Category: Trump Second Term

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This Week’s Pravda — Talking points for non-thinkers

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 29th 2025

Every one in a while some right winger gets up on its hind legs and tries to pretend it can think.

Almost always it’s a cut-and-paste job from some flak at the Heritage Foundation or similar propaganda pit, as this one is. This one has all the elements one might expect: punching down while howling ‘victimhood,’ combined with ludicrous rationales, scapegoating, and flat-out lies. Propaganda 101. Let’s look at this week’s crop, shall we?

1. Accept the fact that this is the leadership that we working, middle class Americans wanted. We are pulling the economic weight in this country and we are tired of pulling the weight of those that do not contribute.

Chances that the author of this piece is anywhere near middle-class are pretty slim. But like all libertarians, he conflates society with a business. Businesses can be efficiently heartless and throw their unproductive elderly and infirm off on an ice floe to die. But societies don’t work that way. Societies take care of the elderly, children, the chronically ill and the otherwise disabled. We aren’t Nazis. The Nazis were very efficient. But you wouldn’t want to live and die under them.

2. If you haven’t already, get a job. Every business in the country is hiring. And you get paid for the work you do. And the harder you work and the more you learn, the faster you will advance and the more you will earn. It’s an amazing concept.

Unemployment is at 4%. That means nearly everyone who can work is, and there aren’t many jobs to be had. I know they are talking about work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but the fact is that 65% of them ARE working, and the rest can’t. The “amazing concept” is just cruelty and unconcern.

3. Understand that if you are a citizen or a legal alien that you are not going to get deported! I don’t care what CNN says.

Flat out lie. Right now there is a four year old American girl whose guardians are frantically fighting her deportation because she has an illness that will kill her in days without treatment available only in America. There are dozens of instances of people, both American born and with green cards being sent to Donald’s for-profit gulag in El Salvador. Are we supposed to believe those dozens of court cases concerning illegal deportation the government is losing aren’t real?

4. Tariffs are a bargaining chip. When you are in business you make deals, and sometimes you have to play hardball. That’s how you get the deals you desire.

TACO Donald is playing hardball with a Nerf ball, it seems. His tariffs are wild, capricious, illogical and have cost the country hundreds of billions. Now a court has slapped him flat, ruling that he has no authority to levy tariffs in the first place. But immense damage has been done. In the eyes of the world, America has become a bad joke.

5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects you from discrimination by age, sex, race, etc. DEI openly violates this. Democrats want you to believe the opposite is true because they value your vote more than your quality of life.

All DEI ever did was ensure that jobs didn’t go to unqualified white males. Republicans hate the Civil Rights Act and want to get rid of it. You can’t justify “DEI” to erase the roles of women and other minorities in history and science. They even tried to erase Jackie Robinson’s military history and mention of the Tuskegee Airmen. It’s a reinstatement of Jim Crow bigotry, nothing more and nothing less.

6. It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money. You absolutely should give a damn about how it is spent.

Let’s see here. Four point three trillion in tax cuts, 101% of which goes to the wealthy. A tax INCREASE for those making $17,000 a year. Meanwhile, $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and a drive to make Social Security more “efficient” by making it harder to claim benefits. They claimed widespread fraud and audited 110,000 “suspect” cases. They found two—yes, single digit two—cases of suspected fraud. I’ll replace item six this way: “It’s your money, and the government is taking it from you and giving it to the rich.”

7. We are not the World Bank. If other countries need help they should raise their own finances. I don’t recall receiving any hurricane relief money from India or China.

And now we aren’t getting any hurricane relief from the United States, either. Trump cut off aid for last year’s storms in North Carolina. Oh, and he wants to close FEMA. But foreign aid, which made up less than one percent of the budget, was an invaluable tool for maintaining American influence and support throughout the world. Yes, China is more than happy to step in and replace us.

8. Drill baby, drill. Want to know why? Because we have it. Are electric cars the future? Not in their current form. There is way more oil in the ground than lithium, and guess where most of that is? China. Want food prices to come down? Then energy costs have to come down. And that means oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. Unicorn farts won’t power a factory.

Aside from the fact that oil production was at an all time high under Biden and prices still went up, there’s the fact that the multinational corporations do it for profit, and not for gas at $1.98, as Donald is claiming it is. Filthy fuels are still on their way out, and even though Tesla fell apart under the misrule of Elon Musk, other companies have surpassed Tesla in economy, range, price and reliability. And we’ve found large reserves of lithium in the US.

9. The economy and the security of the country are far more important than your feelings, get over it.

If everyone is broke and nobody trusts or respects the government any more, then you’re going to find yourself on the outside looking in. The one thing libertarians never understand: the economy exists to support the society. The society doesn’t exist to support the economy. Get over it.

10. There are men and there are women. Simple as that.

I’ll pass on the biology debate for now. Biology isn’t my strong suit, but I can still mop the floor with the ignorant bigot who wrote that. Human gender is far more fluid than most people realize, and human sexuality is another entire universe. Visit any large porn site to learn just how quaint and parochial your interests really are. Remember; the social rules of East Podunk are not the natural laws of the universe. I suspect the only thing the author knows about women is that he can’t get one.

