creating ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ of Trump Priorities.
ROSETTES FOR VALENTINE’S DAY [VIP]: Happy Valentine’s Sky Candy — Stars in Your Eyes.
HOW TO STOP THE DEMS’ TRO ASSAULT: Rod Martin has a few ideas about how to stop the growing wave of liberal judges granting Temporary Restraining Orders (TRO) sought by Democrats and their allies to stop Trump from doing what he was elected to do.
STILL NOT TIRED: Trump’s Most Epic Trolling Yet Is Hanging Outside the Oval Office.
READER FAVORITE: Veise Fingerprint Door Lock with 2 Lever Handles. #CommissionEarned
ANTI-EXTREMISM, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: ‘Students Against Nazi Extremism’ warn Tesla owners to sell their cars – or else.
A group calling itself “Students Against Nazi Extremism” is reportedly issuing threats to Tesla owners ito sell their vehicles or they will be vandalized, according to a local media report.
Lost Coast Outpost reports that residents in Humboldt County in northern California found notes left on their Teslas saying “no Nazis in America.” At least one of the notes was tied to a brick, according to local media reports.
The group mailed a supposed manifesto to the news outlet claiming responsibility for the notes. The manifesto also issued threats to Tesla owners in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Hayward in Alameda County in the city’s East Bay, and Seaside in Monterey County.
I spent six years in Northern California, including four in Humboldt County, so the stupidity, intolerance, and comical lack of self-awareness come as no surprise.
GOOD ANALOGY:
Have you ever tried to delete a piece of malware and it starts screeching that this will destabilize and crash your operating system?
That's basically what's happening with USAID
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 14, 2025
SOON TO BE RENAMED RED WHITE AND BLUELAND: Genetic study of Greenlanders reveals variants specific to their culture.
NOT SCREWING AROUND: Tom Homan Refers AOC to DOJ for Investigation.
I THOUGHT SEX WAS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED: Research uncovers molecular basis for male, female stress response variations.
CHANGE? NATO Sec-Gen Bends to VP Vance: ‘You Are Absolutely Right, We Have to Grow Up.’ “I also want to thank you personally for everything you have done over the years in engaging with Europe. It has been noted before, and it’s really important. And I look forward also from that perspective to our talks and on Europe stepping up, the European part of NATO stepping up. You’re absolutely right. It has to be done. We have to grow up in that sense and spend much more.”
YOU SPELLED DISNEY WRONG, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, SPOT ON: Marvel Is Now a Giant Slop Machine.
Even at the level of base genre pleasures, Brave New World feels more obligatory than exciting. It seems hard to remember now, but once upon a time these Marvel movies staged action in fast, funny, creative ways, utilizing cutting-edge visual effects to realize their superheroes’ unique abilities. Nowadays, more often than not, we get dull, derivative drudgery — a symptom perhaps of familiarity (there have been 35 of these movies so far) but also an overwhelming sense of box-checking that’s settled in over the past few years. Is it that they’ve all just done every move, every kick, every punch, every launch to death? Last year, Deadpool v. Wolverine provided Marvel with a much-needed mega-hit, but even that felt like a knowing nod to the fact that the studio had run out of ideas. That film succeeded by poking fun at its very existence. So, uh, what do the other films do now?
To its credit, Brave New World does okay with the fights themselves — the stuntwork is effective, and there’s still fun to be had with the way Captain America throws that shield around, plus now he’s also got those Falcon wings — but its dogfights and more VFX-heavy sequences are so lifeless and tiresome that I felt my eyes drifting closed a couple of times. By the time Ross actually turned into Red Hulk, I started to imagine a Has Fallen series entry in which slobby retired Secret Service agent Gerard Butler had to protect President Red Hulk from a gaggle of murderous goons. Is there a worse sign for a film than for the viewer to start imaging other, similarly mediocre films they could be watching instead?
