Trump’s Stupid IRS Lawsuit Will Be Settled with Our Tax Dollars

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the president is about to steal $1.7 billion from the rest of us. From ABC News:

President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.

This is a meritless lawsuit, the same way all the others have been, except this has the bizarre twist that the president is going to scarf up a lucrative settlement from the government he purports to lead. And even if he doesn’t claim all the money, he has an unaccountable slush fund from which he can dole out bribe money with both hands. I’m sure this will work out splendidly.

In addition to a public apology from the IRS, the compensation fund is believed to be the main condition for Trump to drop a series of legal actions he filed against the federal government, including the $10 billion lawsuit related to the 2019 leak of his tax returns as well as $230 million in legal claims related to the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term in office, sources familiar with the ongoing deliberations said. The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims; however, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims, sources said.

Along with the noise in Congress about erasing both impeachments from legislative history, the president will now get paid for occasioning law-enforcement actions against him. His minions will get paid for their minionhood. And the January 6 insurrectionists will get paid for desecrating the Capitol building, attacking Capitol police officers, and generally attempting to use mayhem to overturn the 2020 election.

The arrangement would be an unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars with little oversight. Under the terms of the potential settlement agreement, President Trump would have the authority to remove members of the commission running the fund without cause, and the commission would be under no obligation to disclose its procedures or decision-making process for awarding more than a billion dollars, the sources said.

So the president is going to win a settlement of a lawsuit from one agency of the government that he brought against another agency of the government. Three more years of unreality to follow.

These are not serious people. They are ghouls, gargoyles, grotesques of serious people.

Left out of the FBI’s news releases was an exclusive excursion that Patel took days later when he participated in what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona in an outing coordinated by the military. The sunken battleship entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines at Pearl Harbor. The swim, revealed in government emails obtained by The Associated Press, comes to light amid criticism of Patel’s use of the FBI plane and his global travel, which have blurred professional responsibilities with leisure activities. The FBI did not disclose the snorkeling session or that Patel had returned to Hawaii for two days after his initial stopover on the island.

Do you think this jumped-up Internet troll stopped for even a second to consider what a revolting idea his “VIP snorkel” really was?

With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona. The battleship, now a military cemetery reachable only by boat, has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941. Marine archaeologists and crews from the National Park Service make occasional dives at the memorial to survey the condition of the wreck. Other dives have been conducted to inter the remains of Arizona survivors who wanted to rest eternally with their former shipmates.

So, naturally, the director of the FBI decided to poke around an underwater grave site, trespassing in the most frivolous way, as though he was killing off a 40 in a cemetery on Halloween.

Still, since at least the Obama administration, the Navy and the park service have quietly allowed a handful of dignitaries, including military and government officials responsible for management of the memorial, to swim at the site. The Navy and park service declined to provide details of those permitted to take such excursions.

Jesus, what a bad idea this was. Sooner or later, a ghoul was going to take advantage of it.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Got That Will” (Lee Moses): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1946, brand-new American Wernher von Braun launches a V-2 in New Mexico. I actually just chose this piece of film so I could play this song. History is so cool.

It appears that Brooke Rollins, the heretofore anonymous secretary of agriculture, has been busy planting her department thick with the Jesus. From USA Today:

The National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents more than 100,000 federal workers across various agencies, along with several individual USDA employees, accused Rollins of “(adopting) a practice of sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees that report to her,” according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. …

... The issue “reached a crescendo” with an email Rollins sent on Easter Sunday in early April that characterized the religious holiday as “the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith and the abiding hope of all mankind,” according to the complaint. The email referenced “the very real trials and hardships we face” but said “fear and sin and death do not get the last word,” the complaint said. “And so, like the very first disciples to encounter our risen Lord in the Upper Room almost two thousand years ago, this Easter let us too be alive with hope, full of Paschal joy and confident in the mission each of us has been called for,” Rollins’ email said, according to the complaint.

This, of course, is the fine Christian woman for whom the earth moved when they kicked 4.3 million poor people off of their SNAP benefits.

Quick quiz: What does it say about the future of democracy when the premier of China references Thucydides and the president of the United States burbles about how Americans love Chinese food?

Nothing good, I’m guessing. And, of course, the president knew exactly what Xi meant. He meant Joe Biden was a bad president. And he shared it on his ghost town of a platform.

When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct. Our Country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and so much more!

President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401K’s, military victory and thriving relationship in Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran (to be continued!) — Strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again, with a record 18 trillion dollars being invested into the United States by others, best U.S. job market in history, with more people working in the United States right now than ever before, ending country destroying DEI, and so many other things that it would be impossible to readily list. In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time.

Christ, get the net.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found!

From Science Daily:

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed visible light images ever taken of the largest known protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star. The enormous structure appears far more chaotic and turbulent than astronomers expected, with huge wisps of gas and dust extending high above and below the disk. Even more unusual, the longest filament-like structures can only be seen on one side. The discovery, published in The Astrophysical Journal, offers scientists a rare look at how planets may form in extreme cosmic environments and highlights Hubble’s continuing role in exploring the universe.

My favorite machine keeps on keepin’ on!

The system, known as IRAS 23077+6707 and nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” is located about 1,000 light-years from Earth. The giant disk stretches nearly 400 billion miles across, making it about 40 times wider than our solar system out to the Kuiper Belt. At the center of the disk is a young star hidden by thick clouds of dust and gas. Researchers think the object may be a single massive star or possibly two stars orbiting each other. Besides being the largest planet-forming disk ever identified, scientists say it may also be one of the strangest.

“The level of detail we’re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” said lead author Kristina Monsch of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA).

Also, is it weird that I think “turbulent and oddly lopsided” also to be a fine descriptor for the U.S. government these days?

Hey, NPR, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Researchers have identified a new species of dinosaur in Thailand, the largest found in Southeast Asia. It would have been about 90 feet long and weighed some 30 tons, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. That’s the weight of more than four large African savanna elephants, or more than three times the weight of a Tyrannosaurus rex. “One of the many features that we’re kind of excited about is the size of this dinosaur,” says Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Ph.D. student at University College London who is the lead author on the research paper.

Well, yes. The first thing that enchants children about dinosaurs, and brings the enchanted child back out in many adults, is how freaking big those suckers were. And this one, as it turns out, was only an evolutionary linebacker.

As big as this dinosaur was, sauropods were about to get a lot bigger. “It gives us an understanding of the potential kind of evolutionary trends that are beginning to occur” around this time, he says. Larger sauropods have been found from later on in the Cretaceous period—one as heavy as 70 tons. “In the Middle Cretaceous, we find dinosaurs in China, South America and probably Africa that are super giants. They are the biggest of the biggest,” Sethapanichsakul says. The new discovery, he says, “essentially represents that kind of on-ramp towards that kind of supersizing.”

God love ’em. They lived then to make us happy now, and to inspire scientists to charming colloquialism.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people, and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the brilliant journalists of The Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and for the people affected by the tornadoes in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.