Talk About Tennis 2.0

The NY Times sent this out to their subscribers about an hour ago. I had no idea this had happened and thought perhaps others may be oblivious as well.

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Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk
Simmering anger at the billionaire’s unchecked power spilled out in a remarkable Cabinet Room meeting. The president quickly moved to rein in Mr. Musk.


Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.

Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.

You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.

Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.

Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.

After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.

The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Mr. Trump was willing to put some limits on Mr. Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.

Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.

Thursday’s meeting, which was abruptly scheduled on Wednesday evening, was a sign that Mr. Trump was mindful of the growing complaints. He tried to offer each side something by praising both Mr. Musk and his cabinet secretaries. (At least one, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has had tense encounters related to Mr. Musk’s team, was not present.) The president made clear he still supported the mission of the Musk initiative. But now was the time, he said, to be a bit more refined in its approach.

From now on, he said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.

It is unclear what the long-term impact of the meeting will be. Mr. Musk remains Mr. Trump’s biggest political financial supporter — just this week his super PAC aired $1 million worth of ads that said, “Thank you, President Trump” — and Mr. Musk’s control of the social media website X has made administration staff members and cabinet secretaries alike fearful that he will target them in public.

But if nothing else, the session laid bare the tensions within Mr. Trump’s team, and news of the sharp clashes spread quickly through senior ranks of cabinet agencies after it was over. This account is based on interviews with five people with knowledge of the events.

In a post on social media after the meeting, Mr. Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal work force would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — a clear reference to Mr. Musk’s scorched-earth approach.

Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.

But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.

Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.

Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.

Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

The secretary of veterans affairs, Doug Collins, has been dealing with one of the most politically sensitive challenges of all the cabinet secretaries. Mr. Musk’s cuts will affect thousands of veterans — a powerful constituency and a core part of the Trump base. Mr. Collins made the point that they should not wield a blunt instrument and cleave off everyone from the V.A. They needed to be strategic about it. Mr. Trump agreed with Mr. Collins, saying they ought to retain the smart ones and get rid of the bad ones.

In response to a request for comment from The New York Times, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement: “As President Trump said, this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost-cutting measures and staffing across the federal government. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”

Tammy Bruce, a spokeswoman for the State Department, responded, “Secretary Rubio considered the meeting an open and productive discussion with a dynamic team that is united in achieving the same goal: making America great again.”

A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman said, “As President Trump has said, it’s important to increase efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while keeping in place the best and most productive federal employees. V.A. is working with DOGE and the rest of the administration to do just that.”

In a post on X on Friday, Mr. Duffy praised Mr. Trump and the work Mr. Musk’s team is doing and said it was an effective cabinet meeting. He added that “the DEI Department at the FAA was eliminated on day 2” and that Mr. Trump’s “approach of a scalpel versus a hatchet and better coordination between Secretaries and DOGE is the right approach to revolutionizing the way our government is run.”

Mr. Musk, who later claimed on X that the cabinet meeting was “very productive,” seemed far less enthused inside the room. He aggressively defended himself, reminding the cabinet secretaries that he had built multiple billion-dollar companies from the ground up and knew something about hiring good people.

Most cabinet members did not join the fray. Mr. Musk’s anger directed at Mr. Rubio in particular seemed to catch people in the room by surprise, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. Another person said Mr. Musk’s caustic responses to Mr. Duffy and Mr. Rubio seemed to deter other cabinet members, many of whom have privately complained about the Musk team, from speaking.

But it remains to be seen how long this new arrangement will last.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/p ... =url-share

None of them have any idea how any of this works.

Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

JoJoFromJerz
‪@jojofromjerz.bsky.social‬
It takes several months to complete the FAA Academy and two to four years of on-the-job training to become a certified air traffic controller, but don’t worry, the ones Elon’s DOGEbags want fired will be replaced with “geniuses from M.I.T.”

So this is fine.

The Secretary of State of the USA is chewed up at the oval office.
By a foreign national.
Well, well, well. Who are the traitors now?

I wasn't sure where to put this

The Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

The Narcissist's Prayer (by Dayna Craig) beautifully illustrates the inner workings of the narcissistic mind. Denial, gaslighting, minimising poor behaviour, blameshifting and shamedumping all feature in this one simple verse, all hallmarks of covert emotional abuse. To a narcissist the 'truth' is not seen as a finite, fixed entity, but as being malleable - as being whatever the narcissist says it is, at the time they say it. The truth is simply whatever serves the narcissist at that particular time.

