Idiocracy On Full Display…

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…”

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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…

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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…’

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

Not Much Of A Choice…

Have you seen the video of Katie Porter “directing expletives” at a staffer? Porter seems to be recording an interview when a staffer walks into the shot, prompting Porter to say, “Get out of my f*cking shot.” (Apparently, that asterisk leaves you completely mystified about what word was used…) The staffer in question wasn’t phased.

She didn’t retreat, feeling rebuked. She delivered information Porter needed in the moment for that conversation. I think what that video actually showed was that Porter uses the “F” word. Those of us who do, often just shove it into sentences rather haphazardly. My own observation about the use of that word is that it makes the speaker sound angry, even if they’re not. That seems to be the issue with Porter.

Katie Porter is a policy wonk and I honestly think she would do a good job as governor. She would be my first choice except for that video. I don’t care about it, but it works beautifully to smear her as unstable and an angry woman. As of this writing, she’s sitting at 8% and I really don’t think she’s going to be the choice. There was a time when I would have voted for her anyway, because that’s how democracy is supposed to work. I can’t do that anymore.

Now it’s all strategy. Who can win, what might we lose? The front-runner right now is a British talk show host who wants to trump California. I genuinely do not understand why cons continue to think talk show hosts are qualified to be in government but we can’t seem to shake that belief and now Steve Hilton is a real threat.

Who is in second place? Well, that depends on which poll you look at. It’s either Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, or Chad Bianco. Bianco is an “Are we sure that election was fair?” guy so MAGA just loves him. Steyer, of course, is a billionaire who insists he’s a class traitor who will only work for the little guy and not for the billionaires. I’ve heard that promise before. Didn’t the Drumpfster take that position? It hasn’t worked out that way, has it? Worse, can you tell me when it ever has?

I think I have to vote Becerra, like it or not. Sadly, I’m FAR closer to “not” than “like,” but we, the people, don’t really get to choose anymore, if we ever did. Our constitutional republic is in a shameful, embarrassing state…

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“Oh, supply chain problems. Haven’t you hear about the Strait of Hormuz? We’re forced to raise prices at the pump to maintain profitability.” Uh-huh. Quarterly earnings reports are out. Gas companies are reporting record profits. Not “maintained profitability.” Record profits. That means, by definition, that those companies started charging increased prices the minute they had an excuse – Donny’s Dumbass War – and long before they actually needed to.

47 is just helping the oil companies extract money from you while making lots and lots of money for himself via “prediction” markets. (It’s not much of a “prediction” when you know what’s about to happen, like announcing progress in talks.) At this point, it’s pretty much a full-on grifter economy…

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So, when hackers get into your Amazon account, the hackers tend to buy gift cards. Amazon knows this. This is an ongoing problem and it’s been “ongoing” for years now. Amazon isn’t much help. I’m speaking from experience, here. Recently, hackers got into my Amazon account. I was asleep. In the morning my email inbox was full of “purchased” and “here’s the redemption code you need.”

I’m not sure how the hackers get the redemption code when it comes to me but this has been going on for a long time and they keep doing it so there’s value to them somewhere in this process. Anyway, the first thing I did was go remove all the payment methods on my Amazon account, effectively stopping the scam. So, I did what we do, right? I contacted the people who I need to contact, replaced vulnerable cards, changed passwords, upped my security, all the while wishing harm and evil on the pricks who rained this darkness into my world for no reason other than their own greed.

But I keep getting messages from Amazon. “Update your payment method so we can finish this transaction.” Um, no. There are orders pending on gift cards. If I put in a payment method, Amazon takes my money for something I never ordered, never received, and don’t want. Easy, right? Just go click on the ‘Cancel Order’ button. Hey, guess what? On gift cards, there IS no ‘Cancel Order’ button.

I feel an urgency, here. I want those transactions stopped and I can’t do that from my own account. The obvious solution? Contact Amazon and get them to cancel the orders. Yeah, good luck with that. Have you ever tried to contact Amazon? I’ve tried to find a way. It MUST be possible, but it ain’t easy. I challenged one of the purchases, intending to challenge the rest, but they do that one at a time that way. You can do a day at a time, but this assault crossed days as the clock passed midnight.

I used to read a blog called ‘Bartcop.’ The guy who wrote it, not named ‘Bart’ and not a cop, had a rule of thumb: when a person or entity makes a “mistake” that puts money in their pocket, expect them to make that “mistake” over and over again. It’s a solid rule. So what happens if we apply it to Amazon’s failure to correct this “problem?”

Is it really outrageous to wonder if Amazon knows about this scam but does nothing to stop it because it’s a (possibly) substantial revenue stream for Amazon? All they have to do is stop delivering gift card electronically or require verification for each new purchase from the main account holder. A pain in the neck? Yes. A protection for consumers? Hell yes. Will Amazon risk a revenue stream? It doesn’t appear so.

So THEN I find myself wondering if Amazon works with hackers in India to get into accounts and order gift cards. (One feels vulnerable after such an encounter.) Certainly, they make little to no effort to actually stop the practice. In law, there’s a rule, “Silence is consent.” Maybe in retail, “inaction is permission.” If I CAN stop hackers from stealing from customers, but I don’t, maybe I’m not bothered enough by the practice to try. Maybe there’s something in it for me.

