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Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleThe Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight to discuss politics and whatnot over a drink. Please stop by if you can.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the back room of the pub. We start at 8:00pm.

Chapters of Living Liberally are all over the place…if you can’t make it to the Seattle chapter, stop by another chapter near you.

Comments

  2. 2

    People in the top pay grade aren’t supposed to make mistakes or learn on the job:

    The temporary leader of the Social Security Administration acknowledged Tuesday in an email to staff that he’s made mistakes in his rapid shakeup of the agency but said he wouldn’t be deterred.

    And there’s no excuse, none, for this:

    Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of Social Security, has shuttered internal offices, announced plans for mass layoffs and briefly canceled contracts in an apparent act of political retaliation against the state of Maine.

    If that’s what his White House boss insists he do, he should resign. By doing Trump’s bidding to keep his job, it’s on him, too.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/social-security-leland-dudek-mistakes_n_67d9925ee4b034e52523cd43

  4. 4

    A federal judge slammed the Trump administration Monday for putting fired workers entitled to reinstatement on paid administrative leave, saying they should be back on their jobs immediately.

    Judge William Alsup, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said in his order that putting workers on paid leave does nothing to fix the government services that were hurt due to the firings. He gave the Trump administration until 3 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday to explain what was going on.

    “The Court has read news reports that, in at least one agency, probationary employees are being rehired but then placed on administrative leave en masse,” Alsup wrote in his order. “This is not allowed by the preliminary injunction, for it would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judge-order-trump-fired-probationary-employees_n_67d99891e4b0f28acf227ecf

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Trump and his minions seem to think federal jobs exist solely for the benefit of federal workers. This goes a long way to explain why they’re so tone-deaf to what’s happening at Republican townhalls.

  5. 5

    A Jan. 6 rioter who attacked cops with a bat plans to run for U.S. Senator in Florida. I can’t decide whether this good or bad, because if he wins the GOP nomination, you’d think that would improve the Democrats’ chances of flipping that seat; but Florida being Florida, what if he wins and someone like that is in the U.S. Senate? But I doubt he’ll get more than 1% or 2% in the primary, similar to that St. Louis lawyer convicted of brandishing an AR-15 at black protesters (IIRC he was pardoned too) and then ran for the Senate and flopped dismally.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/man-pardoned-over-jan-6-capitol-attack-announces-run-for-us-senate_n_67d9ac90e4b004def09d433e

  8. 8

    Peacefully picketing on public right-of-way in front of Tesla dealerships without obstructing traffic or intimidating customers is a First Amendment right; but Roger Rabbit adamantly opposes vandalizing Teslas, Tesla charging stations, or Tesla dealerships; these are criminal acts and should be punished according to law.

  9. 9

    1,
    Just in time for media to finally turn their attention to the now long standing, credible, and widely documented reports of uniformed Russian infantry beating, raping, and torturing mothers, grandmothers, children, and even farm animals during their extended holidays in Crimean Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine.

    The GOP supports Russia. The GOP supports child rape, sodomy, and beastiality. They are unworthy of being considered human.

  10. 10

    Well, Robinhood Dumbfuck Rabbit’s last hope was for a spectacular explosion of the SpaceX recovery vessel in full view of all right-thinking and Musk-hating Americans. Alas, there was a successful splashdown and recovery of all astronauts, which makes Elon Musk a hero whom Joe Biden refused to allow to assist after the Biden-preferred Boeing recovery option turned to shit.

    Better luck next time, Robinhood Dumbfuck Rabbit. Still no SpaceX astronaut fatalities. NASA certainly cannot say the same.

  11. 11

    PI granted in Maryland. USAID funding and staffing restored.

    https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.576293/gov.uscourts.mdd.576293.73.0.pdf

    Unless the administration wishes to continue to openly defy the law.

    Which of course they will. But at least it does move us a big step forward toward the inescapable (and frankly already obvious) public conclusion that Republicans are now lawless authoritarians who have lost all control.

  12. 12

    @ 2

    People in the top pay grade aren’t supposed to make mistakes

    The best hitters in Major League Baseball fail nearly 7 times out of 10, Robinhood Dumbfuck Rabbit.

    Warren Buffett has made some seriously bonehead investment decisions.

