THE END OF CRAZY WEEK THREE

Here’s good news: Yesterday, the International Cryptocurrency Scam suffered what Paul Krugman called - in a rare evening post to keep up with the day’s events - a “Wile E. Coyote moment” (i.e., that moment when he realizes he’s not standing on the cliff edge, just before that loonng drop to the canyon floor). Bitcoin, which back to a lower valuation than it had at election time in 2024 when it and the rest of the scam were riding high on Dilbert’s intention to have the U.S. Treasury start treating it like a Real Thing (which it isn’t) - all the King’s bullshit and all the King’s men can’t keep Humpty Dumpty from falling again. Everyone who bought Dilbert’s BS has lost 60% of however much they shoveled into that black hole. Another case of ETTD, and this happens to be why so many under-40 bro-morons are upset with him and have taken to the lifeboats before the SS Trump breaks is keel and goes glub-glub-glub.

In more good Techie-Bro News (for us, not them), Geoffrey Hinton - one of the “godfathers” of AI - said this week that no matter how much computing power and trillions of dollars are stuffed into the black hole of AI, the AIs will never be more efficient than they are now. A Carnegie-Mellon study found their failure rate (the “hallucinations”) averages around 70%. Only 12% of businesses that have used AI have found it reduces costs and increases profit - and only where it is employed on simple tasks. S&P Market Intelligence found that the cancellation rate of corporate AI programs grew from 17% in 2024 to 42% in 2025. Like my scientist father said 65 years ago, “Them that think computers think, don’t.”

The combined crash of AI and crypto could be simultaneous and within the next three years. It will create pain everywhere, but the result will be the death of the billionaires and techie-bros on a mass scale. I’ll tighten my belt without complaint to see that happen. (As all the people saying this say, “this is not investment advice.”)

ICE is now bypassing the El Paso County medical examiner who ruled a death at the Camp East Montana detention center at Fort Bliss a homicide. After the latest detainee death at the tent facility, the autopsy was performed at Fort Bliss’ William Beaumont Army Medical Center, which doesn’t release autopsy reports to the public.

Europe is reassessing the imminence of the Russian threat: The earlier belief in Berlin and other capitals was that Russia wouldn’t be able to threaten NATO until 2029 or so. There is now a growing consensus that such a crisis could come much sooner - before Europe, which is expanding its own investment in defense, is in a position to fight back. “Our assessment is that Russia will be able to move large amounts of troops within one year,” the Netherlands Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in an interview. “We see that they are already increasing their strategic inventories, and are expanding their presence and assets along the NATO borders.”

Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: The CIA announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual.The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions. First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies. The Factbook proved so useful that other federal agencies began using it, and within a decade, an unclassified version was released to the public. Let’s keep Americans in their usual state of ignorance about the world. (It really was useful - I used it multiple times researching for my books.)

Florida voters have filed a petition challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis’s push for mid-decade redistricting. A Thursday filing before the Florida Supreme Court argues that DeSantis does not have the authority to order the state Legislature to draw new maps. They’re asking the court to clarify that the proclamations and directives issued by the governor and secretary of state are “not binding and unenforceable.”

Maladministration II is rescinding a total of $1.5 billion in health and transportation funds from multiple blue states, OMB confirmed Thursday. OMB directed the Transportation Department to rescind $943 million from Colorado, Illinois, California and Minnesota, and it directed the CDC to rescind $602 million from those states. The Transportation funds are mostly for electric vehicle chargers but also include other projects such as green buses. The CDC funds would have gone toward state and local health grants that the administration feels are too “woke.” The OMB spokesperson said the recissions are targeting “states fraught with waste and mismanagement.”

The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. And announced “changes” to the information, Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling Evers’ murderer a “racist.” Edits to the brochure have removed that reference to Byron De La Beckwith, according to Park Service officials, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Other edits include eliminating the reference to Medgar Evers lying in a pool of blood after being shot. In 1963, Beckwith shot Evers in his back on the driveway of the Evers family home. It would take 31 more years before a Mississippi jury would convict Beckwith. The original brochures pulled from the home called Beckwith “a member of the racist and segregationist White Citizens’ Council.” Beckwith also belonged to the nation’s most violent white supremacist group, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, responsible for at least 10 killings in Mississippi. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed Trump’s EO calling for the end to “woke” displays with his own order, calling for changes to monuments and memorials that “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures; or include any other improper partisan ideology.” National Park Service officials are “broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.” At the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in 2017, Trump hailed Evers, a World War II veteran, as a “great American hero.” But in the wake of his 2025 executive order, the U.S. Army removed Evers and others from a section on the Arlington National Cemetery website that honored Black Americans who fought in the nation’s wars. Alan Spears, from the National Parks Conservation Association, said: “You can talk about Martin Luther King Jr. overcoming. You just can’t talk about what he overcame.” God I hate these motherfucking scumbags. UPDATE: As of yesterday afternoon, after this became public, the NPS restored the brochures telling the truth to the Evers home.

Democrats are unified in their demands for ICE reform. Democrats have also made it known that they will not be providing any more votes for any continuing resolutions to keep the Department of Homeland Security and ICE funded beyond next Friday. John Thune is already preparing another continuing resolution and plans to decide by today whether it will be a short- or long-term patch.With concern growing about Trump using ICE to meddle in the midterm election, banning ICE from polling places is common sense. Everything Democrats have proposed is standard practice for local law enforcement, and Republicans oppose them all. The reality is ICE doesn’t have the resources to influence over 450 congressional elections nationwide in November. The bigger threat is Trump deploys ICE to where there are open and close US Senate elections to try to keep the Senate majority in Republican hands. ICE is likely to be shut down again next Friday, and Republicans are the reason why.