Yeah, I recognize that sounds crazy, and it likely is, but this is exactly the kind of question one asks, gets attacked as paranoid, then gets exposed in a New York Times investigative report as actually what happens…

Not Political, Just Kangaroo…

I was struck by a couple of headlines in Friday’s Guardian. One of them blared, ‘Supreme court’s Voting Rights Act ruling cited misleading data from DoJ.’ Basically, the article explained that corrupt “Justice” Samuel Alito cited data that suggested that black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in the last election in Louisiana. Turns out, one had to use some rather creative accounting to get that outcome, which, you will not be surprised to hear, was not supported by any other measure.

The other headline? ‘Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district.’ THAT headline is the direct result of the Robert’s Kangaroo Court’s ruling that racism is over and not a problem in voting, based on fraudulent data. The second headline pretty much condemns the first as a biased and ridiculous decision. The court wanted to help Republicans, so the court helped Republicans. It’s pretty simple, really.

Oh, yeah, John Roberts, the leader of this band of thieves, insists “supreme court not ‘political’ after Trump-friendly rulings.” Oh, well, if he says so. Wait, what’s the rule? Actions speak louder than words? Hmm, that makes it seems like he’s saying one thing and doing another. THAT sounds like classic politics, to me…

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If you’re anything like me, you need a break from from his ugly face from time to time. You need a distraction, something to clear your mind from the insanity. To that end, I’ve been watching videos on YouTube that are rather mindless and easy to take.

I found this guy, SB Mowing. All he does is drive around town (Wichita, I think) and clean up yards of abandoned and overgrown properties. He shows his work in ten minute videos, all at very high speed. The videos are all pretty much the same. How much variation can there be in mowing a lawn? But watching them is strangely satisfying.

It’s like watching a fish tank. It has a calming effect I can’t explain, but do yourself a favor. Find ‘SB Mowing’ on YouTube and give one of his videos a look. You might find it has the same calming effect on you that it has on me. No, I don’t know the guy and he doesn’t know (or likely care) that I’ve written about him. But I digress. That isn’t what I wanted to write about at all.

Another video series I’ve stumbled across is a cop showing videos of traffic stops when the driver of the vehicle is what is sometimes (incorrectly) called a ‘Sovereign Citizen.’ These videos are not relaxing. There’s quite a bit of shouting. They’re more…astonishing.

There’s a whole scam out there on the internet “teaching” people that they don’t have to follow the law. It all looks and sounds very official and it teaches it’s adherents to think they can get away with things if they just play semantic games. For instance, when they get pulled over, obviously driving, they insist they’re NOT “driving.” They’re just “traveling.”

They have stacks of papers, all of which are intended to prove they don’t have to follow the law because of this or that obscure section of a commercial code or whatever. For reasons I don’t understand, they’re also told to be obnoxious to the cops, or at least that’s how it seems since they invariably are obnoxious to the cops. They’ll only open their window a crack, not all the way down. They challenge the cop’s authority almost immediately. They shout a lot.

They don’t register their vehicles. They honestly believe they don’t have to. That’s usually what gets them pulled over, where it is soon discovered they also don’t have a valid Driver License, which they insist, they also do not need. These are ticket offenses but – also invariably – the “travelers” argue and agitate and fail to cooperate so aggressively, they usually escalate their charges to felonies and end up in handcuffs going to jail.

The reason I mention it is this: these people genuinely and honestly believe they’re going to get away with this. (It should be mentioned, NONE of these people are up for Mensa membership any time soon.) They genuinely and honestly believe they’ve found some magic bullet nobody else has found and now they’re free to live their lives outside the law. It never crosses their mind that NOBODY likes paying vehicle registrations or for Driver Licenses and EVERYBODY would be waving those pages if they had any effect, whatsoever.

but they believe it. Deeply. They follow the script. They go through the motions. They wave the papers and demand to see supervisors and sheriffs. They shout at cops, refuse to cooperate, wave their papers some more, and insist they know more after fifteen minutes on the internet than the cops who do the job every day and, oh yeah, have been through school on the subject.

Always, the free travelers lose these confrontations. Occasionally, one of them will realize as they’re being put in the back of the cop car that maybe they’ve been deceived, but mostly, they go into the back seat screaming and yelling and certain they’re going to get the cop’s jobs and receive a massive payout from their promised lawsuits. Spoiler alert: they don’t. I think that’s the thing that so fascinates me about these videos – the level of dedication the “travelers” have in their clearly false belief.

And they do believe, faithfully and fervently. Their faith does not save them, though. Their belief does not translate into beating the consequences of their actions. It’s mind-boggling. Then one thinks of the general population of the United States. These kinds of people are everywhere, clinging desperately to some fraudulent belief or another. It reminds me to reexamine my own beliefs from time to time. Am I staying loyal to some erroneous thinking just because it’s comfortable, like an old shoe?

For clarity, this is an observation about MAGA. I mean, these free travelers may or may not be MAGA but they clearly display the MAGA mind and MAGA’S dedication to wrongheadedness. The free travelers believe in their thing just as deeply as MAGA believes in 47 and no amount of evidence can convince them they’re wrong – even after going to jail, going to court, then going to prison.

