That Which Is Foretold…

by MyBaconPress

It’s odd, isn’t it? For decades, we’ve listened to cons clamoring for “state’s rights” over Federal government. They use it, mostly, when they want to do some evil or crappy thing. But suddenly, state’s rights don’t seem as important. I wonder what happened to change the stance? I suspect it was when they discovered they could do those same evil and crappy things more effectively with the power of the Federal government.

Minnesota banned “prediction markets.” A prediction market is like any other gambling site, but often without the gambling. The person placing the “bet” might well have insider information that makes it less of a “bet” and more like a no-risk investment. Say, for example, you (somehow) knew the US government was about to set back negotiations in a trumped up war with an unexpected bombing. You could make a prediction market “bet” and clean up.

Our Inglorious Misleader has said he “was never much in favor” of prediction markets. Of course that’s what he says. Meanwhile, he and his family are involved in the industry and according to the New York Times, Dumbass Jr has ties to two top prediction market companies. (Remember how angry the right was when they just thought Hunter Biden might be trading on Daddy’s name? Hypocrisy, thy name is MAGA.)

And of course the Drumpfsters are involved. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, described the markets as, “designed to be addictive and prey especially on young people and low-income folks.” He said they, “help the ultra-rich get richer and the rest of us get poorer.” I suspect the Drumpfsters are the kinds of people who would gleefully get rich with pay-day loans, too.

So, state’s rights be damned. The National Embarrassment wrote that it’s “critically important” that the federal government retain control over the multi-billion dollar prediction market industry. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a lawsuit to stop Minnesota and other states from protecting their citizens from this, particular scourge.

It might just be me, but I think the Federal government should NOT have the power to FORCE states to allow their citizens to be victimized by gambling sites…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, whaddaya know and who coulda guessed? 47 bombed Iran again, just as the now-infamous and obviously-better-than-Obama’s deal was just about to be set. Oh, so close. Now we don’t get the deal that was better than Obama’s after all. I wonder which markets paid off on that one – and to whom? And now he has added a new poison pill: all the Arab nations need to sign on to the so-called Abraham Accords.

The Abraham Accords created a framework for Arab nations to recognize Israel. The Arab nations that haven’t signed it, don’t sign it because Israel has never been open to the idea of creating an independent Palestine. Those nations are not going to sign the thing until that changes. So? Poison pill. He gets to claim he’s working to end his stupid war while keeping the thing going with unworkable demands. I suspect there’s profit in it – for him, anyway.

I’m thinking that next comes more threats and tough talk from a weak guy before an “unexpected announcement” of being THIS CLOSE to a deal, a great deal, the best deal, a deal like no other deal, a big deal, a strong deal, a deal with tears in it’s eyes as it says “Sir, nobody could have negotiated a better deal than this deal.”

Then? Why, more bombs and another payout. It IS a pretty sweet arrangement if you just happen to have access to all of the beautiful insider information…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m writing this early Tuesday morning. Lying Donny has a physical scheduled for today at Walter Reed Hospital. It’s his regularly scheduled, quarterly, “annual physical.” The increased visits seem to support the notion that doctors are monitoring the progress of his dementia. But the announcement, I expect, will be that he’s the healthiest human being ever to walk the planet.

Update: Yep. Word is, he’s in great shape. Oh, AND, he can still identify an elephant, too…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

London in a heat dome? On Tuesday, London hit 95.2 degrees Fahrenheit, an all-time record. All of Europe is said to be sweltering. The heat is expected to hang around for the rest of the week. Lovely. London isn’t built for heat. I suspect it might want to start getting ready.

It’s a good thing all of that talk of climate change is fake news or I’d be thinking we, the species, might be in trouble…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where ever conservatives hold sway, life gets crappier for the working class every single day. Have you noticed that? I mean, the cons will TELL you things are great. They’ll insist on it, in fact. But metrics are metrics and it’s measurable that where ever conservatives hold sway, life gets crappier for the working class, every single day.

It’s disheartening to discover that people will ignore the mountains and mountains of evidence that the conservative way is NOT the better way. But that’s what the evidence shows…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chalk up yet another successful “prediction” from Mike Judge in his unintentional documentary ‘Idiocracy.’ In the movie, the President of the United States is a clown named, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. He’s every bit as qualified for the job as the clown we have now. He turns the White House into a spectacle.

Now Donald “Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho” Trump is building an Ultimate fighting Champion (UFC) arena – on the White House lawn. Real classy-like, you know? He’s hosting a cage fight next month to celebrate his birthday – on the White House lawn. Apparently, he likes watching fit men in short-shorts grappling with each other…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Megyn Kelly said “I didn’t expect the corruption to be quite as widespread as it has been.” How is that NOT the same as, “Oh, I KNOW he’s corrupt. I just thought he would be more discreet about it.” The idea that they KNEW he’s corrupt and voted for him anyway fits into another point of view I’ve recently heard.

That idea suggests that MAGA doesn’t like what Lying Donny does, either, but they DO like that it irritates “Libtards” so they stay in line. Does MAGA really hate progressives SO much, they’ll celebrate 47 harming them, so long as it harms lefties, too? “Hey, Donald Trump burned your house down?”
“Nah, he burned down the house of that libtard, next door. Mine just got caught up in the blaze.”
“But your house burned down, too.”
“Did you HEAR the part about him burning down the libtard’s house?”
“But YOUR house?!?”
“Small price to pay to own a libtard!”
“Well, where are you going to live now?”
“Hey, what did Joe Biden do to my house?”

I don’t mean to be unkind, but, honestly, in many of these exchanges, MAGA – as a group – does not come off looking any too…um…intellectually sophisticated…

Deal Or No Deal?

by MyBaconPress

I wonder what he means. I wonder if HE knows what he means. He wrote that a deal he gets with Iran will be the “exact opposite of the JCPOA disaster negotiated by the failed Obama Administration.” The JCPOA is the ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’ Obama negotiated with Iran. Donny didn’t like it because Barack did it and Donny is the most petty of petty individuals. Then 47 goes on to claim the JCPOA was a direct path to nuclear weapons for Iran, but that’s because he lies about everything.

In fact, it was a solid arrangement that kept Iran from developing nuclear weapons for a long time to come. It was probably easier to negotiate than one might imagine, since Iran issued a fatwa against “building, maintaining, or using” nuclear weapons as contrary to Islam in 2004. The negotiations sounded like, “Will you promise not to do that which you have already said you don’t want to do?”
“Um, sure.”
“Okay, then, here’s some of your money back.”