Texas federal judge Alan Albright, a Trump appointee, determined that Texas state law SB13 - was a violation of the First and Fourteenth amendments. “SB 13’s application to protected speech is ‘substantial,’” he wrote in a decision published Wednesday, adding that this makes it “unconstitutional and unenforceable.” He found the law to be too broad, saying it “permits the State to penalize companies for all manner of protected expression concerning fossil fuels.” SB 13 - the law in question - would have barred state investment funds including pensions for teachers and state employees from firms that refuse to do business with fossil fuel companies. It required the state comptroller to create a blacklist of such companies and to divest state funds from them if they do not give up their anti-fossil positions.The state level law was part of a broader Republican opposition to what’s known as ESG investing, in which investors seek to push their money toward environmentally- and socially-conscious companies.

Winning friends and influencing people ( not!): the U.S. ambassador to Poland is lashing out at the country’s parliament speaker for the offense of not supporting Trump’s Nobel Prize fantasies. Ambassador Tom Rose raged at Parliament Speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty in an X rant on Wednesday, threatening the US would “have no further dealings, contacts, or communications” with Czarzasty, due to his “insults directed against President Trump.” Rose wrote that Czarzasty “made himself a serious impediment to our excellent relations with Prime Minister Tusk and his government.” Czarzasty made the alleged “outrageous and unprovoked insults” toward Trump on Monday while speaking to journalists. The chairman of Poland’s New Left party said he would not support U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s campaign to rally heads of the European parliaments to nominate Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, saying: “In my opinion, President Trump is destabilizing the situation in these international organizations by representing the politics of force and using force to pursue a transactional policy. All of this means that I will not support President Trump’s Nobel Prize nomination because he doesn’t deserve it.” Poland’s right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, came down on Czarasty, saying, “The current ruling coalition chose as parliamentary speaker a man who does not understand the importance and significance of alliances.” In contrast, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk chastised Rose, responding, “Mr. Ambassador Rose, allies should respect, not lecture, each other. At least this is how we here in Poland understand partnership.” Rose, a former right-wing journalist, responded, “I’m assuming your thoughtful and well-articulated message was sent to me by mistake, because surely you intended it for the Speaker of the Sejm, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, who’s despicable, disrespectful and insulting comments about President Trump were so potentially damaging to your government.” The controversy underlines tensions between the country’s left-leaning parliament and its conservative president. In Poland, a parliamentary republic, the president is the head of state, while the prime minister is the head of government and the Council of Ministers. (Sounds to me like the system we should have.)

It turns out that once you succed with extortion, you’ll try it again: CNN reports that Trump told Chuck Shumer last month that he would restore the funding he’s withholding from the Gateway Project, the new tunnel under the Hudson River to conn3ct New York City and New Jersey, which has been called the nation’s most important infrastructure project, but there was a price for his cooperation: Shumer had to agree to rename Penn Station in New York City and Washington’s Dulles International Airport for him. The startling offer was quickly rejected by Shumer, who told the old extortionist he didn’t any authority regarding renaming anything. This is another demonstration that Trump has dedicated all of Maladministration II to satisfying his own desires as well as satisfying his desire for revenge against his enemies.

Yesterday, the Office of Personnel Management announced a final rule creating Schedule F (now renamed Schedule Policy/Career). This allows Trump to remove job protections and fire tens of thousands of federal employees who hold policymaking roles, another step in politicizing public services under his personalist regime. Atredy, about 350,000 employees have been pushed out of government, disproportionately in agencies that are seen as more liberal. Federal hirings, annual performance evaluations, and even employee awards must now consider how loyal employees are to Trump, and are closely monitored by political appointees. The new rule both encourages politicization by making firing easier and by weakening whistleblower protections. Whistleblower claims no longer go to the independent Office of Special Counsel, but now stay inside the agency, reviewed most likely by a political appointee unlikely to want to expose wrongdoing by his fellow Trumpists and who could also expect to be fired for doing so. The document is an exhausting 250-plus pages of legalese and misdirection. This whole scam is part and pacel with the false “unitary executive” theory promoted by the authoritarian Right and will destroy the nonpartisan civil service that has now existed for 150 years.

MAGA’s long-haired sweetheart Kid Rock is under fire once again after more creepy comments towards teenage girls resurfaced. In an April 2001 Saturday Night Live appearance, Kid Rock - who is set to perform at the alternative conservative Super Bowl halftime show this Sunday - said that Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were old enough to pursue. At the time, the twins were 14-years-old. “Why is every guy in America waiting for these chicks to turn 18? I mean, you know what I’m saying? If there’s grass on the field, play ball!” he said on the show’s Weekend Update segment. Democrats were quick to highlight Kid Rock’s creepy comments about the Olson twins. “The face of the MAGA Halftime Show,” the Democrat’s X account wrote, sharing a post of Kid Rock’s transcript on SNL, paired with a screenshot of the MAGA singer’s appearance on the Update desk. Kid Rock is performing at Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” for the Super Bowl this weekend, which has been marketed as the “family values” halftime show. How dumb are the MAGAts? Dumb enough to think this bozo has any talent.

A final thought from David Rothkopf: Donald Trump is a noodle adrift in the chicken soup of his own mind.

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