11. Education is to establish a learning core that prepares a child for the real, working world. Anything else is wrong.

So we should only educate people to be mindless drones in service to the economy? If you think education is failing you now, wait until you are dealing with people who know even less, but aren’t happy with your rule!

12. Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States and he won in a mathematical landslide. Get over it.

Trump won by 1.6% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him. In an election not owned by billionaires, gerrymandered to death in the House, and with Jim Crow-like restrictions on so-called “voter fraud” Trump would have been laughed off as a bad joke back in 2015.

Copied from another post.

Of course. People who can’t read or think are the TARGET, not the source of this malarky!

 

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One Big Beautiful Bukkake — Plutocrats Plan Our Gangbang

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 26th, 2025

While everyone has been distracted by Trump’s demented and often Naziesque antics, the true fascist mien (cough) of the GOP has been revealed for all to see. Donald is just using his often-cartoonish viciousness and cruelty to keep his most mindless followers hooting in joy as the GOP contemplates its long-held dream of raping America to death.

The House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (so named by Donnie, who knows how to engage the most stupid people around) by only one vote. I wish I could say that the handful of Republicans who opposed it did so on some sort of moral or ethical principles, but the sad fact is they hate the bill because it doesn’t go far enough. They’re worried about the estimated $4.3T in debt it will add to the existing GOP-created flood of red ink. But rather than eliminate the estimated $4T tax cut that would go to the billionaires, they want to completely eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

You? Oh, your taxes would go up. Not a lot, but then, forty years of Reaganomics hasn’t left you with much to tax, has it?

One estimate is that 99% of the tax cuts would go to those making more than $4M a year, while people making $17,000 or less would see a tax increase of $1,000 a year. You don’t mind giving up your health care and pension so Bezos can send another bevy of trophy wives into the stratosphere in a giant phallus, do you? Sure, just as long as it owns the libs.

Nobody really knows how many nasties are hidden in the bill. Here’s the ones we’ve found so far.

It extends the “state of emergency” Trump declared over the wholly imaginary Venezuelan invasion of the United States. This means among other things that he can unilaterally declare martial law, and delay or even cancel elections.

The bill has a provision to federalize elections (they are mandated to the states by the Constitution) which means that Trump’s utter corrupt and politicized Department of Justice under Kristi Noem would have complete control over who could vote, how they could vote, and even eliminate the secret ballot in the name of fighting “voter fraud.”

It completely neuters the courts, mandating that the administration can ignore any court edict for up to a year, and protecting all members of the administration from contempt of court rulings—the one weapon the courts have to enforce compliance. There has never been a country without a strong, independent judiciary that was worth a shit, and America would be no exception.

Back when I was a kid, they used to teach about the “Spoils System” wherein new administrations could replace government functionaries with their own people. Needless to say, massive corruption and incompetence was built into such a system, and the Pendleton Law was passed in 1883 creating a non-politicized civil service.

This bill would restore the spoils system. Good luck getting that permit you need if you voted for the wrong guy in the last election! Need a copy of your birth certificate? Don’t forget to bribe!

Protests and protesters could be tracked and penalized, no matter how peaceful and legitimate. Freedom of speech becomes an empty mockery. It includes individual lawful protest. This essay, completely legal and legitimate in May of 2025, could put me in prison next year. Ex Post Facto wouldn’t exist under Trump. He already has a track record of punishing people for actions that were lawful at the time—many still are lawful, but that doesn’t stop Trump.

ICE, already America’s Gestapo, would see its budget increase by twelve-fold to $43B a year by 2029. By then they will probably have run out of undocumented people to throw in the Gulags and will be branching out to arrest anyone with brown skin or a last name ending in a vowel.

Mind you, most of this has no foundation in US law, and much of it is flat out unconstitutional. But no worries: the courts won’t be allowed to stop it. Read back to see the shit status of countries without a meaningful court system.

As is widely noted, the bill would absolutely devastate all social safety net programs (the ones that Elon and his Randroid thugs haven’t already destroyed, like Meals on Wheels or the Weather Service). It’s no exaggeration to say that starvation would become a serious problem in America.

For the second time in a week, some right winger decided to refute our fears about the bill by citing AI: in this instance, Elon Musk’s apartheid joke of an AI, Grok. I’m still laughing.

That “One Big Beautiful Bill”? No worries. Elon’s bastard cyberchild has a simple answer: it doesn’t exist. And I quote: Existence of “One Big Beautiful Bill”: There is no record in my knowledge of a bill by this name or with these specific provisions being proposed or debated in the U.S. Congress as of my last update.

Oh, well. I guess I need to go back and unwrite this sucker. Would Elon lie to me?

Elon isn’t the only one pretending it isn’t really there. The bill holds off most of the very worst provisions until 2029, after the next (and possibly final) presidential election.

Now, it won’t survive the Senate, which means that the whole thing is still a long way from becoming law. I predict the next budget bill will be yet another Continuing Resolution, which is a polite way of saying “Let’s hang the country very slowly.” We’re not dead yet, in other words.

But for anyone who cares to look, it’s a naked look at what the plutocrats who control the GOP have in mind for us. If enough of this monster passes, there’s no turning back.