Of course, now Lying Donny has killed the people behind that fatwa so he may have opened the very doors he says he wants closed. He does that a lot, the exact opposite of what he says he wants. Mr. ‘Make America Great Again’ has brought this once-great nation to it’s knees and to the brink of insolvency, for example. Nothing great about that. Really, when you get right down to it, he sucks at this ‘President’ stuff.

There are people out there suggesting he’s getting ready to surrender in Iran. I’m not sure he’s smart enough, even for that. Every day that passes, energy prices rise, costs for everything go up, in fact. It’s becoming burdensome and will move on to unsustainable very quickly. His whole oil war is a great reminder of one of the best reasons to move away from fossil fuels in the first place: nobody fights over sunshine. That stuff is everywhere.

For some reason, the price of a barrel of oil has dropped below $100. The story given is ‘hope of peace with Iran.’ Are these Wall Street types really so stupid as to keep being at the end of his yo-yo string? How many times can he claim peace is just around the corner and then start bombing things – or threatening to – before Wall Street realizes it’s more market manipulation than successful peace strategy?

In the end, that part doesn’t matter to me. The price at the pump is steady. It doesn’t fluctuate up and down like the barrel price is doing so their costs go up and down but their revenues are as strong as ever. Record highs, in fact. MY wallet is hurting, though, as, I suspect, is yours…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, that will probably work. The Team Evil DOJ website is quietly removing references to the J6 attack. Do you think that will work to get us all to forget it? I suspect the removal has something to do with the fact that he’s planning to give them money for their treachery. It sort of increases the need to minimize the “treachery” part. One can almost hear the wheels turning in their twisted little brains – if we remove the reference, nobody will know what happened.

Do you know what? We all know what happened. Records exist. More, the internet gets backed up on a regular basis. A lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true. It’s possible, if you know how, to go back and read things in the archived web that were once posted and have since been removed – like all of the information they’re hiding…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is it a conspiracy theory, or an actual conspiracy? The term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is, essentially, belittling an idea. It’s intended to make the person suggesting a conspiracy sound paranoid, perhaps slightly around the bend. If I suggest Donald Trump and his friends are making money by manipulating the stock market with comments and tweets, one can dismiss that as a ‘conspiracy theory’ easily enough.

But look at a definition of ‘Conspiracy.’ “An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.” If Donald Trump and his friends are making money by manipulating the stock market with comments and tweets, that’s likely an actual conspiracy, not just a conspiracy theory.

Just because I have a theory that Trump and Co is a criminal enterprise robbing the entire nation blind as fast as they can doesn’t mean I’m riddled with “conspiracy theories.” Really, it just means I’m paying attention…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So how long do you think it will take Kevin Warsh to start dropping interest rates? Of course, he promised he was going to be independent and do only what was called for according to economic conditions. But my guess is the only “economic condition” he plans to respond to is whatever Lying Donny tells him. Worse, I suspect Warsh will start dropping the rates at oversized clips.

Commonly, the rates move in eighth or quarter points. That leaves room for response in case of error. I suspect that when Warsh starts fulfilling the Drumpfster’s dreams, rates will drop a point at at time, maybe more.

I’m not the only one thinking we’re facing a world-wide financial crisis and I’m not alone in thinking the US is particularly ill-prepared for such an event. We’re currently led by a bunch of clowns pretending to know what they’re doing. Clearly, the nation can coast for awhile but sooner or later, an actual and honest crisis is going to hit – or be caused directly by the Dumbass, himself.

The Keystone Kops might be fun to watch but when you have an actual emergency, if the Keystone department is all that shows up? You’ve got a real problem…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, is now a good time to remind you that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends and likely co-conspirators in a sex trafficking scheme for years and years? He’s trying very hard to distract people because he wants people to forget that. People are not forgetting that. Don’t you forget that…

Tactic Or Trumpery?

by MyBaconPress

Look, I don’t know what’s real when it comes to these “shooters.” On the one hand, their “attacks” are about the most useless, impotent charges they might possibly plan. I mean, ‘just run through the checkpoint?’ What the hell is THAT? Killing a President is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. The days of the unprotected booth at the theater are long gone, largely because of that ONE unprotected booth at that ONE theater.

People work really hard to protect Presidents – even this one. (Sidebar: could you imagine laying down your life to protect that fat, old, lying, cheating, grifting weasel?) If you want to try to kill the President, make a plan. Take your time. Wait for your moment. Grabbing your gun and charging security checkpoints isn’t going to work. They have guns, too. They’ll use them. So far, in direct charges, security is 1 for 2 when it comes to hitting (and killing) the “attackers.”

It’s possible these are what might be called “leading edge” would-be assassins. These are people attacking blindly, in fury. They represent the fringe of humanity. These are not deep thinkers. These are not careful, meticulous planners. That’s WHY ‘grab-your-gun-and-charge’ feels like a possible answer to them. As the attempts continue – and I believe they will – they’ll become more sophisticated.

But every time one of his supporters (or some other patriotic American) decides it’s time for him to die, it’s an opportunity for the White House to tout the ballroom. That gives it a “staged” feel. The “attempts” are ridiculous. They have zero chance of affecting Our National Embarrassment. Oh, but we’ve got to have a ballroom. For clarity, I’m not saying they ARE staged. It’s just that the always-the-same immediate response leaves the impression that the attempts are an effort to help get the ballroom more than any real effort to get the Dumbass…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, have you heard that it took an extra long time to get a handle on battling the Ebola outbreak because the first samples sent to the lab traveled at the wrong temperature? That used to be a task USAID handled because they knew what they were doing. 47 doesn’t understand things so he didn’t know what USAID did in the world. When Evil Elon decided it was only wasting money, Lying Donny shuttered the thing. I guess some people (MAGA) think Elon did a good thing. I think Elon is killing a lot of people…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The US has indicted Raul Castro for an official act he took something like thirty years ago. He shot down a couple of airplanes the government considered a threat. He did it without warning and without evidence that the planes were, in fact, a threat. Now Castro stands indicted.

So what does that say about the boats Lying Donny keeps blowing up in the Caribbean? You know the ones. They’re the boats he blows up without warning and without any evidence that the boats, are, in fact, a threat. I think Lying Donny has now, accidentally, made the case against himself for his boat murders…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He “does not know what he is doing. You have this damaged individual that you have now thrust into a position of power with no skills, no background, nothing but this damaged psyche who you have now given all the power in the world to, and ask them to behave properly.”

We all know who that references, don’t we? I mean, isn’t it obvious from the description, the words? You didn’t have to stop and think about it. You didn’t even hesitate. You knew it as you were reading it. You KNOW who the “he” is in that description. Hell, even MAGA knows. They won’t admit it, of course. Stubborn is stubborn, but they know. We ALL know who that’s about.