The Free Travelers faith in that stack of papers consistently lands them in jail. MAGA’S faith in 47 has made the US a nightmare to live in and a laughingstock on the world stage. They don’t know that. They can’t see it. But their faith does not save them (nor the rest of us) and their belief does not translate into beating the consequences of their actions for any of us. I wish we could get them to reexamine their beliefs but faith never seems interested in introspection or closer inspection. Curious…

Simply Nonsense…

This kind of stuff doesn’t help anything and I’d really like to see it stop. On the left, people are talking about the evacuation of the room when that runner ran through the security checkpoint upstairs. There’s a photo of the process in which Stephen Miller has his hand on his wife’s breast as he’s guiding her out of the room.

The left has come out trying to smear Miller by suggesting he was “copping a feel.” Faux outrage meets feigned indignation. There are probably very few less “sexy times” than when you’re dashing for safety because you think you’re threatened. Copping a feel probably doesn’t cross one’s mind.

It was a scary moment. People were rushing. That woman is eight months pregnant. As much as I despise Stephen Miller, I saw a guy make sure his wife was with him and protected. Compare that with RFK, Jr, who is photographed being whisked away while his wife scrambles to catch up, defenseless. Miller was helping to guide his wife. He was less concerned about where his hands went and more concerned with making sure she was safe. He wasn’t copping a feel and everyone – everyone – knows it.

And, no, he wasn’t using her as a human shield, either. They’re moving away from the door, where the runner would have come through had he been making a serious effort to get in there. It looks, to me, like HE is shielding HER, although there IS an agent shielding him, as well. The effort to paint Miller as a selfish lecher didn’t smear Miller AND it gave the right a talking point. “See how desperate they are to find something negative to say about us? They have to make up things like that!”

Okay, so ‘Grab-Her-Boob-Gate’ is debunked. ‘She’s-My-Shield-Gate’ is also debunked but clearly, the world is ready for a Stephen Miller conspiracy theory so let me give you one that isn’t as plainly bunk as those two, because I can make ’em up, too. Ready?

Last year, right around the end of May, 2025, Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, left Washington DC – with Elon Musk – ostensibly for work. She hung around Musk until just before September when she left to go work on a podcast. That’s not a conspiracy theory, obviously. That’s just what happened. This next isn’t a conspiracy theory, either.

It’s a known fact that Musk pays women to bear and raise children for him. The story is, he’s pretty generous. There’s a generous up-front payment, then he bears all of the costs of raising the child. It’s apparently quite a lucrative gig for any woman who can stomach sleeping with Elon Musk, but I’ll bet it’s much, much easier with a shiny, new million dollars or two in your bank account.

So maybe, just maybe, Miller wasn’t making sure his wife was safe from a possible shooter. Maybe, Miller was simply protecting his investment. If something happens to the (Elon’s) baby, all of that beautiful lucre is gone. Let me assure you, so there is no question. I have absolutely NO evidence that Katie Miller is carrying Elon Musk’s baby in exchange for money. I literally just made it up, sitting here, just so you can have a new conspiracy theory about Stephen Miller.

But I’m going to revisit this theory if that baby isn’t born looking just like Nosferatu…

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Well, the Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. I’m sorry to say, once again, I’m not on the list. Go figure…

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At this point, the Robert’s Supremely Corrupt, Kangaroo Court can only be working to secure it’s legacy as the most dishonest, purchasable, dishonorable, putrid, and venal court in the history of history (hyperbole alert). As you know by now, they struck down sections of the Voting Rights Act, leaving southern states free to gerrymander districts to remove minority candidates. They did that, they said, because states had stopped gerrymandering districts to remove minority candidates, just like the law said they had to.

Of course, now that no law says they have to, the first thing the southern states did was rush to redraw their maps to gerrymander districts to remove minority candidates. In short, the corrupted court used the success of the law as the excuse to eliminate the law. It’s not the first time they’ve made such upside down rulings. Sadly, it won’t be the last, either.

They even went out of their way to speed the process up so Louisiana could jump right back into their old, comfortable, Jim Crow ways starting with this very election. Imagine working so hard to get to the positions they’re in – the “Justices” – only to do that to your name and your legacy…

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Did someone say $400 million dollars in private funding for the ballroom? Oh, don’t be so naive. How about the taxpayers fund it, and why in gods names would we settle for $400 million? How about a billion? Yeah, that’s the ticket, $1 billion of your tax dollars.

We can’t help with health insurance. “Too expensive,” they say. We can’t help with child care. “Too expensive,” they say. We can’t properly fund our schools. “Too expensive,” they say. No help to recover from natural disasters. “Too expensive,” they say. We can’t seem to do anything that helps Americans. “Too expensive,” they say.

Oh, but we can pay for wars so long as we don’t CALL them wars. And ballrooms. And redecorating bathrooms and the reflecting pool and turning everything into gaudy gold and thinking, actually thinking, it’s “classy. Real classy, you know?”

Somehow, I suspect the money is there. It’s just being extremely, severely, unconscionably, uncontrollably mismanaged…

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I was reading an article this morning about how the last tanker of oil from the Middle East is coming into port for California. After that? Well, let’s just say California is looking for another supply. All because 47 is a narcissistic idiot. But that’s not the point, here. Two paragraphs, side-by-side, prompted a thought.

The first line read, ‘California has the highest gas prices in the US.’ The first line of the second read, ‘While oil prices have risen in recent weeks, the current supply has not yet been severely affected as markets have continued to receive oil that was already in transit when the conflict began.’ Put another (more accurate) way, the oil companies started charging top dollar the day they could get away with it.