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AI Caramba — What you ask AI matters, too

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 21st, 2025

 

One right wing user on Facebook, annoyed by warnings of a Nazi takeover of the United States, posted the following:

Well, that’s the first time someone has made an appeal to authority to try to demonstrate that America isn’t falling into Nazism, but then, these are unusual times. And it’s also the first time I’ve had someone use an AI (A-One to any Trumper reading this) as that “authority.”

I joked that at least he didn’t use Musk’s AI and have it go off on an unrelated rant about an imaginary “white genocide” in South Africa. But then I thought, why not go to that same AI (perplexity.ai) and ask it “Does the Trump administration show Nazi tendencies?”

I gave the response below, but want to say at this time that I have never used and will never use AI in my writing, whether fiction, non-fiction, or reviews. If I cite AI, I will link the source, clearly identify it as AI, and note any problems I spot in the cite.

The response was surprising, not because it gave any response that was unexpected (“Hitler had dogs as pets, Trump has them as wives”) but because it was balanced (without falling into the trap of “bothsidesism”), accurate, and informative. I was impressed. It also clearly denoted opinion opposed to simple assertion of fact.

So here’s the perplexity.ai response to the question,

“Key Parallels and Differences Identified by Experts

  • Authoritarian and Anti-Democratic Practices
    The Trump administration has been repeatedly criticized for authoritarian tactics, including undermining the rule of law, suppressing dissent, and attacking democratic institutions. Amnesty International noted the use of government power to silence opposition, erode checks and balances, and foster a climate of fear and division
  • Dehumanizing Rhetoric
    Trump’s language about immigrants and political opponents has drawn direct comparisons to Nazi and fascist rhetoric. He has referred to immigrants as “vermin,” “animals,” and “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing language used by Adolf Hitler and other fascist leaders to dehumanize targeted groups
  • Such rhetoric has been condemned by historians and scholars as a hallmark of fascist and Nazi propaganda.
  • Targeting of Minorities and Marginalized Groups
    Policies and executive actions under Trump have targeted immigrants, racial minorities, LGBTQIA+ communities, and others, leading to accusations of fostering white supremacy and systemic discrimination

The administration’s embrace of far-right groups and failure to unequivocally condemn white supremacist violence further fueled these concerns

  • Attacks on Press and Free Speech
    The administration’s pattern of undermining press freedom, threatening journalists, and cracking down on protestors—especially those supporting marginalized groups—has been cited as reminiscent of repressive regimes, including the Nazis
  • Use of Fascist and Nazi-Era Language
    Trump’s public statements, such as pledging to “root out” internal enemies and referencing “bad genes,” have been compared to Nazi rhetoric about racial purity and the need to eliminate internal threats

His calls for the “remigration” of undocumented immigrants also echo language used in European far-right and ethnic cleansing movements

  • Encouragement of Paramilitary and Militia Groups
    While the U.S. lacks Nazi-style stormtroopers, Trump’s friendly stance toward groups like the Proud Boys and his encouragement of the January 6, 2021, Capitol assault have been seen as attempts to threaten constitutional order using extralegal force, drawing a parallel to the Nazi reliance on paramilitary violence to intimidate opponents

     

  • Notable Criticisms and Cautions
  • Historical Uniqueness of Nazi Evil
    Even critics such as Al Gore emphasize that the Nazi regime was “uniquely evil,” and direct comparisons should be made with caution
  • The scale of Nazi crimes, especially the Holocaust, is not matched by the Trump administration, and most experts stress the importance of recognizing this distinction.
  • Debate Among Historians and Scholars
    While some scholars see strong echoes of fascist and Nazi tendencies in Trump’s rhetoric and policies, others argue that these are more about antagonizing political opponents or reflect broader trends in right-wing populism rather than a direct replication of Nazism

End of AI response.

Well, there you have it. I might normally have one of two reasons for citing an AI response, let alone quoting it at length. Either I would because it was absolutely ridiculous (“Water does not freeze at 26F; it freezes at 32F”) or, as in this case, because it actually did a good job.

So be assured that if I didn’t cite AI, then what you are reading is my own original ridiculous drivel.

Promise.

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Leveling Out? — Hints of a Seismic Shift

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 19th 2025

There’s a word I’m hearing more and more, not just from Democrats and Independents, but from Republicans, judges, army personnel, and even some in MAGAland. That word is “overreach.”

The “gift” from Qatar may have been the tipping point. It was blatant corruption, a vast and ridiculous gift that was so ludicrous that even people totally undismayed by the criminality and avarice of Trump realized what a fool the man truly is.

Never mind that the interior of the plane resembles an Ed Wood notion of what a 1920s Turkish bordello must have looked like. We’re used to that particular aesthetic from Trump, after all. It is quite literally a flying albatross, weighed down with dross and easily brought down with a drone with a good laser on board. An albadross, if you will.

In fact, it’s a white elephant. It was originally commissioned in 2012 by the Qatari Royal family and delivered in 2015. The Qatari regime quickly realized it was a gaudy turkey, and gifted it to King Abdullah II of Jordan. The king flew it for a bit, and then returned it. Since 2020, the Qataris had been trying to find a sucker to unload it on. Low mileage, at least: it has only logged about 25,000 air hours, a minuscule amount compared to any commercial 747.