Only, it isn’t. That’s a quote from an historian who was talking about the third Roman Emperor, Caligula. It’s hard to describe some of the worst characters in history without accidentally describing 47 as well. That’s quite the crowd he matches up with…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, so this time they’ve trotted out Little Marco Rubio to claim Lying Donny’s stupid war of choice – Lying Donny being the only President stupid enough to fall for Netanyahu’s pitch – is nearly over. I guess that means we should expect a late nite post from the Dumbass himself, threatening to bomb Iran some more.

How does one strike a bargain with a person or group when that person or group is doing everything in their power to convince you that they have no intention of honoring the bargain? That’s Iran’s dilemma, today. They’re trying to negotiate peace with a crowd that’s not dealing with reality. How can one trust anything they say?

Now there will be hype and tons of speculation about what might be in the promised, pending “agreement.” The Strait of Hormuz will re-open and they’ll have talks about limiting Iran’s nuclear capability. More importantly, the prediction markets will pay out some big money to some “anonymous bettors” because private profits are always an awesome look during very public wars.

The only question in my mind, will 47 get as good a deal as Barack had negotiated oh, so long ago. You remember, the one the Drumpfster tore up because he was so stupidly certain he could negotiate a better deal – which he clearly can not. So far, he can’t even get AS GOOD of a deal as Barack. That’s because Barack was a much, much better president and a much, much smarter man…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope it works. In southern California, there’s a huge tank of highly toxic chemicals threatening to explode or at least leak. This is highly toxic stuff. If/when it gets out, it looks like it will directly affect some 40,000 people, long-term. Officials have evacuated as many as 78,000 people. A large swath of Orange County looks like a ghost town.

Somehow, a chemical reaction started in the tank. A bunch of liquid monomers – essentially a bunch of single molecules – are reacting with each other and becoming polymers, forming a solid. Oh, AND, generating heat. The current hope is that cooling the tank while the chemical reaction plays out can keep it from exploding. No one knows if that will work, though.

Right now, officials have deluge guns flooding the tank 24/7 in an effort to keep it cool – only to discover the temperature is still going up. But it’s going up slower, so they keep spraying. Maybe, just maybe, they can contain the temperature increase until the reaction stops. Then again, maybe not, at which time… BOOM!

It seems weird, to me, that a tank that dangerous could be stored where so many people live, but that seems to be the price of a modern society…

A Moment Of Clarity…

by MyBaconPress

Listen, I don’t want to be all depressing, here, but I’m going to be. Sorry. Sometimes, I get these moments of clarity. Here’s one now. We’re all on pins and needles, waiting around for the next election. We all know the stakes. Democrats take back Congress and maybe save the Constitutional Republic, or Democrats do NOT take back Congress and our once-great nation devolves fully into shithole dictatorship, run by the One Percent, FOR the One Percent. But let’s wind back to that ‘We all know the stakes’ bit.

This coup has been in the works for fifty years. The planning started in the 70’s. The execution began with Ronald Reagan, forty-six years ago. Loyal toadies have been inserted into every aspect of our government. Judges loyal to conservatism and not necessarily the law, have been installed. The One Percent didn’t much bother with lower courts. They infested appellate courts with toadies to overturn otherwise proper decisions of the lower courts. The “check” of the courts is severely weakened.

Enough loyalist Congress critters have been put in place to paralyze Congress and if something DOES get close to happening, the “leader” of that institution just closes the doors and runs away. The only things that actually get through seem to be inexorable (like the trump/Epstein files), or often by surprise, but if MAGA Mike, the Johnson can stop things from happening, he will. The “check” of Congress doesn’t even exist anymore.

Election oversight officials – as many as possible, anyway, have been chosen based on their loyalty to conservatism, not the Constitution. These are people like that anti-American Tina Peters, who allowed a team in to tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election, hoping for a different outcome – or hoping to create one.

Our last line of defense? The Fourth Estate, the public press, the “news.” News outlets have been purchased and corrupted to broadcast propaganda, not information. The One Percent have spent billions buying, controlling, and corrupting the free flow of information here in this once great nation. In short, it has been a very careful, very comprehensive plan to corrupt every aspect of American governance. The GOAL was to leave us no place to turn for rescue.

As I’ve mentioned (twice, now), we all know the stakes. THEY know the stakes, too. Do you really, honestly think they’ve gone to all of that trouble, all of that expense, over all of that time, just to watch the whole thing crash and burn in a single election? Or should I say, “election?” Would they have done that without some kind of fail-safe?

We all know, ONE general election remains to try and save ourselves. THEY know it, too. They are but ONE general election away from consolidating their control and completing the coup. After all of that time, money, planning, troubleshooting, and effort, does it make sense that we’re looking at anything LIKE a free and fair election?

Once again, I remind you, JFK said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” I think we’d better keep our powder dry…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I saw a snarky opinion piece from the ‘USA Today,’ celebrating the end of ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.’ He repeated all the old lies about the show’s cancellation. Well, they may not be completely false. They might just be misleading or misdirections. The main point of the column was that Stephen had only himself to blame because he made jokes about the Inglorious Moron and some people (mostly, the Inglorious Moron himself) didn’t think those jokes were funny.

This is really simple. Lying Donny has thinner skin than an onion. He didn’t like jokes Colbert made on his network show. He kept watching, though. Finally, he got his chance. The parent company that owned Colbert’s show wanted to merge with another company and they needed regulatory approval from Lying Donny’s corrupt government for the merger to take place. There was a condition: Colbert had to go.

See their BS (CBS) said the show cost too much. ‘The Late Show’ was the number one rated, left-leaning late-night talk show. The opinion piece pointed out that ‘Gutfeld!’ on Fox NotNews averages 3.3 million viewers. THAT, he says, proves that moronic conservative opinion is more popular than the liberal position. Classic twisted “thinking” from the right.

If you’re going to compare popularity of positions, you have to add up the lefties. See, there are four major broadcast networks. Three of them broadcast liberal hosts. One of them broadcasts Gutfeld. That means the liberal viewership is divided between three networks while the cons are all focused on one. So, yeah, ‘Gutfeld!’ gets 3.3 million viewers. The hosts from the left? 6.56 million viewers. Well, RATS! Facts usually thwart MAGA.

