DCUM Weblog

For the next week or so, I will be putting my attention elsewhere and won't have time to post here. But I'll return to this blog as soon as I can. In the meantime, I want to provide a few thoughts about what I believe to be the three greatest dangers that our country is currently facing. There is a bit of overlap among these, and none of them can be covered to the extent that they deserve in a post of this length (or, more accurately, shortness). I have previously touched on all of them as well. But to get to the point, the three great dangers that I see facing the United States are cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and political autocracy.

The dangers of cryptocurrency are not really the currencies themselves, but the side effects of them. The original vision of cryptocurrency, at least as I understand it, is that it would create a currency that was not controlled by governments. The philosophy of cryptocurrency supporters was aligned with the thinking of libertarians who valued freedom from government. Implicit in this thinking is that cryptocurrencies would actually be used. Individuals would be able to buy things with the currencies just as they do using U.S. dollars. Increasingly, however, cryptocurrencies have become vehicles for investment. In very simplistic terms, there are two types of investment. In one, the investment makes steady, though perhaps modest, returns. These returns could be in the form of dividends, for instance. Alternatively, the goal of the investment is profit from the increasing value of the asset. In other words, buy something at one price, wait for the price to go up, and then sell it. Monthly dividends are generally not much of a concern in this case. Almost exclusively, cryptocurrency investments are the second type. Cryptocurrency investors hope to buy low and sell high, but they don't really plan to use the currency as actual currency.

I didn't really have ideas for a particular topic on which to concentrate today. Therefore, I am going to touch on a few shorter items. The first is the mental condition of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. I have written before about Trump's particular fixation on the word "groceries", a term that he seems to believe is old-fashioned and not widely understood. As such, he has repeatedly made an effort to define the word for his audience. Last week, The Recount put together a video compilation of Trump talking about groceries as if the word is a mystery to most people. As I suggested earlier, I believe that this is an indication that Trump might be struggling neurologically.

In 2023, Supreme Court expert Stephen Vladeck published a book titled, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic". I have not read the entire book, but I have read lengthy excerpts and a number of summaries. Based on that exposure, I am not sure that there could possibly be a more prescient book about today's Supreme Court. It would literally be impossible to understand what is going on with the Supreme Court these days without understanding the "Shadow Docket." Moreover, this has become increasingly true after Vladeck published his book. Just yesterday, the Court again issued a ruling in regard to an emergency application without the majority providing a single word of explanation. In essence, we know what the justices concluded, but we don't know how or why they arrived at that conclusion. This provides plenty of room for misunderstanding or to mislead about the decision. There are a number of distinctly negative ramifications from this practice.

Last Friday I wrote about the dangers of the expansion of federal law enforcement departments under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. The recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill law contains $178 billion in immigration enforcement funding over the next decade, most of which will go to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. As I noted in that post, the law enforcement agencies under DHS have much more lax recruitment standards and follow considerably more lenient policies than the law enforcement departments contained within the Department of Justice, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As a result, abuses are much more likely to be committed by the DHS agencies, such as ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Recently, there has been considerable attention focused on the tactics employed by those agencies, with federal judges stepping in to halt some practices.

There is a lot to say about the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is now the One Big Beautiful Bill law after cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump signed it. While the law is far from beautiful, it is indeed big. It will take years to understand its full impact. Democrats and Republicans alike have been expressing surprise about changes to how gambling losses can be deducted from taxes. Apparently, most didn't know the provision was included in the OBBB, and many are having regrets about the change. But that is a small change compared to the impact the law will have on the availability of healthcare coverage and electricity rates. The fact that the law contains tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations is probably well known. But the law also provides massive benefits to Trump's deportation efforts. The law contains $178 billion in immigration enforcement funding over the next decade, most of it going to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. This is going to remake law enforcement in the United States in ways of which most Americans have no idea.

In the aftermath of the July 4 flooding in Texas, which has left at least 120 dead and even more than that missing, attention has focused on cuts made by the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Criticism of the accuracy of the weather forecast by local officials in Texas caused many to wonder if Trump's cuts had harmed those agencies' ability to accurately predict rain. However, it now appears that the forecasts and predictions were reasonably accurate. That, however, does not mean that the federal response has not fallen short in other areas. To the contrary, there is plenty of room to be concerned about the state of federal emergency response services.

Twenty-two years ago, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq justified by claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. These allegations would later prove to have been false. Intelligence had been manipulated to fit the desired outcome. As the notorious "Downing Street Memo" that described a meeting of top British officials discussing classified U.S. plans for the war put it, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." A Washington Post article published yesterday suggests that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears to have embarked on a mission to repeat the manipulation of intelligence that marked the Iraq War run-up, but this time on steroids.

Today I am going to talk about trade. Yesterday, cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump sent letters to the leaders of a number of countries informing them of new tariff rates that would take effect on August 1, 2025. As such, this presents another opportunity to discuss how little Trump seems to understand about basic international trade, or indeed, any trade.

Trump views American trade deficits with other countries as an indication that those countries are somehow cheating us. There was a time when Republicans were all about "competitive advantage" and arguing that a country should focus on selling the products that it could produce cheaper than other countries. But those were the days when Trump was a Democrat and he probably didn't pay attention to what Republicans were saying. Incidentally, the Republicans back then promoted what were technically "liberal" economic theories. Similarly, Democrats in those days tended to be more protectionist, which is a conservative economic position. Down used to be up and up down, but that was the way we liked it. Now things are more complex with both parties having liberal and conservative economic proponents. Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon can probably find a lot of common ground on trade issues with both advocating conservative protectionist ideas. For that matter, if he were honest, I am fairly certain that Bannon would prefer former President Joe Biden's approach to trade and industry — in which targeted tariffs were used — more than Trump's uncoordinated approach. The problem with Trump is not that he is either liberal or conservative in his economic approach, but that he is just ignorant. None of it makes sense.

It is unfortunately normal these days that any significant event is immediately politicized. Social media is particularly responsible for this phenomenon as posters race to post an interpretation of events that fits their partisan political leanings before relevant facts are known. The floodwaters in Texas had not likely even crested before fingers of blame were being pointed in various directions. It was fairly hard for anyone to blame Democrats given that Republicans control both the federal government and the government in Texas (though that didn't stop some folks from trying), but there was a very public disagreement between federal and Texas officials. As is often the case in such tragedies, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Finger pointing started immediately with the first press briefing held by officials in Texas. Local authorities blamed the National Weather Service for wrongly predicting the amount of rain that would fall in the area. Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd told reporters, "Everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right? ... It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw." While Kidd presented a somewhat misleading account of the NWS's performance and was clearly engaged in blame-shifting, his narrative supported earlier predictions by Democrats that government cutbacks led by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and the U.S. DOGE Service would result in Americans losing their lives. A narrative took off — and almost immediately showed up in DCUM discussions — that the cuts to the government's weather organizations had left the agencies unable to perform their duties. Blame for the deaths in Texas, therefore, was laid squarely at the feet of Trump and former Shadow President and de facto DOGE leader Elon Musk.

I had considered not writing a blog post today since it is a holiday, or possibly writing about how today would be a good day to remember that the 4th of July celebrates this country's forefathers ridding themselves of a tyrant's rule and creating a political system in which there is no King. Those seem to be lessons lost by many Americans, particularly among those who like to call themselves "patriots". However, the New York Times published an article about Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani's application to Columbia University in 2009. Because everyone else seems to be writing about that, I thought I should as well. If I wait until Monday, there will probably be a half-dozen other things about which I will want to write. So, here is a holiday special about the New York Times, which has shown itself quite clearly to be an enabler of fascism.