* * * * * * * *
One can squint at times to try and see the movie Captain America: Brave New World maybe wanted to be — not so much a replay of the old Chris Evans Captain America films and more a shorter, tighter, close-quarters action flick, one without any alien invasions or heavy fantasy elements, one in which the villains wear suits and hoodies and use guns and fists instead of space weapons and whatnot. One without any epic quests for magic elements, the video-game conceit that was already tired a decade ago and yet still drives so many action movies today. And certainly, the concept of a hero who uses his wits and his courage instead of a special serum would have fit in nicely with that approach. But somewhere along the way, the whole thing appears to have spun out of control into the confused and shallow mess that we have before us. It’s enough to make one wonder if, given the level of interference and second-guessing involved, Marvel could ever make such a movie. Victims of their own success, they’ve somehow turned their vaunted production enterprise into a giant slop machine.
Marvel Comics movies, the Star Wars franchise, the turgid reboots of beloved old Disney movies. Uber-Woke Disney ruins everything it touches. The Critical Drinker is appropriately merciless in his review, including noting the movie’s depiction of a “totally implausible David and Goliath war between America and Japan, when China would have been a much more plausible rival. But then again, we wouldn’t want to offend one of Disney’s biggest potential markets, now would we?”
Earlier: Disney’s Pipeline Still Clogged With Woke. “Disney is in a weird place right now. They’ve sort of, kind of, announced that (like most of the rest of corporate America) they’re backing away from wokeness, to the extent that they’re cutting woke storylines from Pixar properties, and Disney was able to course correct in enough time to make Moana 2 and Inside Out 2 big hits last year (plus Deadpool & Wolverine, which I suspect was too rude to ever be infected with wokeness), but the company itself is still infected with DEI, and they still have an awful lot of very expensive turds, conceived and crafted in the woke era, sliding down the alimentary release canal.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: In final days, Biden awarded $50 million to self-dealing charity leader.
During President Joe Biden‘s last 20 days in office, his administration issued at least $1 billion in grants to hundreds of nonprofit groups scattered throughout the United States. A slice of that pie, $50 million, was awarded by the Department of Energy to a little-known charity in New Mexico called the Tribal Energy Consortium.
The $50 million grant, for a climate program under the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature 2022 spending law, is, on paper, an unbelievable windfall for the Tribal Energy Consortium. The charity posted just under $50,000 in revenue in both 2022 and 2023, IRS data show.
But now, along with other Energy Department grants under Biden, the Trump administration is investigating the $50 million handout, the agency told the Washington Examiner. The grant has not yet been disbursed to the awardee and could be cut, according to an official briefed on the situation.
That investigation will take into account how the TEC shares close ties to another tax-exempt organization and federal grantee with a history of financial mismanagement, the Washington Examiner has learned.
“The Department of Energy is conducting a department-wide review, which includes funding such as grants and loans, to ensure all activities are consistent with President Trump’s executive orders and priorities,” Ben Dietderich, a spokesman for the Energy Department, told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
As the Gipper famously said, “We could say the government spend like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors, because the sailors are spending their own money.”
Related: Buck Sexton Shares WaPo Front Page Loaded With ‘Trump’s Greatest Hits’ Headlines.
The “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan above the headlines showing the WaPo furious about the Doge boys shining flashlights into all of the corruption is a french kiss moment.
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Assault With a Deadly… Neck Massager, I Swear. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have assault with a deadly… you know, the lawnmower-based mailbox assault, and I’m still trying to figure out what Texas Man did wrong with that Port-a-Potty.”
PRETTY SURE THOSE CAUSED THE INSTA-WIFE’S HEART ATTACK: Some birth control pills, devices linked to greater heart risks. “The most common formulation of birth control pills has been linked to a doubling of relative risk of heart attack and stroke, a new study finds. Contraceptive vaginal rings and skin patches formulated in the same way also were linked to higher heart risks.”
I’VE MENTIONED HERE OCCASIONALLY that I teach a class in the law of distilled spirits. Here’s something on that.
AND NOT JUST ON VALENTINE’S DAY: Why Did We Evolve to Feel Romantic Love? One of the last interviews, just posted by the neuroscientists Heather Berlin and Christof Koch, with the world’s most quoted authority on love, the great anthropologist (and my late wife), Helen Fisher.