TIME TO END TRUMP

Nobody imagined it would be this bad. They are in a big hurry to destroy the government and if we do not stop them they will. The Trump administration needs to end in the same big hurry, or we will be living in a dictatorship very soon. Privatize means for profit means profit for billionaires. The billionaire belief system is that everything has to make them money. If it does not it is “communism.”

Suckers and Losers

Trump Was Always Going to Betray Veterans

By Sarah Jones, senior writer for Intelligencer who covers politics and labor

In filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers, military service guarantees citizenship in a futuristic — and fascist — regime. The policy is simple: Join the war on the alien bugs or suffer a second-class life. Verhoeven’s satire worked in part because it echoed real-world politics. Although the American government is a mite less radical than the fanatical world government of Verhoeven’s film, our politicians have long promised a form of enhanced citizenship to those who fight. The military welfare state supports active-duty servicemembers and their dependents, and once a person separates, they’re eligible for benefits that aren’t available to anyone else. They can receive affordable health care through the VA or go to college on the GI Bill or apply for a reasonable home loan. If they’re able to work, they might look to the federal government, which offers preferential hiring to veterans.

Veterans’ benefits once seemed like the third rail of American politics, but perhaps no longer. As Elon Musk and his DOGE goons slash away at federal jobs, they’ve laid off thousands of veterans with few repercussions to date. Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s former attorney and a White House adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the veterans they’ve fired might not be “fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work.” She added, “And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, ‘Sorry, you know, they’re not going to come to work.’ It’s just not acceptable.” A day later, the Associated Press reported that the VA plans to fire about 80,000 workers, a clear threat to veterans’ care. The news hit home: My husband, a Marine veteran, relies on the VA for his health care.

Trump’s patriotism has always been bluster, a way to mobilize his base without much of a material commitment to veterans or servicemembers. That’s not so unusual for an American politician, even if most are not as blunt as Trump’s adviser, Habba. Anyone can campaign on so-called veterans’ issues; it’s much more difficult to reckon with the human cost of our bloody foreign policies. In the absence of moral accountability, the American government offers its youth a fragile bargain instead: Kill the bugs, and we’ll take care of you later.

But there’s no way to trust a promise that recognizes the humanity of some while denying it to others. What we do on the battlefield and in prisons like Guantánamo Bay reflects the domestic values and priorities of the American government. We have always reserved humane treatment for a select few while we force everyone else to struggle for scraps, though we insist the system is based on merit. Dignity is a luxury, meted out on the basis of race and gender and disability status. In such a country, the benefits we offer veterans rest on a shaky foundation. If health care and housing and education are unique privileges, not universal rights, the government can easily go back on its word. Veterans are only special as long as they’re convenient.

In betraying veterans now, the Trump administration merely hastens the inevitable. It has been popular to think of veterans as an exception to centuries of rhetoric and policy that cast people in need as takers and moochers; the uniform has, in theory, distinguished those who bore it from  those who belong to a parasitical class. We see now that the uniform never meant all that much and that what’s given can be taken away in a flash. But policy does not exist in a void. In this case it depends on a Praetorian culture that achieved new strength in the post-9/11 era. We honor the troops with parades and flags and discounts at Applebee’s, as if no form of citizenship is entirely separate from consumer identity. Members of both parties brandish the uniform to win office and curry favor not just with veterans themselves but with moderate and conservative voters who say they respect the military.

By definition, American Praetorianism singles out military service for special treatment, almost sanctification. That can be powerful, but for whom? Although millions of people have achieved middle class stability thanks to the military welfare state and veterans’ benefits, their rise always depended on the whims of the government. An administration that is poised to damage Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid is an administration that can strip veterans of everything we said they had earned. Habba’s comments are remarkable because she is telling us the truth about the order of things. Veterans remain subject to political forces that prioritize profit margins over human life and dignity. With each week that passes, it becomes harder to deny that Elon Musk’s billions carry more weight than the uniform ever could. It is similarly no coincidence that the administration is purging veterans from the federal workforce while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks of lethality and warfighting. This is a cruel ideology, which treats humanity as a trait it can bestow or rescind. No one is safe, not even the troops.

The Space Review and SpaceNews

The Space Review and SpaceNews has, for many years, been a prime promoter of Elon Musk and SpaceX and now is the time for them to be doing the opposite. It is NOT the time to be ignoring what is happening in America. Nobody is talking about the number of children that have died since aid programs were cut by Musk, how many suicides have and will happen because of those who have lost their jobs because they were fired by Musk, how much damage has been caused to America and the reputation of America in the world by Musk.

It would be better if this person had never been born. Somebody else would have built a rocket. Musk’s determination to destroy democracy should have space advocates screaming at the top of their lungs to have SpaceX government contracts cancelled, SpaceX private contracts blocked, and SpaceX assets seized, due to the blatant conflict of interest and attacks on those agencies Musk obviously wants to stop interfering with his ability to do anything he wants.