Let’s take a closer look:



“That didn’t happen”



Here we have denial , mixed in with history rewriting - both classic narcissistic behaviours. If you’ve been in a narcissistic relationship you will recognise this instantly. Narcissists need to feel good about themselves. This is an essential part of the personality disorder. They have a desperate need to feel special or perfect, in order to distract themselves from their core wound - which is an underlying feeling of worthlessness. They can’t accept the blame for bad behaviour, as it would challenge this image that they need to project to the world, so they simply deny it.





“And if it did, it wasn’t that bad”



Minimisation is another tactic that is hardwired into the miswired narcissistic brain as a result of how they reacted to their upbringing. Here they diminish the topic concerned, to make it seem unimportant. And to a narcissist, if it doesn’t serve them, it is unimportant. Narcissists will minimise all manner of things, from their own bad behaviour to another’s achievements, to an ill person’s symptoms, to someone else’s problems. Narcissists are intrinsically controlling - they have to control their image and how others see them, and they have to control others in order to escape from the reality of their own fragile egos. Here they are trying to control how others see external situations.





“And if it was, that’s not a big deal”



Of course, this is also minimisation again, but here I want to mention the idea of ‘ gaslighting. ’ Gaslighting is a specific narcissistic behaviour in which the narcissist denies another person’s reality, by making them think that they are perceiving something incorrectly. ‘You are thinking about it all wrong’ is a common narcissistic refrain, in one form or another. If this happens enough times, eventually the victim stops trusting themselves, and starts to rely upon the narcissist in their lives as the ‘voice of reason’ or as the barometer of what is good or right. I knew of a narcissist whose gaslighting was so severe that he would tell his wife that he was drinking tea when actually he was drinking coffee, which she had watched him make. Although she knew somewhere in her heart of hearts that this wasn’t right, she found herself questioning everything she thought she knew. This keeps the victim exactly where the narcissist wants them to be - trapped in their metaphorical cage where they can be manipulated and used to give attention, adoration, drama or conflict to the narcissist, whenever they need it - the oxygen that keeps the narcissist feeling whole and alive.





“And if it is, that's not my fault.”



Another easily recognisable narcissistic behaviour to anyone who has been in a narcissistic relationship - here we are looking at the phenomenon of “ blameshifting” . Narcissists cannot take the blame for anything at all, again, because in doing so they have to admit to themselves that they are not perfect and special, as they have to be in their own minds. Even just letting in the tiniest bit of accountability, through the smallest chink in their armour of superiority, will cause the entire false persona that they project to the outside world to come crashing own, leaving them exposed, ashamed and vulnerable. All narcissists play the victim when they need to. Nothing can ever be their fault - it is always someone or something else’s fault, and they are just the helpless and hapless victim of circumstance.





“And if it was, I didn't mean it”





Again, accountability issues come to the fore here. Narcissists do not apologise and mean it. Not ever. An apology will only come if it benefits them in some way - apologies are transactional, as everything is to a narcissist. Narcissists cannot be seen to be the bad guy, and they cannot bear shame. That feeling of burning shame, the humiliation of it that healthy people learn to take on, unpleasant though it is, is simply not something a narcissist can allow themselves to feel. To them, shame feel like an existential crisis. It must be batted off at all times, usually on to another.





“And if I did, you deserved it.”





Here we have both projection and blameshifting . This transferring of your feelings onto another person so that you do not have to feel them yourself is called ‘projection’, and narcissists are masters of it. If a narcissist incorrectly accuses you of feeling something or doing something, or being a certain way, it is likely that they are projecting on to you, and it is they who are actually feeling that feeling, doing that action or being that way. In this line of the verse the narcissist is projecting their shame onto you. They are blaming you for what they did, so they do not have to bear the shame, and their shining false external image can remain intact and whole. The narcissist often uses illogical arguments to persuade you that something is your fault, or that you have got it all wrong, but delivered with such convincing fanfare that you find yourself fooled. They will often change the direction of their arguments so quickly that you are left utterly confused.