As it happens, television in general is declining in viewership. Really, they don’t seem to be even trying to produce anything watchable these days. And now the move to make is to cancel your number one show and replace it with pablum? THAT ought to help viewership, right? At this point, in my not-so-humble opinion, NONE of the networks are worth watching anymore. Oh, sure, I’ll still tune in football games on See their BS but other than that, I’ll be moving away from Paramount products in general. They’re just putting out crap anyway…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a thing to remember: you know the slush fund that dumbass is trying to create so he can steal even more of your money and give a bunch of it to J6 traitors? That results from a lawsuit about Lying Donny’s taxes being released, just like he promised he would but never did because he lies about everything. The theft fund is supposed to be a “settlement.” So, who infested the Oval Office when Donny’s taxes were reveled? Why, that would be Donny, himself.

It seems 47 was suing himself over his own incompetence and now wants a settlement of your tax dollars to he can give your money to people who assaulted police and attacked the Capitol. Go ahead, try to tell me we don’t live in Bizzaro America…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

$174,000 dollars each year. That’s how much we pay – entry level – Congress critters. And what do they do for that money? Not much, it seems. Every time they get faced with a vote the GOP might lose, MAGA Mike the Johnson shuts down the House. I’d LOVE to be able to shut down the office and take a paid, month-long vacation every time my boss gave me an unpleasant task, wouldn’t you?

Like the GOP-controlled Congress, I would, likely, spend a LOT of time doing what I want to do and not what I’m paid to do. THIS time, the Johnson shut down the House because he feared there was enough support to pass a war powers resolution requiring our National Embarrassment to end his stupid, costly, war of choice in Iran. But the GOP knows they can’t have Congress functioning well or they might interfere with this amazing money grab that’s going so well for Lying Donny and his richest associates.

This is the eighth time the House has avoided doing their jobs on this subject. They’re taking their salaries, I’ve noticed. I was taught that if you’re mucking about on company time, you’re essentially stealing from the boss. Well the House is definitely mucking about on company time, and we, the people are the boss, so they’re stealing from us. (Again!) Let’s fire them and get some people in who will do the job…

Losses That Look Like Wins…

by MyBaconPress

It says a LOT to me that Thomas Massie became a focus for Lying Donny’s wrath for the “crime” of doing the right thing. In this case, “doing the right thing” always meant standing against Lying Donny. Here’s a puzzle for you, MAGA: if Massie did the right thing and was against Lying Donny on those issues, who was NOT doing the right thing? Take your time.

Meanwhile, Massie earned Lying Donny’s wrath by standing against his budget-busting tax cuts. He was instrumental in forcing Lying Donny’s corrupt DOJ to release the Trump/Epstein files. He also supports the Constitution in demanding Congressional oversight of Lying Donny’s stupid foreign wars of choice. Massie thinks the government should get a warrant before spying on Americans. Again, standing against Team Evil.

Massie’s actual “crime” is that he supported the Constitution of the United States over the whims of a self-indulgent madman…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As of Tuesday, Lying Donny’s approval rating fell to roughly 37%. That’s ’cause he sucks. The 37% approval kind of surprises me. A THIRD of this once-great nation still approves? Of what?!? No, they’re just MAGA. They don’t even KNOW what he’s doing and they certainly aren’t going to hold him responsible. The thing that shocks me the most about this entire movement is the number of Americans who completely lack discernment, critical thinking skills, and morality…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s not just Massie getting bumped for doing the right thing. MAGA is having quite a good time, tossing out decent people in favor of other MAGA Lying Donny likes better. It seems a little scary until one remembers MAGA, alone, isn’t enough to carry a general election, and most of the trump supporters who are NOT MAGA have fallen away by now. MAGA gets their extremist trump-loving bootlickers, but is that person going to carry the general election? I’m not so sure.

What looks like something of a banner day for trump endorsed candidates in these primaries might well prove to be weakening the GOP’s chances in the general. Fingers crossed…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MAGA insists, stubbornly, that Lying Donny isn’t racist. I say actions speak louder than words. He’s actively working to remove or keep out any people who appear slightly darker in their skin color. Sometimes it seems like a good tan might get you deported. Somehow, he can tell they’re “bad” just by looking at them. Meanwhile, he’s bringing in white Afrikaners from South Africa – and he’s spending $100 million dollars to do it.

Somehow – and it seems to be the same magical power – he seems able to see the white guys are all a-okay – just by looking at them! Lying Donny has made up stories about why the white guys need the help. He pretends they’re under attack. In fact, he commonly refers to a “white genocide,” a long-standing fringe conspiracy theory that has been debunked over and over.

South Africa IS an unstable country with a high crime rate. It’s just that there’s no special focus on white people. But it wouldn’t matter if there was. Many of the brown people he’s exiling also come from countries in upheaval. Many are here because they fled from there. He doesn’t give two figs about that. The really, really important part seems to be white versus not-so-white. That’s racist, whether you acknowledge it or not…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s looking more and more like billionaire Tom Steyer is going to do well in the California governor’s race. A populist billionaire. Uh-huh. Wasn’t Lying Donny a populist billionaire? It’s easy to say the right thing on the campaign trail and once you’re in office, there’s precious little the population can do to remove you. That is to say, all they’ve got to do is get in. THEN you find out about the real agenda, which, magically, seems to be helping billionaires.

ALL of the candidates promise to “address” (not solve) the housing crisis. California is becoming unlivable for most median income earners and nearly ALL of it is caused by the housing crisis. And the housing crisis is caused by Wall Street (and other investors) buying up single family homes. The fix is easy and obvious: stop Wall Street (and other investors) buying up single family homes and force them to divest their current holdings. (More on that in a moment.)

Ro Khanna has called for that but he’s not running for governor. I haven’t heard any of the candidates call for that. It would not be painless. Everybody who owns a house has benefited from artificial equity, caused by the relentless buying from endlessly deep pockets. If the buying spree is stopped and reversed, the artificial equity disappears. That is to say, people see their home values drop. They don’t want that.

But there are only two choices: a careful reduction or a hard crash. And because we, apparently, will not engage the careful reduction, we should brace for a hard crash…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t think Lying Donny’s lawsuit “settlement” will hold up. I desperately hope Lying Donny’s lawsuit “settlement” doesn’t hold up. Not only does it create a slush fund Lying Donny can… whatever, say, give to J6 insurrectionists, give to other criminals, pocket himself, it protects him from any investigations of his and his families taxes – ever.

The Sackler family tried that over intentionally addicting so many people Oxycontin. Judges struck down that provision. Apparently, one cannot use a settlement to indemnify themselves from any and all related and unrelated crimes. But our world is upside down, these days. 47 shouldn’t get such a break, but somehow (the devil takes care of his own) he gets things he shouldn’t all the time.

