Facebooking
An assortment of recent Facebook posts no one cared about except me.
Gaza.
From Robert Higgs, great economist.
What the Israelis have done, with the support and essential cooperation and supply of the U.S. government, is monstrous beyond description. Here is a picture of a small portion of the whole despicable scene. This is as pure a depiction of evil as anyone is likely to see.
Californian High Speed Boondoggle to Nowhere --
Don't investigate it, Trump. Kill it.
The fact that this boondoggle of all boondoggles -- this exemplar of political corruption and incompetence, this criminal waste of federal money, this stupid love-toy of the mass transit nerds who are stuck in 1905 and still dream of passenger trains everywhere -- still exists after two decades and still has supporters is not a bad joke, it's a crime.
Where was the national media? Where were the journalists? Where were the uncorrupted politicians in California?
I hope Trump does to what's already built of the train what Biden did to the border wall, only faster.
(I sure hope my old paper, the LA Times, has come out against this stupidity on its editorial page many times, and done lots of investigative work to expose its many failures and crimes, but I am dreaming. Not that the LAT matters anymore.)
latimes.com — Lapdog media.
Speaking of Lapdogs.
My pal Sean Paige asks the right questions about why our 'watchdog media' have no interest in exposing the waste and stupidity that has flourished in Washington for 30 years.
"Shouldn't our "watchdog media" -- you know, the media that exposed the Watergate scandal, published the stolen Pentagon papers, and blew the lid off the "Iran Contra Affair" -- be cheering Trump's effort to rummage through the Deep State's dirty laundry?
"The media supports greater government transparency and accountability, right? The media speaks truth to power, right? Democracy dies in darkness, right?
"So, why is our self-styled "watchdog media" totally freaked out by what Trump and Musk are doing with DOGE? Real watchdogs should be loving this. But they're hating it.
“What does that tell you?”
Executive Order Abuse
Since we're counting executive orders, I asked Perplexity Ai to help put some things in perspective. When we're talking about being a dictator who did imperious things, it's hard to top FDR -- in quantity and quality: He took away people’s gold and he interned Japanese-American citizens during WWII.
Here’s a definition of executive orders from Ballotpedia:
Executive orders are directives written by the president to officials within the executive branch requiring them to take or stop some action related to policy or management. They are numbered, published in the Federal Register, and cite the authority by which the president is making the order.[1][2]
Question:
Starting with the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln and continuing through the Biden administration to today, please list the most important executive orders signed by various presidents and how many executive orders were signed by each of the last 10 US presidents.
Answer:
Executive orders have shaped pivotal moments in U.S. history, from advancing civil rights to addressing national crises. Below is a breakdown of landmark executive orders and the volume issued by recent presidents.
Key Executive Orders in U.S. History
Abraham Lincoln
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states during the Civil War15.Franklin D. Roosevelt
Executive Order 9066 (1942)
Authorized Japanese American internment during WWII15.
Executive Order 6102 (1933)
Banned private gold ownership to stabilize the economy5.Harry S. Truman
Executive Order 9981 (1948)
Desegregated the U.S. military1.Lyndon B. Johnson
Executive Order 11246 (1965)
Prohibited employment discrimination based on race, religion, or gender2.Jimmy Carter
Executive Order 12148 (1979)
Established the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)2.Donald Trump
Travel Ban (2017)
Restricted entry from several Muslim-majority countries34.Joe Biden
Rejoined Paris Climate Agreement (2021)
Revoked Trump’s withdrawal from the accord3.
Executive Order Totals for the Last 10 Presidents
PresidentTerm(s) Total Executive Orders
Richard Nixon 1969–1974: 346
Gerald Ford 1974–1977: 169
Jimmy Carter 1977–1981: 320
Ronald Reagan 1981–1989: 381
George H.W. Bush 1989–1993:166
Bill Clinton 1993–2001: 308
George W. Bush 2001–2009: 291
Barack Obama 2009–2017: 276
Donald Trump (1st) 2017–2021: 220
Joe Biden 2021–2025: 160
Sources indicate recent presidents average 266 orders per term, with two-term presidents issuing more (e.g., Reagan’s 381) than single-term leaders like Biden 67.
Notably, Franklin D. Roosevelt remains the record-holder with 3,721 orders over 12 years.
I added this info:
President Joe Biden (D) signed 162 executive orders, 242 presidential memoranda, 725 proclamations, and 152 notices.
LA Fires
Leftwingers want to blame the devastating LA fires on climate change. Rightwingers want to blame incompetent Democrat politicians or too little water in the reservoirs and hydrants or too few qualified fire fighters because of DEI.
The real culprit is Mother Nature and her stubborn insistence on repeating herself every few decades by sending unstoppable wildfires into places like Pacific Palisades after humans have built more and even more expensive homes.
For LA residents or working newspaper folks who blame climate change and want the local authorities to address its threat, it may be a surprise to learn that LA officials, planners and politicians have been doing a lot of talking and writing about mitigating the threat of climate change for almost 20 years.
This handy, rightwardly spun substack item tells that history. Spoiler: The record is not good. https://www.greenleapforward.wtf/.../fires-and-los...
And for the record, and eerily loaded with Hollywood movie people losing their huge homes, is the LA Times coverage of the Nov. 24, 1938 fires that pretty much swept through the same area in Pacific Palisades.
It was national news, of course, and eventually totaled nearly 800 homes and 50,000 acres burned in five or so fires ... Will Rogers' ranch -- its house/museum was totally destroyed this year -- was partially lost in 1938 .. same kind of photos ... same thick brush on hills and same impossible job of stopping the spread because of the Santa Ana winds.
Mother Nature is not just a bitch. She repeats herself.
The amazing rise of Salena Zito
Salena Zito worked at the Pittsburgh Trib with me in the late 2000s. She was a Sunday political columnist. I edited her copy every week for several years. This is her very good, fair, funny, revealing and honest story about her amazing relationship with Donald Trump and the voters of the Rust Belt who idolize him and put him in the White House twice.
Zito has come a long way and deserves her fame. The former hair-dresser who never went to college outshined, out-reported, out-hustled and out-predicted all the hot-shot phony national print and TV journalists who hated Trump ten times more than Salena liked him and couldn't do their jobs fairly or honestly or smartly.
The great Thomas Sowell.
And let’s never forget the wisdom of Thomas Sowell.
