Flinder Street

Lance Rosen

Trump's "Ante-Diluvian Era" Is Over...He Is Drowning In Humilating Defeats (Intro to a series)

What Will He Do Over The Next Six Months? What Should We Do To Preempt It?

[Ante-Diluvian: means "before the flood," specifically referring to the time period before the biblical flood in the story of Noah's Ark. In everyday conversation, it is commonly used—often humorously or critically—to describe something or someone that is extremely old, outdated, or hopelessly out-of-date. Also a term used in reference to the mythology surrounding the lost continent of Atlantis.]

Introduction--

When we write about or study history, it isn't simply to chronicle significant past events. We are making an attempt to recreate in both our minds and those of others the most impactful contributions to the advancement of human progress as a whole, in order to learn from them. Conversely, we want to study the ways in which corrupted or criminal institutions and individuals wielded outsized power to obstruct and negate the potentials of such advancements.

Oligarchs and empires are as timeless as the various forms of slavery and oppression which have been the hallmarks of their regimes. Progress, whether scientific, cultural, social, or economic, is seen as a threat to their status, therefore they feel compelled to crush, corrupt, or control it. Not incidently the more malignant reactionary oligarchs and authoritarian types share similar patterns of behavior and personality disorders, and their actions are often very predictable.

So, among other things, we are trying to grasp what makes people tick, what motivates them, what are their strengths, or their fears, how they act in a crisis, how they develop their economies, how they govern, their methods of education, and the discoveries they generated. And just as important, how they make functional societies dysfunctional, sabotage their own futures, blunder into wars and other catastrophes through miscalculation, and why they continue the same patterns of mindless neglect and seemingly endless cycles of violence. We study the causes of conflicts between religions, nations, tribes, social classes, oppression of ethnic or gender minorities, divisions due to rigid adherence to ideologies, philosophies, and cultural paradigms. We read about it all for the purposes of making sense both out of events in the past and the present, but also to give us deeper insight into what the future might hold for us.

There is a fine line between typical corruption, which one could write off to human nature if there really is such a thing, versus conscious criminal intent on the part of leadership. We measure the relative success or failure of governments in part by the degree to which they erect guardrails to protect the public from the dangers of criminal oligarchs. Our laws are made based upon both past precedent, and modern necessity. Those guardrails which the United States once had were the work of countless unsung heroes who toiled for most of their adult lives, in some cases becoming martyrs for their efforts. Regardless of the outcomes those people were successes, not failures, because of the righteousness of their causes. They won, though not all saw victory within their lifetimes. And writing the histories of these heroes is in no sense a mere academic exercise, rather it is an honor.

Both precedent and necessity are destroyed when oligarchs and their technocratic henchmen decide to obliterate them, because such things are considered personally inconvenient to their self-interest. In other words, by their very nature, oligarchs have criminal minds. Libertarian billionaires such as the Koch Brothers are among the worst examples of this worldview.

Trump himself views government and existing US Constitutional settled law as an obstacle to whatever might be his next and most important transaction that benefits himself, and his relationship to the law itself is how to break or evade it without getting caught or being held to account. He has to win every transaction, even if he has to annihilate his counterparty to do so, because he is pathological in his identity, demanding attention, adulation, and obedience. If he can't announce to the world that he is the "winner" of any given deal, he won't agree to it, because his ego won't let him.

Remember the bank robber Willie Sutton, who was asked, "why did you rob banks?" He said, "because that's where the money is." That form of moral sickness is what 85 million Americans voted for. Trump is a larcenist who entertains himself by raping women, and allegedly children. His supporters don't care what he is, so long as he gives them what they want and gets rid of those whom they hate. They are narcissistic in the same way as he, and that is their common bond.

In a sense, history is isochronic, meaning that we can conceptualize at any single instant a point at which the past, present, and future, all converge within the same physical space/time. For example, when we learn of a great discovery or invention a millenia or more ago, archeologists and historians will set about "reverse-engineering" it in order to document how it happened, and sometimes that helps us to make an innovation in the present which benefits society. That innovation, and the method by which it was made, is then passed on to future generations, potentially improving their quality of life. One concerted action, which gives added meaning to the life of a person long dead and serves to improve the lives of people right now, and thereby increases the potential of those coming after us. That is "isochronicity," when past, present, and future are each <changed> in effect by a human discovery or intervention, made in one moment of time.

One useful example of this idea is the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who was raised as an orphan after age ten, who labored in obscurity for decades as a Choirmaster, first in Weimar, then for his church in Leipzig at St. Thomas school. And he died in 1750 with most of his works and instruments boxed up. Hardly anyone knew of him, aside from a small circle of musicians and connoisseurs through his son C.P.E. Bach. Only a handful of his compositions were printed or published in his lifetime. It took Josef Haydn, W.A. Mozart, and Beethoven decades later to cement Bach's legacy and build upon his breakthroughs, (in counterpoint, the fugue, all of it) and thus was classical music revolutionized through his impact on them. These composers, by rediscovering Bach and changing the significance of his life fifty years after his death, simultaneously changed the past, present, and future of music.

