I guess it's easier for you guys to talk about those issues rather than face what is going on right now. That is:

* Musk indiscriminately and ignorantly taking his chainsaw to government agencies regardless of the effects on US citizens and the services provided (not to mention the qualified people who got laid off despite their good work), including people losing their earned social security benefits, destruction of in-process medical and scientific experiments, and loss of lifesaving weather information.

* Musk violating the separation of powers by engaging in activities that have been granted only to Congress, not the Executive branch, e.g., with the distribution of funds.

* Trump favoring Russian dictator Putin over our longstanding democratic European allies.

* Trump acting the imperialist and proposing to take Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

* Trump wrecking the economy with his tariffs, tanking the stock market.

* Congress, under the direction of Trump, planning on cutting Medicaid, which would harm millions of Americans, in order give a tax cut to billionaires.

* Musk threatening to use his large money chest to primary any Republican who dares not to go along with the plan (and there are rumors of physical threats to persons and families as well).

* Trump deporting people who are here legally without having or providing evidence of illegal activity, including people whose main "violation" seems to be speech that Trump doesn't like.

* Trump violating and ignoring judge's orders and threatening to impeach judges, to the point where even Supreme Court Justice Roberts felt like he had to interject and say, no, we don't impeach judges, there is a formal process to challenge rulings that you disagree with.

And that isn't even a close to complete list of all of the ways in which this administration is dismantling our system of government. It is because of all of these reasons that many Democrats feel that Schumer isn't recognizing the seriousness of the situation and acting accordingly. Instead, he's acting like it's business as usual, normal times. But this is anything but normal. Many Democrats and Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that, but we will all (except for the billionaires) be all too aware in the days, weeks, and months to come.

The fact that that is your sole response to everything I said is very telling.

Uhuh.

Trump: "This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!"

Chief Justice John Roberts : "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

Note that it's extremely rare for Roberts to make any sort of statement like this.

No talking points here, "Democrat" or otherwise, or anywhere in my comment, just facts.

I've put your comments in italics and left mine in plain text.

I'll give a longer response than Keith, Interesting that Roberta is upset with"

But was not upset when "Left leaning unelected bureaucrats were "indiscriminately and ignorantly" adding new regulations and employees to government agencies regardless of the effects on US citizens and business"...

Whataboutism - an attempt to change the subject from Musk/Trump

> including people losing their earned social security benefits,

Can you share a link to how people are "losing their earned social security benefits" (I did not think this was possible).

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/17/social-security-trump-doge

Social security delays and screwups are legendary. Now they want to take away phone access from people who need it most, i.e., seniors. If you can't get your problems resolved, you lose your benefits.

> loss of lifesaving weather information
I have been told for years that most of the SF Peninsula will be under water and we won't have snow in CA for years by my left of center friends so the "loss of lifesaving weather information." will not be a big loss (these "climate action" people were so sure the climate was changing that they recently got stuck in the snow):
https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/firefighters-rescue-conference-snow-big-bear-20226553.php

I'm talking about weather reports of serious storms on the way where people end up dying -- weather warnings. You seem to be talking about climate change, which is an issue but not the one I was highlighting here.

I'm wondering if Roberta can name even one (1) activity "that have been granted only to Congress" (with a link to the Federal statute that says it is is only granted to Congress)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_the_purse

"In the federal government of the United States, the power of the purse is vested in the Congress as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 (the Appropriations Clause) and Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (the Taxing and Spending Clause)."

When Roberta says "Trump favoring Russian dictator Putin over our longstanding democratic European allies." I realize that (like most of my left of center friends) that "Russiagate" was a hoax made up by DNC staffers hoping it would help HRC get elected.

Again, I don't know why you're bringing this up when Putin's dictatorial actions are legendary, not to mention Russian history, the cold war, etc. You're cherrypicking issues that I didn't bring up.

When Roberta says "Trump acting the imperialist and proposing to take Greenland, Canada, and Panama." I'm wondering if he thinks we should give Alaska back to Russia and California back to Mexico?

Bad behavior in the past is no excuse for bad behavior in the future. We can do better.

> Trump wrecking the economy with his tariffs, tanking the stock market.

The S&P 500 was ~1,100 in 2004, and ~3,900 in 2022 and is ~5,600 today is anyone (other than people that hate Trump) saying the stock market is "Tanking". Not investment advice but nice "South of Davis" (and El Macero and Oakshade) homes that were pushing $1mm in 2004 are barely at $2mm but almost everyone is saying “real estate bubble” the stock market is up FIVE times in the same 20 years so we need a correction to get PE ratios back in line (I sold a bunch of stock to buy CDs last year).

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-nasdaq-sp500-03-18-2025/card/investors-ditch-u-s-stocks-worry-about-global-growth-survey-shows-aZKJ59VElfHyZnBWeFe5

"Fund managers have cut their exposure to U.S. stocks and become concerned about the economic outlook, a Bank of America survey showed.

"Peak U.S. exceptionalism is reflected in record rotation out of U.S. stocks," investment strategists at the bank wrote. They cited worries about the impact of the trade war and stagflation, or the combination of economic stagnation and inflation."

> Musk threatening to use his large money chest to primary any Republican
> who dares not to go along with the
Not OK (like firebombing and shooting at random Teslas and Tesla dealerships)

Seems like you agree on this one?