Estimates on the cost of bringing it up to the standards of Air Force One range from $350 million to $one billion, and certainly would not be ready before 2029. One of the many rationales that Trump gave for accepting this thing was that he was mad at Boeing because the new Air Force One already commissioned won’t be ready until 2029. Apparently he was so annoyed at Boeing over that that the day after accepting Qatar’s Golden Turkey Award, he signed off on an agreement between Boeing and Qatar to deliver $89 billion in planes over the next 15 years. I’m sure the board of directors at Boeing were heartbroken to hear this.

That same day he made a deal with Saudi Arabia, that according to The Hill, “includes a $142 billion defense and security deal that equips Saudi Arabia with state-of-the-art war equipment provided by dozens of U.S. firms. The equipment includes air and missile defense and air force and space advancements.” I’m sure this was met with considerable interest in the Knesset.

One oddity in the $600 billion deal, touted as an invest-in-America thing, was the arrangement to sell 500,000 advanced Intel AI chips. The Saudis already had a vast program to develop AI technology going, and most of the chips appear to be going to the technology-poor United Arab Emirates. It’s widely suspected the chips might go to China, and possibly Iran, as relations between Iran and the desert kingdoms has thawed considerably in the past year. One more thing to keep the thoroughly sandbagged Netanyahu up at night.

Nobody has explained why the plane needs to be brought up to AF1 specs given that Trump is supposed to be out of office by 2029. Maybe the administration thinks Donald Trump Jr. will be president. But for right now, the whole damn thing has to be taken apart to make sure the Qataris didn’t load it up with spyware, or other little malevolencies that might result in headlines like “AF1 unexpectedly loses power over Israel, crashes into Knesset.” What a coincidence.

Whatever wet dreams Donald might have had of flying in royal grandeur over an undeserving world aren’t going to happen soon, especially if Congress grows a backbone and forbids the gift—which they have the power to do.

And Trump would have to redo that silly interior, which is designed explicitly for the tastes of the Qatari royal family. Not a US flag or Big Mac in sight. Like most white elephants, it suffers from being tailored to a specific taste. A retired but still very popular basketball star is trying to unload his estate at 10% of original asking price because he had his name, face, and jersey number plastered all over it, and for most people “23” is just another number.

Trump has always been mocked by his non-admirers, for his venality, his grandiosity, his feeble grasp of policy, and his over the top and often demented “truths.” But now even Donald’s followers are beginning to suspect that he is, in fact, a living embodiment of that Qatar plane: gaudy, ridiculous, non-functional, and widely regarded as a white elephant.

Support for Trump is eroding, rapidly outside of the GOP, but now, critically, within the GOP itself. Most of what Trump is doing is stuff nobody signed on for outside of the fascists behind Project 2025, and even the Heritage Foundation libertarians are beginning to realize the stories about Donald’s dementia and erratic behavior weren’t just rumors but could pull him—and them—down.

A lot of people, myself included, have drawn parallels between Trump and Hitler, comparisons invited by Trump himself, who openly adopts strategies of the vile German leader. But while Trump may recognize Hitler’s strategic genius, he doesn’t have that strategic genius, and is in reality just a poor Xerox of the German dictator. Even Hitler would shake his head sadly at his greatest fan. Hitler, at least, had enough sense to go mad after he consolidated power. Trump doesn’t and that might be his downfall.

 

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Why Dictators Stop Being Great — They Fall; Hitler, Stalin…Trump

‪Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 27th 2025

“It’s easy to be cynical about public opinion, but scholars of authoritarianism are pretty clear that there’s a serious difference in what an autocrat polling at 80% and what one polling at 40% can do. Not obeying in advance includes not surrendering to specious narratives of omnipotence.”

Tim Marchman‬, ‪@timmarchman.bsky.social‬

Perhaps the most reassuring item in the news this week was that Trump is cratering in all the polls. Overall, his approval rating is minus 10 (45-55) and he’s underwater on all policy elements, including immigration. Apparently throwing out American toddlers with cancer is, even for the most rabid haters in MAGA, a bit much.

Marchman is absolutely correct about the role public opinion can play in the rise and fall of despots. People don’t like to admit it, but Hitler was immensely popular in the 1930s, not just in Germany, but in the United States as well.

In Germany, once he had established power, Hitler’s mesmeric sway over the German people was almost unbounded. The huge cheering crowds were totally unfeigned, and the girls blowing kisses and flowers at the fuhrer doubtlessly fantasied about having his babies. Absurd as it may seem, the brown-eyed mousy-haired little man, so similar to a famed American comedian of the time, was seen as the exemplar racialist dream. After all, he saved the economy. He beat inflation. He made Germany great again. He rid the country of enemies, foreign and domestic, real and imagined. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

It wasn’t until the tide turned against Germany following D-Day and the Russian resurgence that his popularity began to crack. Like all despots, he banned polls and independent news, but he couldn’t stop people from gossiping and whispering about the empty shelves, the strange lack of neighbors, the lack of any news from overseas, and of course the huge number of families with war dead.

Hitler knew the limits to his support, no matter how propped up it was by propaganda and news control. There was a reason all of his death camps were built outside of Germany and in the occupied territories. His work camps, hardly any less atrocious, were portrayed as happy, productive, genial places with smiling parents watching healthy children playing in the sun.