Will prices tumble back down in days once this stupid war-that’s-not-a-war ends, if the Dumbass can figure a way out if? What, are you crazy? There’s money to be made. How long will it take to resume supply? The tanker that is delivering 2 million barrels of crude to California, the New Corolla, left the Middle East before Donny’s dumbass war broke out – nine weeks ago!

That’s nine weeks of a war we were told would last three days after being promised he would never ever start such an ill-advised war in the first place. If they ended the war today and all of the loaded tankers stranded behind the strait left today, it would take as long as nine weeks for the next tanker to arrive from there. That boy is going to get gas in California to well over $7/gallon in no time at all. Do I hear $8?

Donny is clearly killing America with a thousand little cuts. If I say he’s doing it because he’s a moron, that should be considered a grace because every reason after that moves into dark-hearted and downright evil…

Oh, Hey, Another Tantrum…

I read an article that included this sentence: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at critics of his Iran strategy.” My problem with the sentence? The suggestion that the Drumpfster has an “Iran strategy.” So far, the whole thing has looked like reaction and overreaction to whatever Iran does in response to the US/Israeli attack. He looks like he’s flailing, to me. And I’m not alone. Germany, for one, has noticed.

47 really is nothing more than a little petulant brat, isn’t he? If he doesn’t get his way, he comes up with some version of holding his breath until he turns blue. In this case, he’s mad at Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for saying that the US is being “humiliated” by Iran, based on nothing more than how badly the US is being humiliated by Iran. Have you seen the Lego man taunts? They’re really very good.

Donny starts an illegal war, a war nobody supported nor wanted. Then, when it wasn’t just a two-day cakewalk, like fools always believe wars will be, he needed help and started taunting our allies for not stepping in to his moronic illegal war, the war nobody supported nor wanted. Pretty much the whole world has been thrown into upheaval because of his stupid little illegal war that nobody supported nor wanted. Europe doesn’t see the value in aiding and abetting war crimes. Go figure.

Donny’s a bully. He’s used to saying horrible stuff about people, places, and things and being protected by his money or, now, the Secret Service, so he often gets his way. But the world is tired of Donny and the things Donny represents. The rest of the world is pushing back. He can’t bully the world, try as he might. And, oh, man, is he trying.

Pulling 5,000 troops from Germany is more of a symbolic gesture, sort of a low-key threat. It’s the guy coming in before problems start and saying, “Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” 5,000 troops leaving will affect the local German economy. That’s the point. Don’t give Donny his way – especially when he’s egregiously wrong – and he punishes you.

Germany will be fine. 5,000 troops is a drop in the bucket. The US has something like 35,000 troops in Germany. This is just another tantrum. He might even draw them down. But they’ll go back. After the big headlines, someone will explain that those troops were there for a reason and he’ll quietly start redeploying them. TACO, you know…

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It really is toothless, the War Powers Act. Team Evil stands in violation of the Act. They’re supposed to seek Congressional approval for military actions within 60 days of deployment in combat situations. Donny keeps insisting the stupid war he started is over. Bombing continues, the Strait of Hormuz is still blocked and blocked again. Oil prices continue to rise. People are still dying.

Donny says he has no intention of asking Congress for approval. He points out that nobody else has done it, why should he? The truth is, he has a point. The War Powers Act was passed after the Vietnam debacle. The idea was to reassert Congressional authority over war, like the Constitution says. But Presidents tend to ignore it and Congress tends to let them.

You’ll hear a bunch of whining from the left on this but the truth is, both Obama and Clinton could be said to have violated the Act and gotten away with it. There are work-arounds…

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Have you heard that Mexico City is sinking? Not just a little bit, mind you. It’s sinking 10 inches a year! That’s a LOT. Mexico City, of course, was built on a lake bed. It has 22 million people. That’s a LOT of water being pumped from the aquifer and it finally collapsed. This one doesn’t seem like climate change. This one is overpopulation.

Florida is Climate Change. Florida is breaking out in sinkholes. The ocean is finding it’s way in under the ground, undermining the stability of the ground. Sudden holes just open up. I’ve been wishing and hoping and hoping and wishing for one under a certain, unnamed piece of (Mar-a-Lardo) property but so far, the devil continues to take care of his own. Hope abides, though. Climate change isn’t going anywhere any time soon…

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If you ask MAGA, 47 stands at the forefront of a successful administration, just chock full of promises made, promises kept. But then, if you ask MAGA, they’ll tell you trump is a competent leader, out-thinking everyone else in his game of, what, 5D chess?

Rational people also saw his rallies. We heard the promises. We know what he said. We know how often he said those things. As far as we can tell, his is a long, long, I mean really LONG list of promises made, promises NOT kept. The latest is his oh-my-god-how-stupid ballroom. This guy seems awfully focused on decorating, doesn’t he? Do you suppose all that raping of women and children was just over-compensation for his internal, secret desires?

He promised, over and over, that the ballroom would be paid for with bribes, known these days as “private donations.” According to him, the bribes were all paid. He collected the money. Now Congress is out there trying to give him the money for the ballroom. So what happens to the bri— er, “donations?” I’m guessing he keeps that and We, the People pay for the ballroom. Promise made, promise not kept…

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Hey, 8647 okay? As far as I know, the expression “86” traces it’s roots back to soda jerks. When the shop (or, perhaps ‘shoppe’) ran out of something, the guy behind the counter would say it was ’86’d.’ It just meant, “we’re out of that,” and I would LOVE to run out of trump…

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When it comes to the cost of gas, the Republicans have decided to stick to their favorite tried-and-true tactic: lying. They’re just going to TELL you gas prices are coming down and, since you have absolutely no way to discover the truth for yourself (unless you use gasoline), you’ll just believe them. Oh, gas prices are down.

