Posts by Alex Miller

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President Musk

Nobody elected him to anything, he is ineligible for the high office he apparently holds, his work in restructuring government is unsanctioned, unofficial, and unconstitutional.  But Elon Musk has apparently effected a successful takeover of the US government, hostile or otherwise.  The head of Donald Trump’s bogus DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk is behaving like a classic Doge, the medieval, autocratic rulers of Venice, arbitrarily cutting staff, stopping funding, and eliminating entire departments at whim.

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Happy St Valentine’s Day (Massacre)

Yeah, well, you can’t expect cupids and flowers from yours truly on Valentine’s Day, right?  Something a bit more twisted is on offer here, but it does involve asteroid Valentine 447.

It’s the infamous St Valentine’s Day massacre, perpetrated in 1929, when seven gang members were slain in a Chicago garage by associates of a rival gang, competing for dominance in Prohibition-era Illinois.  The killers have never been positively identified, but suspicion rests with former members of Egan’s Rats, now working for Al Capone, in the mass shooting at 2122 Clark Street in Chicago’s Lincoln Park section.  Competition for bootleg liquor smuggled from Canada was the proximate cause of the feud between the North Side Gang and Capone’s Chicago Outfit; some of the killers were disguised as police and the rival mobsters were slain with Thompson submachine guns, the romanticized “Tommy gun,” the most powerful weaponry of the period.

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Asteroid Sleuth:  The Case of the Deadly Dessert

A family holiday party in Tores, Brazil on December 23, 2024, turned fatal, resulting in the deaths of three members, and the hospitalization of three others, from arsenic poisoning.  Dead are sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Silva Dos Anjos, 65; and Neuza’s daughter Tatiana, 43; a third sister, Zeli Silva, 60, Maida’s husband Jefferson, and Tatiana’s son Matheus, 10, were hospitalized with severe injuries but survived.

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Pardonpalooza

Monday, 20 January 2025 must have seen some sort of record for presidential pardons.  That morning, as among his last official acts, outgoing President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to a spate of family members, former government officials, the entire staff of the January 6th Committee, and Capitol Police officers who had given testimony in that investigation.  I was unable to obtain the exact number, but it must have been in the hundreds, a prophylactic measure to ensure against future prosecution or harassment for people who had committed no crimes, but were likely to be targeted by the incoming administration for their political stance or connection to Biden.

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Justin Trudeau Resigns

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada since 2015, resigned his office on 6 January 2025, after months of speculation regarding the fractious state of Canada’s government.  Trudeau was preceded out the door by deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who resigned suddenly in December 2024, sparking a political crisis.  Trudeau announced that he would resign as both the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, and advised Canada’s Governor General to prorogue parliament until March 24, while the Party holds a leadership contest.  Trudeau will remain in office until a new leader is chosen, after which he will formally resign as prime minister.

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Trump 2.0: Crazy Like a Fox

Donald J. Trump’s second administration, taking power at noon on 20 January 2025 (by constitutional fiat, whenever the oath itself is taken), is likely to be a replay of the first term, only more so.  In 2017 when he first assumed office, Trump was a newbie novice to the Washington scene; he appointed persons with experience and relative competence to help him run the government, individuals who had a respect for its institutions and norms, who served as guardrails on Trump’s wilder, wackier impulses.

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