The Friday Link for 4/4/25

Let's start off with a sneak peek of Superman.  This expands on the clips we saw in the previous trailers where Krypto, the Superdog, retrieves Superman. Seeing Krypto as a very good, very excited boy is fun. 

I was always more of a Marvel comics kid, but I've enjoyed the Superman movies. This one looks like a hoot with a lot of secondary DC characters showing up (Guy Gardner Green Lantern!).

Also tonight a revisiting of Jelle's Marble Runs, the sporting events that are really just marbles rolling down a course. 

They did a winter competition and here are three of those events including the final which includes some excitement at the end! Who will roll their way to victory?!?

Finally tonight, I never realized how poorly designed Los Angeles was. It's actually a mess.  The YouTube page OBF did a fine video explaining why exactly it's pretty hard to design a city worse than Los Angeles is designed. It shows that the city is on a path to more and more problems.

That's it this week.  Have a wonderful weekend and please make sure you stay vaccinated. 

The Worst Thing Trump Did on 4/3/25

Once again, it is extremely easy to blame Trump for the tariff issue, but there is another thing that is unbelievably horrible. 

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and Trump's proclamation for the month specifically targeted transgender care as a main focus of what he calls abuse.

Trump and his administration are clearly trying to redefine transgender people as a 2nd tier class of human beings, something which history shows us never ends well.

Not only did he single out transgender care as child abuse, but he also intentionally did not say anything about the most common risk factors for neglected and abused children (which has nothing to do with transgender care).  This is once again the Republicans ignoring the actual threat to focus on a mythical threat that's created to attack a desired villain for political reasons, a villain which in most cases has little or nothing to do with the crisis they say they're addressing.

Speaking of which, I have a massive list of Conservatives and Republicans who have abused kids, a far bigger threat than the non-existent transgender myth.  And it includes our recently caught MN State Senator Justin Eichorn (#1384!):    https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTFikAP6MXDCJjWzgMIOvpsT1ji-HwO-rLEvNE8e-cfCGh0YHoZluIG5TEsmwFub7MzIDfh0XgvcWL8/pub?fbclid=IwAR3mEG998_MrFpPwPCbAFbIXbr3jXs47GkyMTXDV-PmcUIDpD0oP-yzRq2M

(undoubtedly MAGA...)

The Worst Thing Trump Did on 4/2/25

I could EASILY go with the tariff debacle; whether it was Trump imposing tariffs on a bunch of penguins, just making up tariff rates with random numbers, or saying he plans on returning the country to the days when white men had the advantage, during the age of slavery and during the brutally unfair 'wealthy über alles' Gilded Age, but something else popped up on my radar.

A series of communications between Trump's temporary commissioner of Social Security Leland Dudek and his staff. A few weeks back, Trump had a very public spat with the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills. As payback, emails show Dudek asking staff about the contracts the state of Maine had with the Social Security Administration.

Dudek wanted to cancel those Social Security contracts as retribution for Mills standing up to Trump.  His staff quickly informed him that doing so would result in missed payments and increase the likelihood of identity theft.

Dudek told them to go ahead regardless.  He did so calling the Governor of Maine a "petulant child."

By doing what he did, Dudek didn't directly hurt Mills, but rather the Social Security benefit recipients of Maine.  We now know he knew that, but he decided to hurt AMERICAN CITIZENS instead of GIVING PEOPLE THE MONEY THEY'RE OWED! Remember, people pay into social security, so this is them getting their investment back, something Dudek proudly denied.

This all came crashing down within 24 hours as part of his cancellation was to deny hospitals the ability to give newborns their social security number at birth, something that is done in 99% of births in the country. Realizing he didn't understand exactly what he had done, he reinstated the contracts.

When this was exposed, there was a mixed reaction from the guilty.  The White House, WHO VOWED NOT TO DISRUPT SOCIAL SECURITY AT ALL, admitted to indeed supporting the punishment of Maine. Dudek himself insisted he didn't intentionally do anything, and that he clearly did not want to create an "undue burden on the people of Maine," something his emails show that was EXACTLY what he was trying to do. 

These are evil people.

The Worst Thing Trump Did on 4/1/25

The Trump administration fired thousands of Health and Human Services employees across the country, with the goal of the administration firing 10,000 federal Health and Human Service employees in this initial round, with the eventual goal of 20,000 people fired.

The employees fired in DC and Maryland found out in one of the douchiest ways possible.  They went to work on Tuesday and waved their badges to get entry into the building.  If the light was red, they were gone. Only the biggest jackasses would ever think something like that would be appropriate.

The firings included 3500 at the FDA, 2400 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(!!!), 1200 at the NIH, and 300 at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  None of those departments will run even as close as smoothly as they did prior to the firings.

One element that is not discussed is the impact of the lack of working people in local communities.  These cuts will not just be on the East Coast, as people across the country, including in many rural communities, will be let go, impacting local economies. 

It also should be mentioned that reports are coming out that RFK Jr. is indeed putting an anti-vax litmus test out there on employees.  If you think vaccines are fraudulent, you get to stay.  This will end up killing millions in the US. 

 

The Worst Thing Trump Did on 3/31/25

And now we have our first admission of an innocent man being deported to Trump's gulag in El Salvador.

Late Monday the administration admitted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported wrongly to El Salvador to the notorious prison designed to torture and kill everyone who enters.  The administration then went on to insist there was nothing they could do to get him back.

Moving past the reality that at least 10 other people the Trump Administration secretly snuck into that gulag are innocent of anything they were accused of, Trump could have this guy back in the US in 6 hours if he wanted to.  

Trump is leaving the man there to prevent him from returning home and telling the country what the heck is actually going on down there. If it's common knowledge that innocent people are being tortured and killed without any legal process to overturn it, he knows many of his more ardent supporters will bail.  

Not all of them.  A shocking amount of Trump supporters are more than happy to go along with torture and killing as long as it's not white people it's happening to.  So Christian...