Now is the time for Americans to stand up to this enemy of democracy, including the press. Now is the time to fight to restore democracy and save America. That Musk called Senator Mark Kelly a traitor, who I voted for, who flew combat missions as a naval aviator and flew the space shuttle is outrageous. Senator Kelly, showing dignity and class that is completely lacking in the Trump/Musk circus, said the richest man in the world should go back to building rockets and stick to that. I think Musk should be exposed by The Space Review and SpaceNews for what he is and by doing so make a clear statement about loyalty to the United States instead of to an oligarch.

This Signals Squalor

NASA is going to get their budget cut. If the DOD is going to get cut 8 percent a year for the next 5 years then expect NASA to get twice that. It is no surprise that the Space Launch System will die…it actually was doomed on election night due to Musk supporting Trump. What will be a big surprise for many is the end of NASA, and it will certainly end with Trump/Musk in power and likely to acquire permanent power. Once the media is completely under control then surveillance will isolate the citizenry and render them powerless….unable to organize even small civil unrest actions. Just like Russian and Hungary and several other Oligarchies, which exist to enrich oligarchs and keep them in power by controlling the population. The only objective is to make money, and NASA spends money so only the facilities and personnel that support Elon Musk will avoid being cut. What remains will then slowly be “privatized” until NASA eventually ceases to exist in a few years.

Fifteen years ago, I realized that NewSpace ideology would end Human Space Flight simply because there is no money to be made except by way of lunar industry. That Musk was against any lunar return or space solar (because he cannot own it) and was instead blathering about colonizing Mars was the tell. I condemned the flagship company and founder as the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration and now it is all about to end. Welcome to the oligarchy.

Extinction

It was not going in circles in Low Earth Orbit that was the first step, it is permanent industry on the Moon that will be the first step, the key to the future of humankind. It is our one chance to survive as a species by ultimately leaving the solar system using beam propulsion and world ships.

All we have right now is a trillion dollars of weapons to incinerate civilization with….and a couple very badly designed super rockets. One is expendable and one cannot go anywhere but LEO. While Climate Change degrades the environment and sets up a death spiral. We are being led down a dead-end street by a greed-crazed oligarchy that will end in disaster.

The true prophet of the best possible future was Gerard K. O’Neill who identified Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources as the economic engine of space colonization. The High Frontier, the “Next America”; with ever increasing numbers of artificial miles-in-diameter hollow spheres leading and trailing the Earth in solar orbit. As America soon celebrates a quarter of a millennium, by the half millennium celebration a vast ring of artificial worlds will be where humankind lives, with the Earth a pristine vacation destination. And eventually, many of us will choose to leave for other stars.

Or we will go extinct.

SpaceX

The shiny starship is certainly a cultural symbol of neoliberal ideology now. It reflects the idea that these John Galt/Howard Roark/Tony Stark entrepreneurs can make a better world. A world like a science fiction novel or comic book. Like the Saturn V showing the rest of humankind the power of American capitalism by defeating the Soviet communists in a race to the Moon. Except it is not like that at all. Apollo was a top-down state-run program. It was so obvious there was no easy money to be made in Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit that aerospace interests threw our original super-rocket in the trashcan. There is no money to be made in “Space” Beyond Earth Orbit. Starship was made to make money in Low Earth Orbit with satellites. Our embodiment of John Galt has shrugged his shoulders and has no problem with cutting off aid to starving children…. and firing tens of thousands of people trying to make a living.

As one of the cyberstalkers that harass me on forums states:

“DOGE isn’t looking to “lay off half the folks in America,” though it might well see off half of the current federal government workforce. An America that no longer has to drag around a couple of million or more government and government-affiliated parasites will quickly produce more than enough new job openings to soak up said cast-offs. There is, of course, the matter of whether people who’ve spent their entire “working” lives collecting fat paychecks and fatter pensions for doing little or nothing – or, worse, doing progressive political activism – on the taxpayer’s dime will be found suitable for actual productive employment.”

Oligarchy. Serfdom. Cruelty. Money as the god of this world and greed as the only faith. A lower and lower standard of living while we pay the one percent for everything except the air we breathe and as they end all environmental protections that will become revenue for them also. The con artists who have pitched a libertarian paradise on Mars and praised their Ayn-Rand-in-space cult leader for going on 15 years now get their return on investment. I knew they were not loyal to this country from the beginning, only loyal to their ideal strongman. And it appears, for now, that traitors have ended America.

“Next America”, if some form of democracy ever returns, will be the end of the billionaire class and money in politics, which ended America. The former 91 percent tax rate on the wealthy and strict regulation will restart democracy. No more nonsense about a republic not being a democracy and decades of Fox News propaganda. And hopefully, a solution to Climate Change by way of space as foreseen by Gerard K. O’Neill, the true prophet of space colonization. First, we have to end the evil now destroying our government.

They Own Us Now

The own us now. People often go into civil service because they want job security….what can be more secure than working for your country (even if it does not pay very well)? This is a message from the super-rich that your country is actually their country and not yours anymore.