The incidence of narcissism is said to be on the increase, and cultural narcissism is embedded in society. Those with a high prevalence of narcissistic traits flourish in today's climate, where prosperity, success, grandiosity and entitlement are largely seen as positive attributes. Consider the world of politics, which is rife with narcissism, and consider the far reaching implications of this. Sadly the profound negative effects on society and those at at an individual level can be stigmatised and are often swept under the carpet.



Figures vary, with some studies indicating that up to 6% of the population qualify for the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The chances are that even if you do not directly know a narcissist, you know someone who does, and who, most likely, has suffered to some degree at a narcissist's hands.



NPD is known to occur as a result of environmental factors. In other words, narcissists breed narcissists due to the way they bring up their children, and the abused become the abusers.



I believe it falls upon all of us to break these generational chains by raising awareness of narcissistic abuse, and de-stigmatising the experiences of those who have been affected by it. The unique challenges to healing faced by those who have been through the trauma of narcissistic abuse needs to be understood by as many people as possible, as does the fact that mere time, on its own, does not heal these wounds.


https://www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-s-prayer

Video at the link

Video at the link

I wouldn't say it's just the young. Any time this country gets rolling, the GOP comes into power and wrecks it. I'm sick of the passivity of the Democratic Party. These aren't the days of Chip O'Neil and Bob Dole.

Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Schumer Retreats on Shutdown
A generational divide, seen in newer lawmakers’ impatience with bipartisanship and for colleagues who don’t understand new media, has emerged as one of the deepest rifts within the party.
Senator Chuck Schumer’s sudden decision on Thursday to support a Republican-written bill to avert a government shutdown so enraged his fellow Democrats that some were already talking about primary challenges to the 74-year-old Democratic leader from New York.

The eruption of anger about Mr. Schumer’s seeming surrender thrust into public view a generational divide that has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s deepest and most consequential rifts.

Younger Democrats are chafing at and increasingly complaining about what they see as the feebleness of the old guard’s efforts to push back against President Trump. They are second-guessing how the party’s leaders — like Mr. Schumer, who brandishes his flip phone as a point of pride — are communicating their message in the TikTok era, as Republicans dominate the digital town square.

And they are demanding that the party develop a bolder policy agenda that can answer the desperation of tens of millions of people who are struggling financially at a time when belief in the American dream is dimming.

In other words, the younger generation is done with deference.

Some who argue for more militancy in opposing Mr. Trump say the party’s elders tend to be less comfortable with the type of unbending political warfare that is called for.

“Our party needs more of a fighting spirit,” said Representative Chris Deluzio, a 40-year-old from outside Pittsburgh. “This is not a normal administration, and they’re willing to do dangerous things.”

The split is “not solely along generational lines,” he said. “But I do think the newer, younger members maybe get this intuitively.”

Mr. Deluzio said that Democrats elected before the Trump era tended to be shaped by fond recollections of comity and camaraderie across the aisle. “Those of us who are a little younger or have come to the Congress more recently, we don’t have the experience of some days of yore where things were more functional and the parties all got along,” he said.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who burst onto the political scene by slaying a giant of the party in a 2018 primary challenge, pointedly declined to shoot down a question about a future primary against Mr. Schumer, who is not on the ballot again until 2028. Interviewed on CNN on Thursday, she called his turnabout on the legislation — which every Democrat in the House save one opposed — a “tremendous mistake” and urged him to reverse himself.

Each younger lawmaker’s prescriptions for the party may be different. But many of them speak of an imperative both to fight and to act. Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, 37, said Democrats needed an ambitious strategy to address educational deficits caused by the coronavirus pandemic, promote housing construction and take on social media corporations that are fraying the social fabric.

“I’m interested in ideas. Do we have big ideas for how we’re going to govern better than Trump?” he said. “Younger lawmakers have that sense of urgency and ferocity.”

That urgency is also driving younger Democrats to try to usher their elders out of the way. Some older House Democrats have already been pushed out of key congressional posts. Younger primary challengers are laying the groundwork to try to oust more senior lawmakers from office entirely, with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, among those targeted.

And in private, 30- and 40-something lawmakers commiserate about having to decipher the mysteries of the internet for their older colleagues; one said she recently had to explain to another House member what a podcast was.

“The generation that got us to this point does not have the skills or stomach to get us to the next point,” said Amanda Litman, who leads Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits younger and more diverse Democrats to seek local office.