As one might have already guessed, it works the other way too. Orwell understood this as thoroughly as any writer who took up the subject of authoritarianism. To stop progress, the oligarchs will commission "court historians" to either rewrite or suppress the past, in order to rob people of their history so they won't know how to act in the present, thereby destroying the potential of the future for those who might threaten their power and control.

Reactionaries by nature are not simply in conflict with society's natural inclination to improve its condition, but with time itself. They are trying to wage war in the present to go back in time to an era in which power and wealth resided with a few. Therefore their existence is inherently a failure, because it is rooted in a futile effort to reverse time, in opposition to the laws of the universe as they are understood by organized societies. This is why the study of their histories are akin to an autopsy on a murder victim which purpose is to determine a cause of death. There is no joy in either writing or reading about it, no excitement of discovery, just compiling evidence of their crimes. It is more like a forensic investigation, since there's nothing new or alive to pass on which is of benefit except for the knowledge of what we should never have allowed to happen.

That is the quandry of being an oligarch. They don't create anything themselves because they are mostly uncreative people. They are losers in life regardless of their status, whose natural end will either be cause for celebration, or a galactic sense of relief. Their positions are due to their talent for stealing or misusing that which is created by others, combined with a fluke of reproduction which enabled many of them to be born wealthy.

For example, the twisted Nazi trillionaire Elon Musk "invents" nothing. He "acquires" the work of others through means which are ruthless, unethical, and in a world which was sane would be wholly illegal. He is the main beneficiary of his work, which defines him as the opposite of a genius. He is a self-obsessed greedy racist and misogynist who wants to become a trillionaire just to be the first to do it, no matter how many democracies he topples or people that have to die as a result of his "great innovation," DOGE. His personal motives for going to Mars are perverse, in that he is a racial eugenics advocate who is driven by his obsession to deposit his "super-genius" DNA on extraterrestrial ground, because spreading his sperm samples throughout the solar system represents his concept of immortality. He cares less about scientific progress and more about perpetuating his genetic code. Just like Adolf Hitler did, with his sponsorship of Dr. Josef Mengele's Auschwitz experiments on blue-eyed twins.

When historians look back in time to write about the two Trump presidencies, they will start by studying his mind, how it works, how it doesn't work, and why he is the first ever criminal psychopath to have become a President of the United States. They will attempt to understand how someone with the mentality of a carnival barker con-man, and personal history as a lifelong sexual and financial predator, now collapsing into dementia-related psychotic behavior, managed to succeed through some method of mass hypnosis in sharing his psychosis, corrupting tens of millions of people, and nearly destroying a 250 year old nation-building project in only ten short years.

Notice, we said nearly. We aren't quite there yet.

Coming soon, Part 1--

Jim Wright

I am writing early Tuesday evening before most primary results have been announced. But there are three major stories to be addressed.

First, to no one’s surprise, the Roberts Court overruled a three-judge panel’s finding of legislative discriminatory intent and gave Alabama the green light to implement a last-minute racially gerrymandered map that eliminated one of two majority Black districts in Alabama. See The Hill, Supreme Court clears way for Alabama Republicans to use congressional map for midterms.

In an unsigned “shadow docket” order, the reactionary majority said that Alabama was“likely to succeed on the merits” when the Supreme Court considers the entire record—a remarkable statement given that a three-judge panel made extensive factual findings that the Alabama legislature was motivated by racial discrimination in violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

The decision plumbed new depths of racist depravity by John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh. They are racists acting to advance the white supremacist goals of the Confederacy. It is not any more complicated than that. We should not pretend otherwise to avoid hurt feelings or to perpetuate disingenuous notions of propriety that serve only to protect genteel racists.

The decision was especially cynical because this Supreme Court previously ruled three years ago that the Alabama legislature acted with discriminatory intent to deny Black voters representation guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act. Three years later, the reactionary majority ignored its prior finding of discriminatory intent and the subsequent finding of the three-judge panel that the new map was motivated by racial animus.

But it gets worse. The pillar of the reactionary majority’s ruling was that the three-judge panel refused to grant the legislature a “presumption of good faith” in drafting its maps. But the Alabama legislature twice refused to comply with federal court orders to draw a second majority-Black district. Having twice flouted federal court orders to end discrimination, the Supreme Court finds that the Alabama legislature will likely prevail because the three-judge panel did not extend a presumption of good faith to the legislature!

Of course, we should not look for logic or consistency in the reactionary majority’s opinion. They chose a side—white supremacy—and did what was needed for white supremacy to prevail.