Hitler had extraordinary influence and popularity in the UK and the US prior to the start of the war. Ken Burns did a three part six-hour documentary about it in 2022, The US and the Holocaust. One example he noted was that after Charlie Chaplin did The Great Dictator, pressure from Germany ensured that America made no more films disparaging Germany and its fuhrer until hostilities actually broke out.

American plutocrats in 1933, envious of Germany’s apparent rise from the depths of the Great Depression and admiring of Hitler’s approach to undesirables, actually staged an abortive attempt to overthrow FDR and replace him with General Smedley Butler. It was aptly known as the Wall Street Putsch.

Despite the fact that Butler had voted for FDR and hated capitalism, American plutocrats, who were no smarter or more loyal than our present bunch, felt he would reverse all the proposed New Deal stuff and return America to the capitalist greatness that had ruined it in the first place. (Trump likes to rhapsodize about the “good old days” of the Gilded Age, from post-Civil War until Teddy Roosevelt, a “golden era” that saw two major depressions, thousands of bank failures, and an appalling standard of living for 95% of Americans.)

Accounts vary on how close the plotters (which included the same prominent families that support Trump today) came to actually pulling this off. Close enough that the NY Times tried to pretend it never happened, anyway. If there had been polls in those days, Hitler probably would have polled better than FDR, at least amongst people wealthy enough to have telephones. (A presidential preference poll a few years later proved catastrophically wrong because it solicited opinions only from those who had phones.)

People don’t like to admit it, but Stalin was also immensely popular in the USSR. Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn has a passage in “The Gulag Archipelago” about how the inmates in the prison containing Solzhenitsyn erupted in an outpouring of utter grief at the loss of the leader and father of the working class. Most of those weeping had been unjustly imprisoned for anywhere from ten to twenty-five years by Stalin, for trivial or non-existent “Anti-Soviet Agitation” charges. One such mourner was a man who had been practicing his signature on a copy of Pravda and was impolitic enough to write one of his autographs across an image of Stalin. Ten years in the Gulag for that. Yes, he mourned the loss of his Great Leader.

But the USSR provides a perfect example of just how important the “consent of the governed” can be. It fell, in 1990, the most repressive and brutal regime in modern history, with nary a shot being fired. People were simply fed up, and en masse, the citizenry took away their support.

America has several advantages. First, the dictatorship of both Germany and the USSR arose at a time when both nations were in horrible condition, with widespread corruption, hunger, and humiliation. All the stuff Fox News likes to pretend America was suffering from under Joe Biden, only of course it wasn’t. Second, we have polls, and enough of a free press that we don’t have to take the word of Katherine Leavitt (Baghdad Barbie) as to how well-loved Trump is. And if Hitler and the Soviets were incompetent, capricious, and cruel, Trump is just as bad, only he lacks the wit to hide his mistakes. Finally, the same weakness that allowed Americans to stumble blindly into a Trump dictatorship is also their greatest strength: they have no history of living under dictatorial regimes, and even before it gets off the ground, a majority of Americans want to end it.

Trump wants to end Wikipedia. He is trying to end a free media. He is arresting judges. He doesn’t like stories about how he’s throwing American children with cancer into his El Salvador death camp.

But even if he manages to still those voices, people will talk. And notice the privations, the loss, the ‘disappeared’ and the vicious cruelty that dictatorial regimes always employ.

With a free press, the end will come quicker.

Stay informed.

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Trumpenomics — The best way to save money is to waste it

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 12th, 2025

G. Elliot Morris, formerly one of the guiding geniuses behind the late, lamented 538 website, came up with this tidbit today: “According to the Hamilton Project data, the U.S. government has spent $2.17 trillion as of April 10, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. ET (the data, which comes from the Treasury, is updated in near-real-time). That is just shy of a 6% increase over spending on the same date in 2024 when the feds had spent “just” $2.05 trillion at this point in the year. This puts the US federal government on track to spend $8 trillion this year, barring other budget changes…”

As odd as that stat is in light of ElonTrump’s chainsaw ‘cost-cutting’ measures, it only tells a small part of the tale. In fact, trillions of dollars have been lost over the past two months to waste, fraud and abuse, and even though Trump had to scurry back on his “Liberation Day” tariffs in light of a potential total economic collapse, the wholesale destruction will continue.

The slashes to government programs, big and small, have been capricious, arbitrary, and often cruel. Thousands of on-going projects have been stopped in their tracks, even though the money for them had already been allocated and spent, meaning that money—hundreds of billions—has been thrown away. Just the ongoing research programs that just got torched alone were in the billions.

They’ve gutted thousands of departments by taking a very systematic and subtle approach: just fire anybody who a) is on probationary status and b) has a vowel or a consonant in their name. This meant every promising new hire who hadn’t been there two years yet, all temporary employees, and anyone who had just been promoted for doing a superior job but whose promotion came with probationary status. With no regard to capabilities or functions.

Courts have ordered thousands of employees unfired, and many of those returned to find their chairs, their desks, and their computers all gone, either trashed or dumped at fire sale prices.

Many of the most important (and popular) government programs, including the Department of Education, NOAA, NASA, Department of the Interior and Social Security are being gutted. That last one, which makes up about 10% of national economic income for the general public, is teetering and in danger of collapse. They want to privatize the Post Office, which means thousands of non-profitable rural post offices will close even as the price of sending a letter explodes ten-fold.