    There is no such thing as a perfect professional anything. Physician, attorney, university chancellor… you name it, mistakes are made.

    You’re a walking, talking mistake, Robinhood Dumbfuck Rabbit.

  13. 13

    @112 Wherein Minor League washout Doctor Dumbfuck thinks it’s okay for Social Security to fail 70% of the time.

  14. 14

    I particularly love the fact that in his order granting the preliminary injunction restoring the USAID agency’s operations, Judge Chuang basically came to the same conclusion that Twitter trolls arrived at weeks ago: DOGE is fake.

    It’s a completely make believe construct created with no legal authority to provide a useful container in which Project 2025 can deposit all the unlawful and unconstitutional shit the GOP plans to do to fuck up legislative policy without functioning majorities in Congress.

  15. 15

    @ 14

    … created with no legal authority …

    Same authority as when Barack created it.

  16. 16

    A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked implementation of President Trump’s executive order effectively barring transgender people from serving openly in the military, a stark blow to the administration’s efforts to curb transgender rights.

    https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5202080-trump-transgender-military-ban/

    Trump’s EOs are falling like dominoes in the courts, and this is as good an occasion as any to explain why other presidents haven’t done what he’s doing, starting with FDR.

    All presidents get frustrated with the federal bureaucracy. FDR described it as a featherbed, which no matter how much you punch it is still the same shape.

    There’s a reason why other presidents haven’t taken a DOGE-style meataxe to it: Federal agencies and programs are established, sized, and funded by the people’s representatives in Congress, and the president’s authority over that process is limited to lobbying members of Congress and vetoing legislative bills.

    The president does not have a line-item veto. He does not have authority to freeze or impound congressionally-approved funding. He cannot unilaterally abrogate collecting bargaining agreements or other legally binding contracts.

    Historically, the presidency has been a “bully pulpit” with relatively little real power to order and direct, given the checks-and-balances nature of our system of government.

    All of this is Civics 101. No one should be shocked that courts are continuing to play their historical and constitutional role as a check on the other branches of government. Judges, on their own volition, have put some exercises of congressional and executive authority off-limits to judicial interference; these are called “political questions.” As one famous example, the legality of the Vietnam War, when challenged in the courts, was held to be a non-reviewable political question.

    Trump wants all his executive actions treated as nonreviewable political questions. Armed with one of history’s thinnest electoral mandates, he wants to put all his decisions and orders off-limits to judicial review.

    It doesn’t fucking work that way. The Republicans in charge of Congress can abrogate their constitutional function and defer to Trump if they want to, but the courts aren’t required to, and Trump has a choice: Either comply with their rulings, or operate outside the constitutional framework, and therefore with no authority other than whatever brute force he can muster.

    Going outside the law has pretty simple consequences. If his administration prosecutes the Jan. 6 committee members despite their pardons, the courts will dismiss those cases and impose sanctions on the government lawyers who bring them to the courts (as might bar associations, as well).

    If DOGE’s mass firings are held by the courts to be illegal, and Trump refuses to reinstate those federal employees, they nevertheless will be entitled to full back pay and benefits, which will be a chargeable liability against the government and taxpayers, potentially costing (and wasting) hundreds of billions of dollars.

    If Trump illegally kicks LGBQT service members out of the military, the courts will rule they are still active service members entitled to the pay, promotions, retirement credits, and other benefits they would have gotten.

    If Trump’s immigrant sweep seizes and imprisons American citizens, and they sue the government, courts will award them damages for violation of their civil rights — once again potentially costing (and wasting) millions or billions of taxpayer dollars.

    How all this will be paid for is up to a future Congress. I’m for taxing billionaires, above all Elon Musk. After all, they’re the ones behind all this. Many of Trump’s cabinet members are billionaires. Musk is the driving force behind DOGE’s illegal agency closures and mass firings. This is on them, and its only fair they should pay for it.

  17. 17

    @10 “there was a successful splashdown and recovery of all astronauts, which makes Elon Musk a hero”

    Why? It’s not a new technology he came up with. Russian and American space agencies have been doing this for more than sixty years. It’s been routine since before he was born.

  18. 18

    @ 17

    Russian and American space agencies have been doing this for more than sixty years.