It’s a bit startling, how quickly he has decimated this once-great nation…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, back to the housing crisis. It IS a start. I guess. Or is it? The Senate has passed a law limiting Wall Street investors buying single family homes! That approaches what they actually need to do: stopping Wall Street investors from buying single family homes altogether and divesting their current holdings. The way this bill is written (for clarity, I read an article about it, not the bill) corporate investors can still buy up to 350 houses. Then, once a corporation owns that many, they can’t buy more. Oh, shoot, NOW what are they gonna do?

How about if the parent corporation sets up a subsidiary that owns it’s OWN 350 houses? Would that work? Landlord Corporation owns Our Houses, Inc 1, which owns 350 houses. They also own Our Houses, Inc 2, which also owns 350 houses. Our Houses, Inc 3 only owns about 227 houses, to date, but they’re still buying. Meanwhile, Landlord Corporation is setting up Our Houses, Inc 4, in anticipation of OH3 filling it’s quota by month’s end.

I’m pretty sure no corporation would or could ever think of that. Hell, it took ME seconds and seconds to come up with it. Fortunately, the rest of the bill deregulates the house-building process so houses can go up faster for Wall Street to buy, slot into the correct subsidiary, and own forever. Hmm. Not much of a start after all…

A Deal Is A Deal, Until It Isn’t…

by MyBaconPress

47 is threatening Iran. Yes, again. Apparently, the clock is ticking. Time is running out. Apparently, he’s just about to do something. Iran better do as it’s told or it’s facing a serious timeout, buster. Do you want me to start counting? Because you’re getting very close to your last chance. I mean it. It’s time to make a deal or else. One… No, I’m serious. Two… You’re really gonna get it. <later> 4,726… You’re getting close to your last chance. 4,727… I mean it, buster!

So Fred Mertz, no, that’s Lucy and Ricky’s neighbor. Friedrich Merz, the current German Chancellor, decided to help by telling the Iranians they had better get serious about negotiating with the US. He wrote on Brand X, “Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA, stop threatening its neighbors, and open the strait of Hormuz without restrictions.“

Easy to say. Not as easy to do. Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA? Is the USA seriously negotiating with Iran? Currently, because certain people think it’s a good idea, the US is governed by a group of the most untrustworthy morons the world has seen in decades. Team Evil lies about everything, all the time. How does one negotiate with that?

One thing everybody knows about Donald Trump: if he makes a deal and then decides he didn’t like that deal, after all, he’ll just ignore the deal he made. For a guy who talks about “deals” all the time, he’s not trustworthy in deals. HE, invariably, is the weakest link. Even if Iran does negotiate with the US, will the US honor anything it says? I think the hardest thing about ending Donny’s war-that’s-not-a-war is finding someone dependable with whom to negotiate…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I saw conservative talk show host Bill Maher this weekend. He challenged his audience to support Israel or admit you’re antisemitic. Clever framing. Either/or, huh? Those are the only choices? I’m going with option C, which Bill pretends doesn’t exist. I think Israel is wrong and it has nothing to do with Judaism.

Israel is fighting a war of attrition, with an end goal of having no Arabs in “their” region. From the river to the sea, as a matter of fact. The idea that it was the Arab’s “region” before doesn’t much affect their thinking. For the record, I think it’s wrong to attack Synagogues and other Jewish organizations in protest of the Israeli government, too. Walk a picket line outside Israeli embassies. Don’t attack places of worship.

It’s weird, watching Maher move right. He doesn’t even know it, either, though I think that’s common when it happens. People don’t realize. It’s often a single issue that gets hold of their minds. In Maher’s case – surprisingly, for a self-proclaimed atheist – it’s Israel and Judaism…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, there’s a new delay in the ballroom. You remember. It’s the $200 million, no $300 million, wait, $400 million dollar ballroom that will be completely and totally privately funded and you can take that to the bank – where you’ll find all of the private funding has disappeared and now the Congress wants to give him a billion dollars in taxpayer money, instead.

This boy just keeps taking things away from the masses so he can give more and more to, um, <checks notes> RIGHT! Himself. But the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has shot down the line item as a violation of proper procedure. The cons can try to get it back by re-writing the bill, so it’s more like delaying, rather than killing the item.

Look, I know it’s a little thing. It’s most likely he’s going to get his ballroom. His toadies work on his behalf all the time. But the delays and challenges frustrate him and I like that. It feels like he’s getting back just a small amount of what he’s sending out into the world on a daily basis. Reaping as he sows, in a manner of speaking…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have a question. Do you feel badly for the poor, suffering Congress critters who have to try and survive on only $174,000 dollars a year? Things are tough all over, I guess. MAGA Mike, the Johnson, says it’s really hard trying to make ends meet on such measly income. His solution? Insider trading! That’s not even hyperbole, though he only mentions “stock trading,” trying to downplay the “insider” part.

He also trotted out that old saw about how less qualified people will come to Congress if we don’t pay them properly – which, in his mind, is a LOT. I always think back to the Founders, who built an entire nation on no salary and only a per diem income of about $8.00/day. (Of course, that works out to around $306/day in today’s money…)

Still the “unpaid,” all-volunteer congress laid out and established an entire nation that rose to empire and dominated the world before Congress gave way to well-paid weasels who don’t do anything of value and have pissed the whole thing away. It looks very much, to me, like better pay did NOT equate to better people. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

$174,000 dollars/year puts congress critters in the top 10% of income, and that’s before all of the other perks and benefits that come their way. Now they “need” to trade stocks in order to support their families? I suspect they may not be living within their means. Maybe they could pass up on that morning coffee from their favorite shop. That outta do it, right? Isn’t that their prescription for us?

Their best argument is about housing. They maintain housing in two places, their home district and Washington DC. They argue that because they have to do that, they need more and more and more money. The solution isn’t more and more pay. The solution is government housing for the congress critters when they’re in Washington DC.

I should mention, Johnson hasn’t talked about this recently. But a clip of him making the comments last year went around on the one-year anniversary of the whining, May 14th. I’ll tell you this: I don’t feel his pain. I can’t relate. I don’t have much sympathy for the person who has to “get by” on “only” $174,000 a year – before the perks…

Happy News To Start…

by MyBaconPress

I couldn’t let this special, special moment pass without comment. I’m so happy. Have you ever heard that commercial on the radio about donating your car to a charity called Kars4Kids? They have the most annoying jingle in the history of jingles. Once you hear it,you’re stuck with it, like herpes. The ad is SO annoying, I decided long ago that if I ever DID give a car to charity, it would be ANY charity other than Kars4Kids.