I’ve actually had right wingers whine that we wouldn’t be complaining if a Democrat did to the government what Trump is doing. Typical of MAGAts—they love to howl about what victims they are as they rape and bully everyone around them.

Fact is, Democrats DID cut government spending, and even balanced the budget. This was in Bill Clinton’s second term, with vice President Al Gore overseeing the government efficiency task force. It was called “Reinventing Government” It eliminated what Elaine Kamarck, administrator of the program, said was “more than 400,000 federal positions between 1993 and 2000 through a combination of voluntary departures, attrition and a relatively small number of layoffs.”

Hundreds of departments were merged or eliminated, and the savings were so great that the Clinton administration had the first (and last) balanced budget since 1968. The day George Bush Jr took office, newspapers and economists where rhapsodizing about “surpluses as far as the eye can see” and there was serious talk of retiring the national debt by 2010. Of course, Republican fiscal fecklessness and greed, serving the notion that the national treasury should be the plaything of the very rich, eliminated the surpluses and instead created record floods of red ink, which their propagandists assured the public was the result of “Democrat spending.” It was a lie, but it was repeated endlessly.

And Reinventing Government slid into the memory hole, partly because it didn’t support the fascist narrative, and partly because it worked exactly the way government was supposed to work: democratically, with decision-making and responsibility shared between Congress and the executive, and with time taken to determine what jobs and projects served a good purpose and which were just accumulated fat. It worked so well hardly anybody even noticed it.

So the next time some wankers moan in self pity that people just hate right wingers, it isn’t politics or factionalism; it’s disgust for greed, incompetence, capriciousness and viciousness. The Democrats used competence, honesty, and good faith. The difference is night and day. People don’t hate Trump and Musk for “saving money”; they hate them because they are hateful people who are destroying the country and selling it off for parts and at our expense.

Even though Trump had to back off on his massive tariffs folly, the damage is already nearly unrecoverable. Not just the incredible waste and incompetence of his “cost-cutting”; the extraneous damage inflicted.

The bond market is teetering. US bonds are the “safe haven” for investors during market crashes, something that New Deal economics took out of our lives which Reaganomics restored. Stocks tank, you invest in bonds and wait it out.

But bonds depend entirely on “The Full Faith and Credit” of the United States, and under this administration, nobody trusts that government. As far as good credit goes, the US might as well be Zimbabwe. And the bond market—nearly $30 trillion in size—relies entirely on trust in the US government.

You hear a lot about China owning a chunk of that, and it does: about $1.8 trillion. About 6%, more or less. A small but significant share. (Most of the bond market is money the US owes to itself).

Trump is going out of his way to antagonize and even insult the Chinese with his mindless bluster. If China tanks the bond market, they will take great economic damage. But the US would be ruined. It would take decades for the nation to recover, and it wouldn’t look anything like the US that we all enjoyed in the 20th century.

It’s clear Trump isn’t running the show: his plutocrats, including Musk, are. But they aren’t noticeably smarter or more competent, and often mistake greed for wisdom. Most of them have the compassion and knowledge of Charles Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson’s boss. Two words: Howard Lutnick. And he’s not even the worst one: far from it. Trump’s Secretary of Education is talking about using that thinking computer thingie for educating the kids, what was it she called it? Oh, yes, “A-One.”

Hope she didn’t pick Hewlett-Packard for the computers. Everyone knows HP and A One are competitors.

Sheesh.

 

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Trump America — Another business destined to fail

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 5th 2025

When the Dow drops 3,600 points—9% of its value—in just two days, it’s pretty safe to say market conditions are ‘unsettled’ in much the same way that Grindavik is unsettled.

My guess is we’ll see a partial recovery Monday, and then the slide will resume. It’s illegal to manipulate markets for a quick and dirty profit, but that’s hardly going to slow down Donald Trump, America’s most powerful con man. He’ll keep right on making announcements that will manipulate the market to his advantage.

The game has already begun. Erik the Moron piped up today, saying that the tariffs were “negotiable” and the first countries to negotiate would get the best deals.

While that made perfect sense to a dimwitted conman, it will also completely blows up the premise behind Trump’s tariffs. The stated reason is that it will force manufacturing to either move to America or start up there. But that means the tariffs have to be inflexible and permanent. Nobody is going to go to the trouble and expense of moving their operations stateside only to find the tariffs have been dropped or reduced and they find themselves competing with competitors back in their previous locales who didn’t move.

The sheer hucksterism of “move now because these deals won’t last” is pretty jawdropping.

Of course, to make a factory that was paying its employees $1.50 a day to set up shop in America means that to make it work, the have to slash pay scales and find a way to greatly reduce all other costs to match what they were paying in Vietnam or Laos or wherever. In other words, to make it worth the overhead of the tariffs, they would have to cut everything to third world levels: no OSHA, no FDA, no EPA, no minimum wage, nothing.

Donald, of course is working hard to get rid of all that crap. It’s patriotic to send your eight year old to work in a poisonous, dangerous place where they might live to be 12 if they’re lucky. Florida is already working on legislation to replace migrant labor with child labor. No, I’m not kidding.

Warren Buffet, who knows a thing or two about the markets, suggested that Trump also inflicted the incoherent tariffs in order to drive interest rates up, something that would also greatly profit the markets. That statement left Donald screaming in rage, which tells you that Buffet pretty much nailed it.