Except gas prices are NOT down. They’re up. They’re WAY up. MAGA would want me to add that they were higher under Biden so I will, but they ignore the fact that Biden was digging his way out of the economic crisis created by our National Embarrassment in his first run at the thing. Biden inherited a mess that 47 just said was the best. On the other hand, Biden left 47 a pretty solid economy, though 47 lied about that, too.

In an interesting variation on the ‘price isn’t high’ lie, Republicans are also claiming that gas started off SO high when Donny started his illegal war that they’re actually down, now. Here’s the thing: I know what I see when I roll up to a gas pump. I don’t CARE how “affordable” politicians tell me gas is. It isn’t. It’s just another brick in the ‘promises made, promises not kept’ wall…

Questions, Questions…

I don’t know. The timing of the whole thing is just really suspicious. A judge blocks his ballroom unless he gets permission from Congress, which shouldn’t be too hard. The judge DOES allow work to continue on security elements of the project, though. KKKarolyin’ Levitt announces there will be “shots fired tonight.” There ARE shots fired that night. Donny’s first concern is the ballroom and how much more secure it could have been. What a coincidence.

Maybe unrelated. Maybe an attempted manipulation. The whole thing just feels like a nothing-burger. Yes, I know, Levitt was only referencing how much “fun” the evening was going to be and used a common reference for roasting-type jokes. But it IS also a commonly used phrase for actual shots, actually being fired. That’s called “plausible deniability,” but with Team Evil, “plausible” isn’t enough.

Oh, I also think it’s important to mention that the entire security breach occurred a floor below where the dinner was being held. The guy never got anywhere near the room where his ostensible target was. Hell, he never even got to the right floor. But this thing is being squeezed by the media for all it’s worth. More than it’s worth, it seems.

Apparently, the would-be shooter sent a “manifesto” to his family only minutes before the shooting. He wrote, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Norah O’Donnell, from ’60 Minutes’ asked 47 about that during an interview, after. “What’s your reaction to that?” she asked the president.

He didn’t like that. “Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people,” Donny replied. “Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
“Oh, you think — do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell asked. Zinger. Apparently, it played well on the left but c’mon, everybody thinks the guy was referring to Donny. It wasn’t that much of an insight to make that leap.

Donny insists he’s not a raper or pedophile, just like every other raper or pedophile. He said, “I got associated with all the stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with let’s say Epstein or other things.”

Bear in mind, he was held responsible for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, an act the judge later agreed could be characterized as a “rape,” and he has gone to really extraordinary lengths to hide the Trump/Epstein files in what seems a gargantuan effort to protect himself from the consequences of the contents. Neither one of those things seems like “totally exonerated,” to me.

But the whole thing did offer one moment I won’t soon forget. I don’t mean to be making fun of the guy or anything. Who would ever do that? But there’s video of 47 during the White House Correspondent’s dinner evacuation – falling on his face! The Secret Service got him up and started hustling him out. They moved faster than old Peepaw can move – and he did a face plant. I kind of enjoyed that…

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Okay, so it’s a little thing and I know that but it’s kind of fun, right? King Charles is coming for a visit. The White House starts setting up all of the little niceties one does when a head of state visits. In this case, they wanted to display Great Britain’s flag, the Union Jack. So, obviously, one grabs and hangs the flag of Australia. “Close enough,” they seem to have thought. “Who will ever know?”

Turns out, people noticed. Then the White House had to go back and change them. Yeah, I know, a little thing. It’s just one more peek into the competence of this group in general. Or, you know, incompetence, as the case may be…

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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 it…

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185. That’s the number of people Donny has killed with his “extra-judicial killings” (that is, “murders”) of people in boats the US is bombing and insisting – without evidence – must be drug runners. So far. Hell, even if they ARE drug runners, they deserve a trial, according to our Constitution, but there’s no evidence they are drug runners. It’s just as likely they’re fishermen who have to feed their families.

The reality is that Donny doesn’t care. It’s good political theater. It helps the rubes think he’s a tough-guy. He probably likes the big booms, too. He has a very immature, undeveloped sense of what it means to be a tough guy. Of course, he has a very immature, undeveloped sense of what it means to be a human being, too, so I guess I’m not surprised.

I maintain that, without evidence or trials, these are nothing but murders of innocent people. I hope these killings get added to his list of war crimes and crimes against humanity when the trials start…

California’s Next Governor…

I’m not sure which direction I’m going in the California Governor’s race. I know which direction I’m NOT going: Republican. Steve Hilton has received Trump’s blessing. That’s good enough for me. Hilton couldn’t get MY vote if he were the only candidate running. I don’t support trump’s toadies, I’ve never supported trump’s toadies, and I’m not about to start supporting a trump toady now.

The other Republican, Chad Bianco, started seizing ballots in an effort to prove a recent special election might have been tainted somehow. That’s clearly a MAGA mind. He called it a “very, very basic, normal investigation.” The state Supreme Court called it a violation and made him stop. Now Bianco knows that “We’re never going to know if our elections are secure.” Yeah, Chad? Is that because Bozos like you keep seizing the ballots and insisting cheating is rampant, Chad? Screw you, Chad.