    Then Biden and Boeing should have had no trouble doing it last year. They couldn’t.

  19. 19

    @10 “Still no SpaceX astronaut fatalities. NASA certainly cannot say the same.”

    Yeah, it’s learn-as-you-go, and SpaceX directly benefits from decades of NASA experience, NASA’s lessons learned, and its astronaut losses. Without the NASA space program, which paved the way for today’s private space ventures, there would be no SpaceX. NASA pioneers are the shoulders Musk’s company stands on.

  20. 20

    @ 19

    … SpaceX directly benefits from decades of NASA experience …

    Yeah, I really like all of those reusable rockets NASA has been firing since before I was born.

    Robinhood Dumbfuck Rabbit credits NASA for inventing the wheel.

  21. 21

    @18 That’s what happens when you contract out space launches and recoveries to private enterprise and/or the Russians. This fiasco should have people wondering whether privatizing NASA is a good idea.

  22. 22

    @15 False equivalency. Obama created the U.S. Digital Service, a technology unit providing “consultation services to federal agencies on information technology. The agency’s 2014 mandate was to improve and simplify digital service, and to improve federal websites” (quoted from Wikipedia).

    Trump renamed this agency “DOGE” and Musk turned it into a wrecking ball. DOGE bears no resemblance to Obama’s USDS agency, and Obama had nothing to do with DOGE. Your comment @15 is more than a false equivalency, it’s intellectually dishonest. Extremely so, even by troll-under-a-bridge standards.

  23. 23

    @20 Explain what role “reusable rockets” play in “successful splashdown and recovery of all astronauts.”

    If Musk successfully shot astronauts into orbit with a giant cannon, which no one has done and would be a new and innovative launch methodology, the reentry and recovery would still be 60-year-old technology.

    The one has nothing to do with the other.

  24. 24

    Re-upping with another dazzling detail

    For the millionth time….not trans or drag.

    State Senator Justin Eichorn, R-MN, family man, married, 4 Kids, BA from Concordia University (private Lutheran) drafter of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome is a mental disease bill

    Arrested. Soliciting sex with a minor, soliciting prostitution.

  25. 25

    Julio Noriega, US Born citizen of a mocha complexion , grabbed off a Chicago street and sent to an ICE facility with no warrant or probable cause, except looking Latino, has filed a lawsuit against ICE and Border patrol.

    The settlement offer from the Government will be swift and substantial

  27. 27

    @25 Stopped and ID’d on reasonable articulable suspicion of looking Latino. Wait, did they forget to ID him? And there’s more:

    “What his case represents here is they have no record of holding him,” Fleming said. “They have no record of having him, there’s no video camera, there’s no body camera. How do they not have any record of having him? That’s scary.”

    In any case, Noriega was arrested in violation of a court settlement under which

    ICE is not allowed to make warrantless arrests in the Chicago area unless officials believe the person is in the country unlawfully and have reason to believe that the person would flee before a warrant is secured, said Rebecca Glenberg, the chief supervising litigation counsel of First Amendment for the ACLU of Illinois.

    (Same link.) And there’s this, too:

    ICE agents allegedly fill out warrants after an arrest

    https://www.wbez.org/reset-with-sasha-ann-simons/2025/03/17/ice-agents-allegedly-making-arrests-without-warrants

    This shit has “unlawful” and “liability” written all over it. These ICE agents must have been hired two weeks ago and given 8 hours of training before being turned loose on the streets with quotas to meet.

  28. 28

    The first couple hundred or so pages of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” can be roughly summed up as follows:

    STALIN: I must have 10 million enemies.

    BERIA, thinking: (Find 10 million enemies.)

    Ten million random people are rounded up and sent to the Gulag.

    I read the book years ago, but remember a passage where Solzhenitsyn describes a woman going to a police station to find out the status of her arrested husband, is told to wait, then she’s arrested and spirited off to the Gulag, too. I wonder if ICE is using “Gulag Archipelago” as an operations handbook?

  29. 29

    The attack on Social Security has begun:

    Social Security Administration to require in-person identity checks for new and existing recipients

    In an effort to limit fraudulent claims, the Social Security Administration will … require millions of recipients and applicants to visit agency field offices rather than interact with the agency over the phone.