So, right here, I’m going to add an apology. I’m aware, now that I’ve mentioned it, you’re going to have that nightmare jingle playing in your head for a while as an earworm. Sorry about that. If it helps any, I’m suffering writing about it, too, but, in this case, it’s worth it.

The special moment? We may never have to hear that ad again – once the earworm fades, that is. A California judge ruled that the hated Kars4Kids jingle and ad campaign was misleading. One hears the ad and infers the charity helps disadvantaged children, right? It’s right in the name: Kars4Kids. Kids. And it does help kids – just not the kinds of kids you expect and not in the way you expect.

Instead, Kars4Kids supports a group called Oorah, a Jewish organization that helps fund young adult trips to Israel. So, kids, yes, but adults, too. Hell, send the whole family! It’s on us. (Someone gave us a car!) The judge ruled that the obnoxious ad is misleading. It fails to disclose the religious affiliation of Oorah and it knowingly leaves listeners with a false impression of the mission of the group.

The judge ordered the group to pull ALL of it’s advertising in California for 30 days and when they DO come back, they have to be more honest about who they are and what they’re doing. That means a definite reprieve from that effing jingle for at least 30 days and likely, forever. Frankly, if there IS a God, I would rather he protect the world from the evil of 47, but if the best the “All-Powerful” can do is relief from false advertising, well, I guess I’ll take it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The top story in the Guardian, this morning, reads, “‘We’re not ready’: US lags on pandemic preparedness after Covid, experts say.” Duh, you think? Wasn’t that Sleepy Donny’s goal? He tore everything apart around Covid. You don’t think he put anything back, do you? That would take foresight. Sleepy Donny is very much an in-the-moment person – when he’s awake, of course.

Biden, sure. Biden has foresight and his administration announced a policy to restore preparations against pandemics but Donny wants that money for himself. He doesn’t want anybody else to have it. He shutters important agencies, allowing things like pandemics, then brags about saving money. Honestly, given a choice, I’d rather he try to save those lives first but in the US, money is God.

This is yet another example of the US quickly becoming a submerging nation. That’s my own term and no, I don’t mean, “We’re sinking below water.” At least not literally. Countries breaking free of Third World status are commonly referred to as “Emerging Nations.” A First World nation feverishly working to achieve Third World status – see the US under the Drumpfster – is clearly submerging…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beetlejuice fan (ahem!) Lauren Boebert seems to be on the outs with 47, these days. She’s not a new face in the defection file, but her situation is coming clearer. She was once loyally MAGA. She doesn’t seem to hold that status anymore. MAGA seems to be fracturing and Boebert, along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, is helping to lead people out.

MAGA started off to be an America first movement. The message 47 used to draw people in was that America was suffering from mismanagement and too much focus on the rest of the world. MAGA promised to focus American resources on Americans. That was the context of every speech he gave. We all know his promises, now better classified as lies. (If you really can’t call his false statements lies, you can always dismiss them as ‘campaign rhetoric.’)

Fix the housing crisis, lower the cost of living, no more foreign wars, release the Trump/Epstein files. Oh, remember this one? ‘Drain the swamp?’ That one sold BIGLY. They ate that up with a spoon. No one ever explained to them that the US maintained it’s power, at least in part, by helping the rest of the world so MAGA just wanted that to stop. Much of it HAS stopped and now, China has stepped in to help those people. Now China is the primary power on the planet and the US is yesterday’s news. (That’s what Xi meant when he referred to the “Thucydides Trap.”

Slowly but surly, as one campaign promise after another got 86’d, Boebert found herself at odds with Sleepy Donny, sure, but also MAGA in general. He didn’t release the Trump/Epstein files (because he’s a liar). He didn’t avoid foreign wars (because he’s a liar). He hasn’t lowered the cost of living (because he’s a liar). He hasn’t fixed the housing crisis (because he’s a liar). In short, he has made America worse, not better and certainly not “great again,” (because he’s a liar).

Some MAGA, like Boebert and MTG, have noticed. They’re still loyal to the idea of taking care of Americans first. They’ve just noticed that Donny, by every measure and metric, is taking care of Trump first and has pretty much turned his back on Americans, in general – even loyal MAGA. So there’s a new movement starting, America First and it’s starting without Donny the Dotard as it’s “leader.”

They’ll need a better name. ‘MAGA’ stuck because it was easy. Americans are nothing if not lazy as hell and we’ll shorten everything we say. ‘America First’ is so many syllables. But ‘AF’ already means something. (For the uninitiated, ‘AF’ means ‘As F*ck’ and is meant to indicate lots and lots. “Oh, man, it’s hot AF!” Like that.) So, they can’t just become ‘AF.’ They can go with a popular common trend and give the movement a technological-sounding name. Maybe they could call their movement “I Like America First,” or iLAF. Just a thought…

The Gaslight Regime…

by MyBaconPress

So, by now, anybody paying any attention at all realizes the best overall name for Team Evil’s current run is ‘The Gaslight Regime,’ right? I mean, they just gaslight everything. I saw one guy claim that Stupid Donny’s stupid war in Iran is going on so long because we’ve just been so darned effective. That seems like gaslighting to me, although he could be confessing that the goal is to keep the war going for reasons of their own.

It’s happening again with 47’s China trip. Xi referred to the US as a nation in decline and quite simply, the nation has not been in this bad of a state for a long, long time. So, 47 said otherwise. Oh, we WERE in decline. Now we’re the hottest of the hot. Just look around. We’re clearly not. Gaslighting. Once again, our National Embarrassment humiliates the US on the world stage.

The thing is, despite the gaslighting, most Americans – and even some MAGA – are starting to see (no, I do not mean ‘sea,’ as in water. I mean ‘see,’ as in vision) The Gaslight Regime just says what they wish was true, ignoring what’s actually true. Republican politicians are noticing too. Or, more accurately, they’re noticing that people are noticing and, gaslighting notwithstanding, blaming the Republicans.

That threatens their phony-baloney jobs. They might not get re-elected if the voters get too angry at the current economic situation. It looks like that reality has kicked off a new strategy from the White House: gaslight the Republican politicians, too. Evil Bartiromo asked Kevin Hassett about current policies increasing gas and oil prices.

Hassett asserted without any evidence and against all logic that prices will come down quickly pretty darned soon and “…certainly ahead of the election.” I think that “…certainly ahead of the election” part is aimed at Republican politicians. I think it’s supposed to calm them. I think they’ll be fools, likely out of work fools, if they listen…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You know the murders he keeps ordering in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific? You know, the little fishing boats the US keeps blowing up, killing everyone in them? Yeah, those murders. I’ve called them murders since the start. Sure, ‘The Gaslight Regime’ says those guys are drug runners, but they have yet to provide even a scintilla of evidence. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

But there IS evidence coming out now, and it keeps saying the people in the boats are poor people from struggling villages, just out fishing in order to eat. They stay on shore as long as they can because of the madman in the White House. But after a while, the village starts to suffer the loss. People start to feel it. Desperate men go out, hoping to feed their families. Then some gaslighting moron orders their deaths.