I don’t trust billionaire Tom Steyer. In fairness, I rarely trust billionaire candidates who fund their own campaigns. The dude made his money with a hedge fund that invested in some really nasty, unsavory things. Then he separated himself from the company and started investing his own money to combat some of those same nasty, unsavory things. Is that Scrooge, having found the true meaning of Christmas or was it Hitler, building the Autobahn to curry favor with a people he later destroyed?

I like Katie Porter. She’s smart. When she was in Congress, she was a very effective fighter. She’s a bit of a numbers wonk, but that’s not a bad thing. At least she knows what she’s talking about, unlike some Presidents we suffer today. But she was filmed being angry with one of her employees and has now been smeared as abusive to her staff. A woman who gets angry? Unforgivable.

During a recent debate, she gave Gavin Newsom a “B” on his handling of the homeless problem. That’s pretty generous, if you ask me. I think she felt she couldn’t “dis” the current Democrat but she certainly couldn’t endorse his tactics on homelessness, so she went with a “B.” I like Newsom but even I wouldn’t give him anything higher than a begrudging “D-.”

In fairness to Newsom, it’s not his fault. There’s ONE answer to the housing problem in California: stop Wall Street from buying single family homes and force them to divest in those they hold now. Newsom didn’t do that, but nobody else will, either. I mean, really, who’s going to tell Wall Street they can’t steal some money from ANY area of American life, right?

Anyway, that leaves former health secretary and California attorney general Xavier Becerra and San Jose mayor, Matt Mahan. Becerra has a record of standing up to 47 and can already work the hallways of the state legislature. Mahan is Mayor of a big city but is that the same as a big state? Hard to say.

I think I’m looking for the Democratic candidate that promises to shut down that stupid, effing kinda-fast train project. I think there’s truth in the notion that one-party rule can lead to problems but the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot on that. Republicans have collectively lost – no, it’s worse than that. They’ve voluntarily surrendered their minds. I won’t, I can’t, support that.

I’d better figure this out pretty quickly. The election is coming. The primary is a short time away and there’s a real risk that only Republicans might end up on the final ballot. We absolutely, positively don’t want that. So help me out, here. Who do you like, and why? Inquiring minds want to know…

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It’s late at night. You’re sleeping soundly in your bed, dreaming of Sugar Plum Fairies or whatever. Meanwhile, there’s a madman who can’t sleep, typing frantically away at his phone’s keyboard. Posting. Posting. ‘Schumer should resign.’ ‘Let’s ignore the 2020 election results.’ Posting. ‘Obama committed treason.’ (No details added.) ‘Hillary committed treason.’ (Again, no details.) Posting. Obsessing. ‘End the filibuster.’ Then, it looked like he was done.

But he wasn’t. About 90 minutes later, he started up again. This was just Thursday night. He did the same on Wednesday night, too. He posts memes. He posts rants. He posts wishes and hopes and always, always wishes and hopes for harm to someone he doesn’t like. His posts are random and disconnected, just like his thinking.

There’s plenty of reason to believe he has lost his battle with dementia. That’s a sad enough situation for anyone, but it’s downright dangerous for the President of the United States. The people around him, though, won’t do anything about it. He’s the source of their power right now. The result of him staying up all night shit-posting anything and everything is that old Pee-paw falls asleep during meetings when he’s supposed to be paying attention. He’s a terrible, terrible President…

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Cons like to speak all the time about crime in blue states. A recent study has determined that the city with the highest murder rate in the country is St. Louis, Missouri. You know, red Missouri. Hmm, it’s almost like everything they say is just made up on the spot. I guess it IS easier to “get your facts straight” when you just make ’em up as you go along…

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It’s not looking too much, to me, like a so-called cease-fire will hold in Lebanon. Netanyahu’s idea of a cease-fire is, “You guys stop shooting, but we’re not going to, k?” Generally, it is NOT ‘k.’ Gaza seems to have honored their cease-fire with several hundred dead Palestinians to show for it, the result of Israeli soldiers continuing to shoot.

Now Israel has exercised the same tactic in Lebanon. It was only a few hours after 47 declared an extension to the cease-fire in the region. Netanyahu’s response to Donny’s announcement, “Wanna bet?” Hezbollah has decried the whole cease-fire thing as “meaningless,” and that seems an accurate summary…

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TACO gonna TACO, I guess. 47 had his toady DOJ launch an “investigation” into Jerome Powell. He was trying to pressure Powell into retiring or, at least, to reduce interest rates. Powell and the Fed board set the rates based on economic conditions. Donny wants to set them base on whims. ONE of those two positions has a solid basis – and it ain’t “whims.”

Powell’s term comes to an end naturally on May 15. All President Pedo had to do was wait and he could order his new toady Fed Chair to do what he wants – throwing the entire world economy into a tailspin as the credibility of the dollar collapses. But no. Powell didn’t do as Donny demanded so Donny was angry. And, of course, he’s always stupid. Stupid and angry are a bad combination. This was no different.