    Beginning March 31st, people will no longer be able to verify their identity to the SSA over the phone and those who cannot properly verify their identity over the agency’s “my Social Security” online service, will be required to visit an agency field office in person to complete the verification process, agency leadership told reporters Tuesday.

    The change will apply to new Social Security applicants and existing recipients who want to change their direct deposit information.

    https://www.aol.com/social-security-administration-require-person-224116377.html

    Many seniors can’t navigate online portals, and they’re closing field offices.

    Given that Social Security is an earned benefit, which recipients are entitled to by right, the right way to do this is to put the burden on the government to flag and investigate possible improper payments.

    Doing it this way will inconvenience 67 million current recipients and all future recipients. At a minimum, a change to accessing Social Security benefits of this magnitude should go through Congress, where the people have a say about it through their elected representatives.

    Especially when they’re closing offices. The seniors hit hardest by this will be those living in rural districts, where Trump typically won by big majorities. Wittingly or unwittingly, they voted for this.

    Expect to see further restrictions on receiving Social Security coming down the pike. The game plan seems to be to shut down the program a little at a time, by refusing and terminating benefits a relatively few at a time.

  30. 30

    @18

    The Biden administration purchased the Space X capsule, authorized the additional funds for an unplanned mission…

    Trump did absolutely nothing. Elon did barely more than nothing.

    It should be noted here the Boeing capsule that NASA rejected out an an abundance of caution, which was the right call returned safely unmanned.

    Funny how the last time something planed WAY in advance by the outgoing administration was Biden’s fault when the plan was carried out.

    It’s almost like Dumbfuck is a craven shill for the GOP

  31. 31

    ICE agents and other Trump minions appear to be operating on a “suspicion equals guilt” basis. I think they got that from Bob.

  33. 33

    Trump just fired the two Democratic federal trade commissioners. By statute, the FTC has 5 commissioners, only 3 of whom can be from the same political party. With these firings, there are 2 commissioners and 3 vacancies.

    The fired Democratic commissioners contend their firings are illegal, and they’re probably right, because the FTC statute only authorizes dismissal for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

    When FDR tried to do what Trump just did, the Supreme Court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that presidents can’t fire FTC commissioners for political reasons.

  34. 34

    Huffington Post is reporting that Trump claims the Supreme Court’s Humphrey’s Executor ruling is “unconstitutional.” But presidents don’t decide what’s constitutional; the Supreme Court does.

  35. 35

    34,

    There’s a new Supreme Supreme Court now.

    And his name is Fat Hitler.

  37. 37

    Ironically enough, DOGE actually closed down the US Digital Service.

    Presumably so the Nazi Dumbfuck could spout this silly lie.

  38. 38

    Minnesota Senate Republican Justin Eichorn, who gained noteriety recently for introducing a bill that would define “Trump derangement syndrome” as a treatable meant illness, was arrested yesterday on criminal charges that he solicited a Bloomington 16 year old for sex.

    Of course.

  41. 41

    Elmo is now crying on television about his failing companies, complaining that there must be a big conspiracy at work against him.

    You know.

    Just like Charles Manson.

  43. 43

    Trump’s DefSec Pete Hegseth is overhauling the military JAG corps “so that they provide more expansive legal advice to commanders to pursue more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes. … Hegseth is also cutting jobs and offices focused on reducing civilian deaths from U.S. combat operations.”

    https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pete-hegseth-us-military-jags-palatore-lawyers-rcna196761

    Looks like he’s adopting the Netanyahu model of handling journalists, doctors and nurses, aid workers, hospitals and schools, and helpless old people, women, children, and babies.

  46. 46

    In other political news,

    “Trump administration halts program to track abducted Ukrainian children, lawmakers say …. Data about 30,000 abducted children may be gone for good”

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-halts-program-track-abducted-ukrainian-children-lawmakers-2025-03-18/

    “Trump administration removes ban on ‘segregated facilities’ in federal contracts”

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-removes-ban-segregated-facilities-federal-contracts-2025-03-19/

    “Trump signs order to shift disaster preparations from FEMA to states, local governments”

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-signs-order-shift-disaster-preparations-fema-states-local-governments-2025-03-19/

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