Ms. Litman said she had already heard from at least half a dozen young people — more than ever, she said — who are plotting congressional primary challenges in 2026.

“I would not be surprised to see, if not quite a Tea Party equivalent, a wave of challengers against old Democratic incumbents in particular,” Ms. Litman said. “It is not going to be ideological. It’s going to be style.”

A Biden hangover

A party that fatefully banked its fortunes in 2024 on an 81-year-old standard-bearer now sees reminders everywhere of the perils of relying on older leaders:

Representative John Larson of Connecticut, 76, freezing for more than a minute last month after suffering a “complex partial seizure” on the House floor.

Mr. Schumer and Representative Maxine Waters of California, 86, chanting “We will win!” in a demonstration that inspired little besides eye rolls and cringes among younger Democrats.

Or Representative Al Green of Texas, 77, waving his cane at Mr. Trump during the president’s address to a joint session of Congress. (“If the Democrats want a 77-year-old congressman to be the face of their resistance, heckling the president, then bring it on,” Speaker Mike Johnson, the chamber’s top Republican, chortled a day later.)

“It hangs a shadow over everything,” Tyson Brody, a Democratic strategist, said of the age issue. “And it becomes a very neat explanation for why we lost, and what needs to be fixed, that people of all ideologies can get behind. It’s a shortcut for ‘How do we rebrand Democrats?’”

Age, of course, is an imperfect way to measure all the varied Democratic disagreements.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 83, has been among his party’s most vigorous voices, barnstorming battleground states and drawing large crowds of young people as he makes his populist economic case against the Republicans.

And in the spending fight, all but one Democrat in the House — spanning every ideological wing — voted to keep up the battle.

James Carville, 80, who became a lightning rod for suggesting the party “roll over and play dead” and let Mr. Trump overreach, told a closed-door retreat of House Democrats Thursday that fighting now was fine, up to a point.

“No one is going to care how hard you fight in March of 2025,” Mr. Carville said Friday. “It’s how you win” in 2026, he added.

On Thursday, Mr. Schumer explained his decision to vote to keep the government open in an opinion piece in The New York Times, a version of which he read on the Senate floor.

“As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse,” Mr. Schumer wrote.

A group of newer Democratic senators have disagreed with his approach, including Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, 48, whom Mr. Schumer had pushed to deliver his party’s response to Mr. Trump’s congressional address this month.

Neither party has a monopoly on the gerontocracy: Senator Mitch McConnell, 83, the former Republican leader, recently announced he would not seek re-election. In December, former Representative Kay Granger, 82, a Texas Republican, was discovered to be residing in a senior living facility while still in office. And there is Mr. Trump, 78, who became the oldest person ever inaugurated as president.........

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/p ... crats.html

Correct me, please. Weren't the majority of people that DID NOT show up to vote the younger generation?

How senators voted on a bill to avert a government shutdown
Schumer and nine others joined Republicans to advance the funding measure to a final vote.

By Chris Alcantara, Janice Kai Chen, Hannah Dormido, Nick Mourtoupalas and Kati Perry

The Senate voted to advance a measure Friday to extend federal funding levels through September and avert a government shutdown set to begin just after midnight.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Thursday that he planned to support the Republicans’ funding bill; he needed at least seven other Democrats to overcome a filibuster and set the vote up for final passage. Nine others who caucus with Democrats joined him and nearly all Republicans voted to advance the measure. Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky) is the lone Republican who opposed it.

The 62-38 vote came after days of turmoil among Senate Democrats who were split on either working with President Donald Trump and Republicans to pass a continuing resolution that includes $13 billion in cuts to nondefense spending or allowing the government to shut down.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire was the only Democrat who voted for the 54-46 passage of the bill. Sen. Angus King (Maine) also voted for it. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican who voted against it.

The bill contains a $6 billion increase in defense funding and allows more flexibility for the White House to direct funding, according to House GOP leadership aides, including an administration request for more money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The bill would force the District to cut about $1 billion from its local budget — including payment for police, schools and other essential services — over the next six months because it does not include language tucked into past funding extensions that allows the city to spend locally raised funds.

The House passed the measure 217-213 on Tuesday. The vote fell mostly along party lines, with Rep. Jared Golden (Maine) as the sole Democrat in favor and Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky) the only Republican in opposition.

See how your senators voted in the table below.

(At the link)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... _p001_f003