It looked like a battle was gearing up between Powell and the Drumpfster. But a Republican named Thom Tillis (NC) blocked Donny’s choice of replacement, Keven Warsh, until the DOJ dropped it’s “investigation” of Powell. Yesterday, they did. I mention it because it’s a Republican that took a stand against Donny’s tantrum and that still feels new, to me, Republicans standing up to trump…

An Open Letter To MAGA…

Dear MAGA, I get it. I do. You trusted the guy. That’s not on you. He told you things you wanted to hear. That’s not your fault. Oh, and “told you things you wanted to hear” isn’t intended as an insult. That’s what candidates do and that’s what voters do. They talk, we vote for the person who said what we wanted to hear, assuming one could believe them. The primary difference between you and me is that you believed trump and I didn’t.

I even get that. His style of speaking is such that he says pretty much everything, leaving the listener to pick and choose the phrases they like. The end impression is that he said the right things in your mind, and where he DID say something you didn’t agree with? You dismissed it as a joke. He was just kidding around, right? It happens. I watched some of his rallies. His audience laughs a LOT. They think the guy’s a hoot. Fair enough.

Your loyalty has been impressive. You’ve stuck with him through a LOT. Because he told you he and he alone held the answer to the problems that plagued you, you ignored things you wouldn’t ignore in any other person. It didn’t hurt that your media outlets helped by carefully curating his image. They’ve been very good at downplaying the mistakes and trumpeting the successes.

But it’s starting to look like some – or, worse, most – of those “successes” are not as they seemed at first. I mean, look, I never believed the guy but, like I said, I’ve seen some of his rallies. I heard his words. I know what he promised, the same as you. Because he’s not, to me, who he is to you, it’s easier for me to see that he hasn’t done what he said he was going to do. In fact, in pretty much every area, he’s done the exact opposite. Of all of the promises, you essentially have ONE THING, one promise, that he has kept.

About the only area that actually fulfills the ‘promises made, promises kept’ mantra you guys like so much is the border. Yeah, he closed it. Frankly, I’m not sure how much of a need still exists on that front. I feel like, soon, the Border Patrol’s primary mission will be to keep fleeing Americans in the country. The point is, it’s the ONE area he has done as he said he would do. One. On everything else?

Gas prices aren’t down. They’ve never been so high and there’s no end to the increase in sight. Housing isn’t more affordable. Since the election, he has said out loud that he’s not going to do anything to bring house prices down in order to protect investors. Not you. Investors. Drain the swamp? Really? Do you realize that there’s not one deal that goes down in Washington DC these days where Trump doesn’t insist on getting his little taste? Nothing. He hasn’t drained the swamp. He has only increased the net worth of the swamp monsters.

I’ve heard you say, “They all do it,” but you know that’s not true. Even where it IS true, it has never, ever been true to this extent in the history of the United States. No foreign wars? No wars for regime change? Yeah, it was easy to excuse Venezuela and it was possible to believe Israel was just responding to Hamas attacks in Gaza, but there’s no excuse for Iran. Even he doesn’t offer one. Well, he’s offered several. And he’s stuck there. He doesn’t have a clue how to get out of this mess. It looks very much like he has figured out a way to profit from it, though.

That’s another story he told that turns out not to be true. He and he alone can fix everything. It doesn’t look like he has fixed anything, not for the vast majority of Americans, anyway. Things are just fine if you’re in the One Percent, but you aren’t, are you? Lord knows I’m not. He’s not protecting you like he promised he would. He’s protecting the people who mean you harm, financially.

So it’s time, MAGA. It’s time to reconsider your loyalty to him. It’s time to let the scales fall from your eyes and see 47 for who he really is – what he can and cannot do. One other thing, and this is important. I’m not saying your only choice is to swing left. You don’t have to try to become liberal just because some politician misled you.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is out there talking up a new America First movement that actually stands for the things trump promised. She’s making clear she thinks MAGA betrayed the principles it stood for but maintains the principles, themselves, are sound. She says it’s time to turn your back on MAGA and turn toward this new America First movement.

Your loyalty to him has been over the top. Nobody can ever, honestly, say you didn’t give him every benefit of every doubt. You trusted him. You defended him. HE let YOU down, not the other way around. But you don’t have to just sit there and take it. Now that you can see – and I’m sure you can see now – that he has no intention of doing what he said he would do, it’s right and proper for you to rethink your support. He said he would help YOU if you supported him. You supported him. He helped somebody else, nobody so much as himself. That boy helps himself to anything that catches his eye.

Let’s say you married someone and then discovered that your newfound “partner” had slept with all of your friends – and several strangers – since the wedding – fifteen months ago. You’re not obligated to stay in that marriage. It isn’t what you expected. It isn’t what you were promised. You CAN, sure, if you choose. But you don’t have to.

All I’m saying is, think about it. I suspect you’re already thinking about it. You don’t have to confess anything to me or anyone else. You don’t have to turn blue. You don’t have to change any opinion except the one about who best will look to your needs. But you KNOW it ain’t him, now. You KNOW he lied. You KNOW he’s not the answer. It’s time to rethink your dedication to trump – since he clearly isn’t dedicated to you…

He’s Evil, Not Sanctified…

Boy, he started running from this pretty quickly, didn’t he? (If you’re one of my subscribers and you don’t see this picture in your email feed, would you please let me know? I hear some people aren’t getting the photos when I use them. If you’re not seeing it, it’s that picture of the Drumpfster pretending to be Jesus.)