Those are blunt words chosen deliberately—because they frame the challenge we will face when we win a trifecta in 2028. Will we have the honesty and courage to acknowledge that reforming the Supreme Court is not enough? If we are to reclaim the full citizenship of Black Americans (after Callais) and women (after Dobbs), reforming the Court is not enough.

We must strip the Court to the barest constitutional minimum and rebuild it anew. It must be substantially larger (e.g., the size of the 9th Circuit at 27 judges), the justices’ terms must be limited by age and length of service; the justices must be subject to mandatory ethics and disqualification rules enforced by someone other than the justices; the Court’s ability to use an opaque “shadow docket” with no appellate record must be eliminated; the justices cannot accept gifts, gratuities, book contracts, bribes, subsidies, or vacations masquerading as speaking appearances; and the use of the law clerk program as a breeding ground for political extremists must come to an end.

There are many more good ideas. We must focus on those ideas that can be implemented immediately with a majority vote in Congress—expansion of the Court, term limits based on age, mandatory ethics and disqualification codes enforced by someone other than the justices.

I understand that many readers will be anxious and outraged by the Supreme Court’s elimination of yet another Black majority district in the South. If there is any consolation, it is that the efforts of Democrats to push back against Republican mid-census redistricting have limited the damage.

As Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) noted, of the 16 seats that Republicans affected by mid-census gerrymandering, the median “shift” in the political lean in those districts was from R+3.1 to R+4.9—for a median shift of 1.8 percentage points.

While that additional advantage is unfair, Democrats can overcome an additional Republican 1.8-percentage-point cushion in a wave election. Indeed, at the moment, the Democratic lead in the “generic” congressional ballot is D+7. FiftyPlusOne - Generic Ballot Polls and Average for 2026.

In short, the Supreme Court’s decision was despicable, but we can overcome the damage by showing up in record numbers. That’s the plan. Let’s stick to it.

Trump appoints political hack to most important intelligence position in the administration.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Congress and the “9/11 Commission” concluded that lack of coordination among US intelligence agencies missed some of the clues that might have prevented the tragedy. As a result, Congress created the position of Director of National Intelligence, whose primary functions are to serve as the head of the 18-agency Intelligence Community, coordinate and integrate the intelligence gathered, and serve as the President’s principal intelligence advisor.

The clear intent of Congress was to create a position that would rise above inter-agency rivalries within the intelligence community and deliver objective, non-political intelligence assessments to the President. See generally, Congressional Research Service, Intelligence Reform After Five Years: The Role of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Trump broke with the model of the independent Director of National Intelligence (DNI) by appointing Tulsi Gabbard, who was unqualified in terms of experience and temperament. She proved her unfitness by supervising Trump’s effort to impugn the results of the 2020 election. She famously oversaw the FBI’s raid to seize ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. Far from serving as a neutral advisor to the president, Gabbard became part of Trump’s revenge tour.

Finding someone less qualified than Tulsi Gabbard was a difficult task, but Trump exceeded everyone’s low expectations by appointing political hack and hatchet man Bill Pulte.

Pulte has no experience in intelligence. He is a money manager who spent the last sixteen months abusing his position as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he mined confidential mortgage information to help Trump attack his political enemies. See The Hill, GAO confirms investigation into FHFA Director Bill Pulte. (“Pulte has abused his position by scouring databases at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two government-sponsored enterprises — for the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats. He then used those records to concoct fanciful allegations of mortgage fraud.”)

The nomination of Pulte has been met with a sharp, collective intake of breath in both parties. His primary qualification is unquestioning loyalty to Trump. See WSJ, Why the President Tapped ‘Little Trump’ as His Intelligence Chief. (Gift article, accessible to all.)

Per the WSJ,

Pulte has no known national security experience, but he has something Trump values above all else: loyalty. In conversations with the president, Pulte made the case that he would be an unyielding advocate for the president’s foreign policy agenda and he signaled support for the war in Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.

Pulte is a danger to all Americans. It would be better to have the DNI role filled by a doorstop than by Pulte. A doorstop would do nothing, but Pulte will use the full force of the intelligence community to attack Trump’s political enemies and support his delusional war of choice in Iran. Pulte will further undermine the credibility and professionalism of the intelligence community—vital to US national security.

Worse, Pulte is currently under investigation by the GAO for possible unlawful or criminal conduct involving the misuse of confidential information collected by a federal agency that was then used to target Trump’s political agencies. Having the nation’s top intelligence officer under investigation for possible criminal conduct is ludicrous. See CNN, Government Accountability Office launches probe into Bill Pulte over mortgage-fraud referrals.