To be clear, I would call these murders even if every explosion included a mushroom cloud of cocaine. I come from a country and a time when even criminals deserved a trial. I know, quaint. Still, I liked that better. I thought it was better to believe, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the person being punished deserved the punishment they were receiving.

I genuinely believe those guys are being murdered just so The Gaslight Regime can try to look like a bunch of tough guys, like this is some big, macho move. I don’t think there’s anything macho about being hundreds of miles away and ordering the murder of people just trying to feed their families. Donny regularly reminds me of a weak man’s vision of what a strong man might look like and now the entire regime reminds me of what a coward might think a tough guy looks…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I imagine 47 enjoyed his trip to China. He got to act like he knows things. He got to feel really important. He got to meet with Xi! They put on displays just for him. He got to attend fancy dinners. He got to drink champagne. Weird, for a guy who insists he’s a teetotaler but then, he lies about everything else. Why not that? Anyway, it was the whole shebang.

The Chinese took him to The National Museum on Tiananmen Square to show off the latest advances in green energy, robotics, and space exploration. The display was titled: “Forging the path to national strength.” The Drumpfster was looking right at the future and didn’t understand a minute of it, dedicated, as he is, to mastering yesterday’s technologies.

We’re supposed to be competing with China, right? But under President Pedo, the US has unilaterally sat down in the race. Oh, sure, we’re still talking about how fast we’re going to go when we get up, but in the meantime, the Chinese are blazing down the track, rapidly escaping our ability to keep up as they they disappear from view in front of us.

Policy? No, no policy. Trade deals? Well, concepts of frameworks. When the topic is Taiwan, nothing changed. When the topic is Iran, nothing changed. He declared — uh, oh, he declared that China would be buying crops from the US again, particularly Soybeans. He said, “The farmers are going to be very happy.” The uh-oh part? This is The Gaslight Regime. Donny lies about everything and regularly says the exact opposite of the truth. If he says farmers are going to be happy, farmers had better start looking for good bankruptcy attorneys.

His big takeaway seems to have been this: “China has a ballroom, and so should the USA!” I wonder how much the American taxpayer paid for his useless little excursion to China…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Americans are upset by the current level of power vested in (or stolen by) the White House. We were not supposed to be a country with a king. We were not supposed to have an executive with this much power at all. The founders wouldn’t recognize the powers of the Presidency today and they would likely be horrified by that much power concentrated in one person’s hands. So how did we get here?

Watch this video: “How the Presidency Became Too Powerful.” Click the title. It’s a link. It’s 22 minutes long, but it’s very informative. It follows the power gains in the Executive Branch from Washington to Dumbass. Yeah, it’s a bit long, but it’s worth the look…

Idiocracy On Full Display…

by MyBaconPress

I find myself just shaking my head a lot. This country seems to have lost it’s collective mind. Utah officials have approved a data center twice the size of Manhattan! According to ‘The Guardian,’ The Stratos artificial intelligence data center footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites. The facility will require about 9GW of power – that’s more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes. Oh, and it will suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.

Shall we define “significant amount of water?” How does 16.6 billion gallons each year sound? I’d say “significant.” To be clear, that’s all the data centers in Utah, not just this new one. Still, local residents are already being told to conserve water because there isn’t enough. The Great Salt Lake is literally drying up, and someone thinks that’s the perfect spot for a water intensive industry? That’s straight up insane.

In fairness to the data centers, they are trying to use less. The newer facilities are switching to closed-loop water cooling systems to reduce usage. The downside is, the closed systems use more electricity to operate and the increased electricity demand means more water usage by the power company so they’re not so much fixing the problem as shifting the problem.

Oh, did I write ‘problem?’ The companies that benefit from the data centers don’t see any real problem. They’re just sure some solution will make itself known over time. Republican (of course) Governor Spencer Cox is all gung-ho on the project as well, citing (this is true) desalinization plants as the long-term possible solution to the water problem. No word on where landlocked Utah is supposed to get it’s ocean to desalinate.

No matter how hard conservatives try, magical thinking will not overcome reality. We can’t wish away or simply ignore problems. It’s brain-dead foolish to insist that some future, unknown (keyword: unknown) solution will magically appear and keep plowing forward. Long-term, it’s not even good business. Investing billions of dollars in a “maybe we’ll figure it out” kind of way seems reckless.

This unfettered Capitalism is making a small handful of people magnificently rich and doing untold – and likely irreparable – damage to the vast majority of us. The ‘Idiocracy’ is in full bloom, here in the United States and, if the news is any indicator, around the world. In fact, it looks to me like anywhere conservatism is taking root, Idiocracy is also on full display. I used to have more faith in humanity than I do now…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, look! Yet another promise made, promise broken. 47 was going to eliminate inflation, remember? That was his promise. Has he done that, or has MAGA started offering excuses why it was, oh, I don’t know, President Eisenhower’s fault? These guys aren’t particular about who they blame, just so long as they don’t blame the guy who is actually responsible.

It’s driven by the clever trap he sprung on himself – completely unsuspecting, by the way – when he decided to choke off the world’s oil supply by attacking Iran. Many people – big people, strong people – were saying, “Don’t do it. It would be a dumb plan, the dumbest plan,” but he did it. Other Presidents were too smart to get caught in that snare but Donny did it. Donny did it.

Oh, AND, according to him, he doesn’t care about your financial problems. His words: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. Not even a little bit.” His focus is on making sure Iran doesn’t build the nuclear bomb they swore off as contrary to Islam in 2004. So you’re paying a higher and higher price so he can keep Iran from building the bomb they unilaterally chose not to build 22 years ago.

Wages haven’t risen at the same rate. We fall a little further behind every day. We’re like the frog in the pot of water. We haven’t perceived the temperature yet but when we do, it will be too late…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of frogs, Donny is about to get his toady in as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The guy got confirmed by insisting he would be independent. Then he ran to Donny and said, “Duh, I told ’em what you said to tell ’em, boss. Duh, gee, boss, they actually bought it, boss!”