Trump is openly defying courts, ignoring direct orders not to send innocent people to his gulags, knowing that the five fascists on the supreme court will rule in his favor. It won’t be Donald who ends the United States: it will be Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, none of whom seem to realize that once they’ve ended the country, they will no longer have any importance to anyone. Some of them are rich and will do OK in the new plutocracy, but lawn jockeys like Thomas and religious whack jobs like Coney Barret will find themselves on the outside looking in.

Basically, the plutocrats are working to parcel out the United States and make it an impoverished third-world nation while making off with tens of trillions in profits. It’s the biggest heist in history. Then they move on to the next prosperous zone and conduct a parasitic orgy there. China would be a sensible target since it’s already authoritarian. If they aren’t stopped, your life, and the life of your children, will be one of misery and deprivation.

Think Trump and his manipulators are not out to ruin your life and kill your children? Consider this Raw Story news article today: “A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump administration of “covertly” withholding funds for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief programs from states that didn’t vote for him, Courthouse News reported on Friday. In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid,” noted the report.”

A court finding is a bit more than a accusation. The reason McConnell ruled the way he did was because he had solid, incontrovertible evidence that Trump was deliberately cheating people for the crime of living in a state that didn’t vote for him.

Pussy Riot, indisputably the bravest rock group in the world, showed up in Manhattan today to urge Americans stand up for themselves against Trump’s planned tyranny. The cowardice of the Republicans is well documented. Democrats, as always, are divided on the notion of whether ‘tis nobler to be spineless, gutless, boot-licking cowards or not. Fortunately, most are not.

It’s the same as with the American public, where I’ve had people tell me they won’t come to today’s demonstrations because they want to keep their heads down and survive. Understandable, but I have to wonder what makes them think life outside of Trump’s gulags will be any improvement. He plans to leave you in poverty and squalor. That’s what’s in store. At least in prison you’ll get moldy bread and contaminated water, just like you would outside. And inside, nobody expects you to pretend to love Trump. Hopefully.

As most of you know, four American serviceman drowned in Lithuania in a motor vehicle mishap. Their bodies were eventually all recovered, and as the caskets were taken to the airport yesterday for the flight back to America, thousands of Lithuanians lined the streets to pay their respects.

The servicemen landed today, but Donald Trump wasn’t there.

He had a golf tournament to watch. That was more important than losers and suckers.

The rallies against Trump begin in an hour and a half (I’m finishing this at 7:25 PDT). I’m hoping nationwise five million will show up, but I think three million will get the point across. There may have do be more than one day of rallies, and widespread strikes and boycotts. But if we want our freedoms back, that’s what it’s going to take.

In a world of Cory Bookers, don’t be a Mike Johnson.

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Lost Signal — Even by Trump’s standards, this was dismal

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 27th 2025

The breaking story about the Signal chat group conversation leading up to the bombing of Houthis in Yemen was already one of the most egregious and bizarre in the annals of American history.

Accidentally inviting the top editor of one of America’s most renowned journalistic magazines, (Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, in case you’ve been on the far side of the Moon this past week) to a group chat about a pending military attack is a bit like being in an NFL team huddle and glancing up to see the stadium announcer is also in the huddle, holding a microphone, listening carefully to the play plan and nodding thoughtfully.

Of course, to stretch that simile further, in this particular huddle there’s no assurance that any of the guys wearing your uniform are actually on the same team. You already know the coach is working for the other guys, after all.

The participants, caught out, have been throwing excuses and lies around madly in all directions like custard pies in a Mack Sennet movie. They’ve tried claiming that the transcript was a hoax, that they didn’t discuss classified information, and that Goldberg made it up because he doesn’t like Trump.

Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t seem to know what country she was in during the discussion. Well, you know how it is: you see one Asian country, you’ve seen all of them. At least one participant was in Moscow during the chat.

Speaking of Moscow, it seems that the reason the Pentagon had issued a blanket order the week before to never use Signal for any official reasons was because Russia had successfully hacked the encryption of the app. And while the Russians may not have been involved with this particular breach, it seems that the names, phone numbers, emails and passwords of all the participants in the session were available online.

About the only people who didn’t know were the American public. But by inviting Goldberg, they got that covered.

To call this a clusterfuck is a bit like saying the Fyre Festival didn’t go well. It’s damning with faint praise.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the man who somehow invited Goldberg to the chat room, claims he never met Goldberg and had no idea who he was. Evidence, including photographs, says otherwise. It’s not quite clear how inviting a total stranger to a top-secret national security chat is somehow better than inviting the editor of the Atlantic. Apparently one guy there was awaiting confirmation to his government post!

But never mind all that. One person was conspicuous by his absence: Le grand citrouille, King Pumpkin, the Donald.

You seen scenes where a major military operation is underway, and they release photos of the president and his cabinet all sitting around, looking tense and serious as they rescue hostages or grease bin Laden or whatever.

Not in this case. The closest to presidential leadership is when one of the participants says vaguely that he thinks Donald approves of what they’re doing here. Evidence suggests that Trump had no idea what was going on. To paraphrase the famous Watergate investigative question: “What did he know, and does he know that he knew it?” It seems pretty clear that the President of the United States was absent simply because he had nothing to offer.