Trump portraying himself as Jesus, cause Trump is a piece of shit...

HE posted this to his social media account. A handful of MAGA “Christian” Nationalists, of course, just thought it was beautiful. ACTUAL Christians, though? The word they used for this was ‘blasphemy.’ One definition of blasphemy is ‘irreverent or impious action or expression in regard to something considered inviolable or sacrosanct.’ Here’s another, ‘Contemptuous or profane speech or action concerning God or a sacred entity.’ I’d say blasphemy is the perfect word for this bullshit.

Once the backlash ignited, he went all TACO. He told a reporter he’s supposed to look like a doctor. Uh-huh. Do we see a stethoscope? Then he pulled the picture and pretended he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Really, it’s disgusting. I’m not even religious and I wouldn’t do something like this. It IS, absolutely, disrespectful. I really, really don’t like this guy…

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It often seems, to me, like anytime Donald Dork “messes up,” someone already-rich makes money. That’s curious, isn’t it? The most recent is his illegal war-that’s-not-a-war in Iran. Not only are weapons manufacturers having a great time, his war has disrupted oil supply chains around the world. This creates both an actual need AND a convenient excuse to raise gas prices at the pump, which the gasoline companies are always happy to do, and have done.

According to an article in the Guardian, the major oil companies stand to take home an extra $234 billion dollars by the end of this year, so long as Donny can keep the price of a barrel of oil hovering at $100 dollars each. His blockade blockade can very likely do that nicely. Yeah, people make money under this regime. It just seems to always be the people who already have money and don’t need any more and not the people who could really use an infusion of cash…

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“What they have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. As the President showed, two can play at that game.” That’s a quote from Jarringly Dumb Vance. He likely doesn’t realize it, but he just admitted that the President – or in this case, Donny – is engaged in an act of economic terrorism against the entire world…

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I liked Eric Swalwell. I did. I thought he was probably a good guy. I was wrong. Damn. He IS a good politician. But, really, what a dumbass. I’ll tell you the truth, I can see some high school kid making an error in judgement, misreading a situation or making a dumb, crude joke. High school dudes can be really dumb. But grown men? A politician?

Politicians are extra vulnerable to public perception. Even the hint of a scandal can end a career. Look at Swalwell. (Don’t look at Donny. His base is immoral and LOVES his scandals.) From the time this story broke until he resigned was a matter of days. He didn’t know that taking his junk out around a female staffer with whom he had only enjoyed a professional relationship previously might cause him a political problem?

His was a bit of a non-denial denial. “There’s no way I did THOSE things, but, I have to admit, I did these things.” Uh-huh. The “these things” part of that statement means you lose anyway. “Sure, I had sex with them, but it wasn’t sexual assault,” is never going to play well with your spouse – nor your constituents. The Dems were quick to dump Swalwell. I presume they’re trying to show the cons how to handle sexual predators like Donald Trump. I understand the GOP won’t care what the Dems do…

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Do you remember when Donald Trump incited his followers to attack the Capitol building in an effort to overturn an election? It was January 6th, 2021. They followed his advice and attacked. Much damage was done. Several people died. Congress went into hiding for a short time. It was an ugly, embarrassing-to-be-an-American day.

Then Donny lied about it. MAGA media picked up the lie and put in on a repeating loop. MAGA rank and file started wandering around parroting the words they’d been conditioned to use. “No attack.” “Day of love.” The posturing became a political flashpoint and before long, you couldn’t find a MAGA who would admit the attempted insurrection was an attempted insurrection. Then? Just to make the point? Donny pardoned the J6 attackers. They got out of jail free.

Several of these fine, upstanding people have gone back to jail since. These were not the best and the brightest in the first place. Many of them were right where they belonged when they were sitting in the clink. In my view, every crime committed by a pardoned J6er is on Donald Trump’s head. He didn’t care if these were good people or bad. He didn’t care if they belonged in jail or not. He ONLY cared about political optics.

Now there are two children out there, sexually molested by a pardoned J6er, that can only have been sexually molested by that J6er because Donny let the son-of-a-bitch out of jail for political reasons. He’s just the latest in a long line of criminals, marauders, perverts, and pedophiles Donny let out of prison. That’s not hyperbole. Many of these guys are back to prison or on trial right now preparing to head back. Thanks, Donny.

I only mention it to highlight the fact that trying to force one’s fantasy alternate reality on actual reality always comes with real-world consequences. Donny corrupted one moment in time for politics. Those kids will pay for that for the rest of their lives…

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Closely related to that, 47 is about to kick off a campaign move to try and convince people things aren’t expensive after all. He’s heading to Nevada and Arizona so he can tell everybody to ignore their own reality. Disregard anything you learn when you, say, stop at a gas pump or go grocery shopping and replace it with his preferred vision.

“Everything is affordable,” he says. “You are getting very sleepy. You are under my control. When I snap my fingers, you’ll believe. Keep your eyes on the watch.” <Snap!> “Everything is affordable. Prices are down. You’ve never paid less for gas.”

Apparently, the GOP is becoming concerned with the price of, well, everything, really. It’s not related to concerns for you, the squeezed consumer. Instead, it’s all about elections and keeping their own phony-baloney jobs. The GOP cares about making rich people richer. Period. Full stop. They’ll pay lip service to affordability until the ballots are cast but they won’t care when they’re talking and they won’t care later, when it’s time to address the problems…