> Trump deporting people who are here legally
The more Democrats gat mad at illegal Latin American gang members who are terrorizing Spanish speaking communities getting deported while yelling at Mexican dudes for using Latino vs LatinX the more Latinos (and Latinas) will switch to voting Republican. Rich college educated white women want more illegal aliens to have more cheap housekeepers (and gardeners) and can’t believe that most Latinos (what they call “the poor little brown people they need to protect”) want a wall and gang members deported (the gender studies professors don’t lose their jobs to illegal aliens but the working class Latinos and Latinas do)…

Umm... yeah... not sure what this stream of consciousness is about, but it doesn't respond to the concern that Trump is deporting people who are here legally.

No President or "appointee" or whatever they are calling Musk today has gone in and indiscriminately made the drastic cuts to employees over the course of days per agency the way that Musk has. No one from the executive branch has tried to cut the funding of agencies because again, that power belongs to Congress (as a number of judges have ruled in recent weeks).

People don’t “lose” benefits if they can’t get a real person on the phone (if you ever really need a person you can stay on hold for long enough like I did with the IRS a few years back).

No, you don't get it. The SSA is planning on cutting phone service altogether -- it won't validate you over the phone. You have to come in person, keeping in mind that there are many elderly people who can no longer need their homes (I know some of them). So, if there is a mistake, it cannot be corrected. They simply won't get their check, or will get a lesser amount, or won't be able to solve whatever the problem is. And the SSA acknowledges that this will be a problem.

How does anyone that is not being irresponsible die in a storm?

Umm, because they didn't know how serious the storm was going to be because of the drastic cuts to meteorology, affecting the equipment, the analysis, and the reporting?

I’m not happy about this, but no President in my lifetime has asked Congress for permission to spend money or cut spending (as a super “anti-war” who has hated the US government spending billions killing people around the world I’m also upset that Congress has not declared war when bombing people (I was ready to move to Mexico rather than get sent to Vietnam where we never actually “declared” war).

No president has ever closed down agencies or laid off workers from agencies. And yes, the president does negotiate with Congress for budget, even for money for war. Remember in just the last months the discussions over whether Congress would continue sending equipment to Ukraine? You're just not paying attention, but it's all there in the news archives for you to read.

I’m wondering if Roberta thinks these gang members were here “legally”?

In many cases the only evidence that they had was a tattoo. A tattoo. Sorry, that's not enough. Perhaps some were gang members, but none got due process.

And I was referring to the Columbia student, who had a green card, and others who've been deported (or they have tried to deport them) for their speech. Again, no crimes have been charged.

I find it fascinating that you guys are more interested in re-hashing the past administration than you are in facing up to what the current administration is doing: violating court orders and the constitution, deporting people who are here legally or preventing them from coming because of their speech alone, dismantling agencies that the public relies on and indiscriminately and illegally laying off thousands of qualified workers (many of whom had to be hastily called back because they were needed or because a judge ordered it), cutting Social Security services and crafting a budget that can only be balanced by dramatically cutting Medicaid (which will affect millions of Americans and cause hospitals to close), tariffs that will hurt business and raise prices, cutting off funding for scientific and medical research, including halting in-process medical trials, all while insisting that the uber-wealthy need tax cuts.

These are serious concerns that *any* American, Republican or Democrat or Independent, should care about.

Well, I guess it depends on what "can't do much about him" means. If you mean "depose him," maybe not. But so far the courts are stopping a lot of his actions. Also, even though Congress has been going along with anything Trump wants, that may change. Members of Congress, especially the House, are concerned about being seen as endorsing unpopular actions (like cutting Medicaid). The bigger the protests get (and Bernie and AOC are drawing massive crowds just by going around and talking to people), the more uncomfortable they get. I'm not claiming that this blog has a huge role to play in getting the word out and sharing information -- we're just Davis after all -- but social media more generally I think does play a role.

And there we are again, right back talking about the Democrats and nary a peep about Trump dismantling our democracy.

Here's the thing. You guys seem to want to play the red team/blue team game and natter on about things that don't really affect you, like the miniscule percentage of trans women playing sports. Meanwhile Trump and Musk are working hard to dismantle the separation of powers and put all the power in the executive branch. The executive, judicial, and legislative branches were supposed to be a system of checks and balances. Do you not believe in that, or can you not break out of the red team/blue team mentality enough to criticize someone from your own team?

And yes, I criticized Biden often enough. He was never my candidate of choice, although he was better than I thought he'd be.

But again, the past is the past and here in the present we have a President who clearly wants to be King. Are you OK with that? When does it get bad enough that you speak out about it?

No, what I am saying is that the things that Trump and Musk are doing to dismantle our government (I'm not going to repeat them again -- I've said several times already) should be concerning to ANY American. And I haven't seen you comment on them one way or the other. Does that mean you don't think we need separation of powers/systems of checks and balances? It's not controversial to say that they are dismantling those things. Their actions and words have been quite clear and explicit.

Ron, still talking about the past administration while not addressing what is happening *now*. So I will ask you the same question I asked Keith, which he didn't answer: Does that mean you don't think we need separation of powers/systems of checks and balances?

Ron, thank you for taking a stand on checks-and-balances. I don't think that most people are clued into just how extensive the attacks on the separation of powers has been over such a very short time. And there are new things every day, e.g., Trump's recent executive order which tries to dictate to states what their voting process should be, something that has always been the purview of states. It will likely get challenged and, I predict, overturned, but the scale of the attacks on our democratic (little d) system of government is overwhelming -- by design, of course.

Ron writes, "I think what's equally-concerning is Trump's withholding of funds to states, agencies, and universities unless they "do what he says" regarding issues that are sometimes unrelated."

I would consider that as part of the same broader concern I have about executive overreach, tending toward authoritarian rule. I share your concern as well as the specific examples you give (LA Fires, the forced release of water, and the Coastal Commission).