The Fed is (was) an important support for the American dollar. Making it subject to the whims of a moronic madman isn’t a good idea in any way…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It looks like Democrats are getting ready to fall into their standard campaign issue: “We’re not Donald Trump.” It’s not enough. I think they should highlight HOW they’re not Donald Trump. Rather than just rip 47, they should specify what they’ll do differently. We all know the wreckage the Drumpfster is inflicting on the nation. All the Dems have to do is describe, essentially, the opposite.

It’s not that I disagree with pointing out the problems with the opposition. I just don’t think it’s enough. You’ve got to have a vision, too. You need a plan, something for the team to get behind. You need more on offer than just, “We’re not that guy…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

47 seems to actually believe that the world will just accept whatever garbage he spews as true and correct. Nobody does, of course. MAGA pretends to, but even they know he’s full of, um, falsehoods. For example, it doesn’t matter how high the cost of his (originally) $200 million dollar ballroom balloons, and it doesn’t matter how many delays occur because of all of the legal violations he’s piling up in just plowing forward, the ballroom is always under budget and on time, no “ahead of schedule.”

The last time he made that ridiculous claim a reporter asked him about it, pointing out that the cost has risen from $200 million dollars to a billion dollars, now. Donny responded with his standard decorum. “I’ve doubled the size of it, you dumb person. Doubled the size. You are not a smart person.” She seemed pretty smart, to me. Design changes add cost, busting budgets. He tried to prosecute Jerome Powell for the same thing, design changes leading to increased costs.

There was only one “dumb person” in that exchange – and it wasn’t the reporter…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, is now a good time to remind you that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends and likely co-conspirators in a sex trafficking scheme for years and years? He wants people to forget that. People are not forgetting that. Don’t you forget that…

Define ‘Reality…’

by MyBaconPress

I hear there’s a war that’s not a war over there in Iran. It’s over but it’s not really over. We have a cease fire but we keep shooting and so do they, which is not what I think ‘cease fire’ means. Trying to make a deal with an unstable madman leading an untrustworthy and undependable government is a very difficult thing – but Iran keeps trying.

It’s clearly an important war – just so long as you don’t CALL it a war. We MUST prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. You know, like the ones they swore off as contrary to Islam in 2004, when they issued a fatwa that called it contrary to Islam to build, maintain, or use nuclear weapons. They seem to take their religion pretty seriously, likely part of the reason Christians don’t really get it.

These days, Christianity seem more like an a-la-cart religion. They like to choose the parts that work for them and ignore the rest. I mean, have you SEEN their new golden idol? They were very careful to note that it was NOT a golden idol before they dropped to their knees and supplicated the thing. It seems they STILL haven’t figured out that this particular object of worship ain’t grantin’ favors or answering prayers without a little taste for his own beak and, even at that, ONLY for the richest of the rich. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

Meanwhile, Israel is over there killing people in Lebanon at a, well, a Biblical rate. We’re in on that war, too. We’re not as directly involved. We just supply weapons to Israel and keep Lebanon’s protector, Iran, busy. Our unstable national embarrassment likes to say that he has solved <pick a number of> wars. (He just makes up the number. You can, too.)

So he has “solved” some unknown countless number of wars nobody knew anything about but can’t solve any of the current conflicts we can ALL see. You remember the wars he said he would end on Day One because it would be so easy? Sometimes, I suspect he hasn’t got a clue…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s said on the left that 47 will do whatever the last person he spoke to convinces him to do. One example is in fruit-flavored vaping pods, which contain nicotine and are used in e-cigarettes. The US stopped selling them because the flavors made the nicotine products more attractive to kids and more people thought we should not be trying to hook children to nicotine than thought we should.

The cigarette companies, for example, really want to sell fruit-flavored vaping pods. It turns out, their product kills their customer base. They must recruit new addicts on a daily basis or there’s a real risk of losing market share. Why, yes, now that you mention it, that IS, actually and honestly, killing people for profit, a staple of Capitalism. Kids are easiest to hook and fruit-flavored vaping pods are a great tool for exactly that.

A representative from RJ Reynolds tobacco company met with President Pedo on Saturday, May 2, in Florida. It seems likely that the required bribes were paid or promised, though I have no specific information to that effect. The next thing we knew, the Dotard was demanding the FDA authorize the sale of the fruit-flavored vaping pods. For reasons we don’t know, the FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, dragged his feet a little. He didn’t authorize the sale until Tuesday.

Word is, there’s been a whisper campaign against Markary originating in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s possible, Markary isn’t insane enough for this team. According to Politico, Makary has “alienated a range of HHS officials and interest groups, including anti-abortion activists, opponents of vaping regulation and some drug manufacturers. He clashed with Chris Klomp — HHS chief counselor and the director of Medicare — over several matters including personnel decisions, according to a senior HHS official granted anonymity to discuss the interpersonal dynamics.”

Now the White House is scrambling to find someone worse. Markary, apparently, had that thing, that… what do you call it? Um, integrity? Is that the word? Yeah, that’s it. Markary had some. Not a lot, mind you. One does not last a year with Team Evil if they have much integrity, but he had some – and it was still too much. Out he goes. A newer, more loyal but dumber commissioner will be found – the US will take yet another embarrassing step into self-imposed darkness. Lovely…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of the FDA, there’s a drug out there called metformin, and it’s the leading Type 2 diabetes medication. AS the leading Type 2 diabetes medication, lots of people are taking it. It seems to work. NOW, scientists are on the verge of figuring out HOW metformin works. Doesn’t that seem odd to you? It does to me.

“Here, this drug seems to do what we want it to do.”
“Great! How does it work?”
“Oh, we don’t know. We think it probably has something to do with the liver.”
“Well, if you don’t know how it works, how can you be sure it isn’t affecting some other part of the body?”
“Look, do you want the profits or not?”
“Of course. I understand the corporate priority. I was just curious.”
“I’ll tell you what, if metformin causes some long-term problem down the road, we’ll come up with a new pill for that, too. How does that sound?”
“Well, um, profitable. Okay, then!”

Now there’s a new theory that metformin works by increasing glucose in the gut and not by affecting the liver. A “theory.” Don’t get me wrong. It’s important that a drug does what it’s supposed to do. I just think it might be nice if we knew HOW it does what it’s supposed to do before we start giving it to thousands of people…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once a reality TV personality, always a reality TV personality, I guess. Sean Duffy is, ostensibly, our Transportation Secretary. Obviously, doing THAT job is verboten in this regime so he sought something else to do. He went on a road trip with his wife and nine children. They made a TV show out it. I’ll bet you buttons to beans you and I paid for it. “Reality.” That’s what they call it.

Maybe in the reality of a taxpayer funded government worker but in MY reality, a nationwide road trip would require a long-term loan just for the effing gas…