According to the WSJ article above, Republican leaders believe Pulte is unqualified. As an acting DNI, Pulte can serve for 250 days without Senate confirmation. Senate Republicans can force Trump to remove Pulte by simply refusing to vote for any of Trump's legislation or nominees until he removes Pulte and replaces him with a doorstop, or with someone or something with better qualifications.

CBS fires Scott Pelley for exhibiting backbone

Bari Weiss is acting as David Ellison’s surrogate in reshaping CBS into a network made in Trump’s image. Over the last several months, Weiss has decimated leadership at CBS 60 Minutes. Last week, Weiss fired the latest round of 60 Minutes leadership and correspondents. She then hired Nick Bilton, a former New York Times tech columnist and Vanity Fair writer with no broadcast TV experience, to serve as Executive Producer of 60 Minutes.

On Monday, Pelley grilled Bilton at his introductory staff meeting about the firings. According to audio of the meeting obtained by Status and confirmed by NBC News, Pelley said Weiss, who was not present, “is murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”

Pelley also said that Weiss has “no qualifications for her job“ and Bilton has “slender qualifications“ for his. Staff applauded Pelley on his way out.

Bilton fired Pelley on Tuesday in a letter that spoke mainly to Bilton’s hurt feelings. Pelley issued a blistering response that accused Bari Weiss and others of serious ethical violations.

Pelley wrote, in part,

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos. For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

See full statement at Deadline, Scott Pelley Reacts To ‘60 Minutes’ Firing: “Waste Is Heartbreaking”.

The jewel in the crown of CBS has been taken over by Trump minions intent on protecting the benefactor. If Pelley’s charges are true, and we have no reason to doubt them, nothing CBS News reports can be trusted. Sadly, that puts CBS in the company of several other leading media companies that have been taken over by Trump-friendly billionaires.

Hopefully, Scott Pelley will find a new platform that allows him to continue speaking the truth. The era of “Walter-Cronkite-trusted-news-services” is over. We must become active, discerning consumers of the news.

Let’s hope that Bari Weiss’s flameout at CBS is spectacular and soon. Perhaps a phoenix can rise from the ashes of a once great news organization if it becomes an unprofitable albatross that no longer amuses the Ellisons or Trump and is sold to the highest bidder.

Concluding Thoughts

Election results are coming in more slowly than expected for Tuesday’s primaries, so I will write about them tomorrow. There are encouraging signs, and disaster was averted in California. Either Xavier Becerra or Tom Steyer will finish in the top two, thereby qualifying for the general election. California will have a Democratic governor in place for the 2028 presidential election.

The Supreme Court decision was a blow, but also a moment of moral clarity. They have dropped all pretense of complying with the rule of law; they are playing hardball, for keeps. We must do the same as we restore the Constitution and honor the rule of law. But let’s stop pretending that the Court is salvageable or that MAGA cultists will change their minds if only we will listen to their imagined grievances.

Millions of Americans are suffering and have real grievances that must be addressed by a government that is interested in their welfare rather than merely perpetuating the power of the ruling elite.

We are on the cusp of a historic wave election. It will not appear unbidden. We must will it into existence through hard work, fearless determination, and stubborn refusal to surrender to anxieties or exhaustion.

Victory is within the margin of effort. And we can control the amount of effort poured into the 2026 and 2028 elections by tens of millions of dedicated Americans who are already on the front lines. Keep up the good work, and keep the faith! We will win. It is just a matter of time.

Bruce Lindner

By now I’m sure you know, CBS fired Scott Pelley yesterday. On his way out the door, Pelley published his own treatise about the situation, which I’ve copied and pasted below the dotted line. That fourth paragraph is a stunning revelation:

“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

A few weeks ago, 60 Minutes interviewed Bibi Netanyahu. To call it an interview is a misnomer, as it came across as more of a P.R. stunt. And who was the interviewer? Major Garrett.

Who? Is he even a 60 Minutes correspondent? Nope.

Has Major Garrett EVER been given an opportunity to do a 60 Minutes segment? I’ve never seen him do one, and until just recently, I rarely missed the show. No offense to Mr. Garrett, but he’s no Mike Wallace. He’s no Lesley Stahl or Scott Pelley either, which explains why Bibi chose him for that “hard-hitting” exposé. He made his bones at Fox News after all, so this sort of “journalism” is probably S.O.P. to him. Now we know why he got the nod; Bibi no doubt tapped him personally.

Pelley seems relieved to be out of there. He had to know they were going to fire him, and it just seems that he’s at peace with how it played out. He kept journalistic integrity first and foremost, even before his career. That’s what REAL journalists do. The cowardly propagandistic types go along to get along.

Mr. Pelley:

“There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”

Portal Under a Full Moon, Chaco Canyon, San Juan Co, NM. Photo: Patrick LanZing (May 26, 2023)

[Robert Scott Horton]

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Colley Whisson (Australian Artist, born 1966)

"Winter Colors",