Wednesday, April 30, 2025
I have read or skimmed three articles on the President’s first one hundred days. None of them mention anything he has done to help, be it people, the economy, our standing in the world, anything one would associate with governing. The overall comments say that it’s been chaotic, and unfocused. Unfocused in the sense that if he claims he doesn’t like something or that he wants to change it he has no ideas as to what he does want. Tariff negotiating teams from other countries have left without answers. When they get in the room and ask they are told to offer something. Like what? No answer. They leave.
The first article I read was from Rolling Stone listing one hundred things he’s done. I stopped at about forty. Too depressing. Another article talked about Musk losing power with his CEO approach to trying to run the U.S. government. The funniest line in the whole article (the only funny line) was that once cabinet secretaries were appointed they “wanted to run their agencies.” Weird. I know. The third article I read listed, by category, all the areas Trump was seeking revenge. It’s staggering. We aren’t talking a hit here or there. We are talking law firms, media outlets, … The list went on for over half a dozen areas.
I also read a fourth article about a group of scientists who were told they had 24 hours to wrap things up and leave. What did they do? They are the group that identified Hep C. If an outbreak is suspected they look at the samples sent to them and they can tell if it’s all from one source. They can then work with local officials to contain the source. In one case it was a clinic and a doctor not using blood vials properly. Now? All gone. Samples are coming in from other places and they are sitting waiting. But it gets worse. They have highly specialized equipment and they can’t just flip a switch to turn it off. They have refrigerators that keep samples a -20 and -80 degrees. They have two decades worth of evidence so they can pinpoint a possible source of infection. They have a database that is very fragile and needs to be maintained. If it or the samples go so goes two decades or more of data, that can’t be recovered. In this group if someone is leaving they workout a transition plan for someone to take over that person’s work. It takes one to two years to do so. They have tried to get access. It was granted for a week or two and extended again til late April. They are trying to maintain their equipment and shut things down properly. It takes time. The cost? Well, if there’s a Hep C outbreak it will go undetected and can become a major outbreak.
All this got me to wondering, “What has Trump done to help us?” Did I already say that? Yeah, I think I did, but it is worth repeating. Can anyone think of anything?
I’ve also read that the majority of our medicine comes from China. Take penicillin. The last lab here that made the stuff shutdown in 2004. No more ships are coming from China. No one is building new factories here because of the tariff threats. I mean, would you? He may change his mind tomorrow. It takes years of planning to build a factory.
The article on Musk says his power is waning and he didn’t save one or two trillion, but maybe 150 billion, but that is even questionable and much of that savings will be taken up with the cost of court cases and termination costs of contracts.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that one of the DOGE employees happened to buy stock in companies that will benefit from the cuts. Huh? Who could have guessed?
I read yesterday that Elon has packed his shit and moved out of the White House. Guess it doesn’t really matter since he got all the data he was after.
DJT was in Michigan on Tuesday in a pretty red county. There was a line of people over 2 miles long protesting him and his administration. The news actually covered more of that than the rally.