Trump himself seems to have no idea what the scandal is about, and is mostly reduced to his boilerplate deflection and denial, some of which may actually be valid. It’s pretty clear he has no idea what Signal is, but having discerned that something called Signal was involved, he has declared it defective and wants people to look into it. After all, it let that Goldberg, who was mean to him in the past, in. Something must be wrong with Signal.

He’s variously tried claiming the transcript was a hoax (that backfired: Goldberg released more to show it wasn’t) and that the Democrats were to blame somehow, and that no secrets were discussed. (Several of the participants have tried making that claim, stopping just short of saying the dog ate their homework.) He is, in a word, clueless.

He doesn’t even have the wit to address the specifics, but is just generally doing The Donald, the things he always does when he’s feeling defensive. He’s the old guy with the cane batting at imaginary insects.

He finally realized that there was something to all this confusing ‘signal’ stuff and described the event as a ‘glitch’ and boasted that it was the first glitch in the two months of his administration. A sardonically amused Rachel Maddow that evening spent a full half hour running down the glitches so far. She didn’t pad it or speak slowly. It’s an impressive pile of glitches, worthy of Inspector Clouseau.

But no worries: Trump will have Clouseau’s real-life equivalent, Inspector Hegseth, in to determine what, if anything, happened.

In addition to the blatant incompetence, malice and possible treason, public discourse needs to include whether Trump has any control over this gang of fascists, crooks and subversives or is just their little smiley face for the public. Are the lights on? Is anybody home?

The next day we learned that a) four US soldiers were missing in Lithuania and b) nobody had bothered to tell Trump about it.

If you need more evidence of how feckless, reckless, and anti-American this junta is, consider the following exchange between Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut and alleged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

HIMES: Do you think it’s responsible for you, as head of the intelligence community, to retweet posts from individuals affiliated with Russian state media?

GABBARD: That retweet came from my personal account.

HIMES: Personal account? You’re the Director of National Intelligence, not an Instagram influencer. There’s no such thing as “personal” when you’re elevating Kremlin propaganda.

GABBARD: I have the right to share information—

HIMES: Information? You mean Russian disinformation. You sit in high-level intelligence briefings, then turn around and boost the same narratives Moscow is pushing. Should we just CC the Kremlin on your next meeting and cut out the middleman?

GABBARD: This is just an attempt to smear me—

HIMES: Smear you? You lied under oath in a Senate hearing yesterday, claiming you knew nothing about classified information, while sitting in Signal chats where war plans were discussed. You retweet Kremlin-backed sources, then act shocked when people question your loyalties.

GABBARD: I’m focused on national security—

HIMES: National security? While pushing Russian propaganda and pretending you’re clueless about intelligence leaks? If a Democrat had done half of this, you’d be screaming treason on national TV.

GABBARD: This is about free speech—

HIMES: Free speech? You’re the President’s top intelligence advisor, not some random guy on Twitter. Every word you amplify has consequences. And right now, you’re handing America’s enemies exactly what they want—straight from your “personal account.”

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904907517261705605

Speaking of Twitter, I’m a bit surprised Musk wasn’t one of the participants. I suppose he’s too busy destroying the United States, though. That can keep a man busy, you know.

Or maybe he’ll join the chat when they discuss bombing Toronto. Hopefully the Russians will leak that before it happens.

 

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The Rise of Emperor Trump — After the Don, Darkness

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 16th, 2025

That Donald Trump is mad almost goes without saying. He has been a pathological malignant narcissist his entire life, going back to a loveless childhood with a cruel and vicious father, a wraith of a mother; no friends, not even pets.

Long before he entered politics, he was widely hated and despised for his cruelty, his dishonesty, his open contempt for women and his hatred of minorities. His wealth protected him from the consequences of his mental illness, but his history of civil suits tells a squalid tale of lust, greed, viciousness, and open thievery. He is and always has been a wastrel, a moral and ethical sewer of a man. Had he been born poor, I am certain he would have died in prison long before he reached thirty years of age.

His unrestrained presidency has been the absolute nightmare many of us feared, as he throws away an entire nation for his own aggrandizement. Manipulated by fascist billionaire scum, given a army of servile and ever-compliant underlings to wreak his will, Trump is rapidly tearing apart the fabric of society, replacing the United States with…

Well, history tells the tale. People may consider this time utterly insane, a time of nihilistic orgy and abandonment of human mores, but historians recognize this. Oh, yes, we’ve trodden this path before. I’ll give a few examples shortly.

I caught some of Trump’s characteristically windy speech at the Department of Justice the other day. It was the same as the SOTU and his stump speeches. People are stupid enough to let him mar memorial services and other solemn occasions with the same self-serving bullshit. The same litany of lies, defamations, whinging, racism, hatred of all who are different from him, and bellicosity. And I realized: that’s all he’s capable of doing any more.

We know that in his first term, “Doctor” Ronnie Jackson saw fit to administer the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to Trump. It’s a simple fifteen minute test used to set benchmarks for onset or continuing development of dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. It’s not something a doctor would ask of a sitting President of the United States without a damned solid reason. I don’t know if they administered any such test to Reagan in his second term, when his mental decline was becoming evident, but he and his staff were together enough not to blurt it out to the public. Trump actually boasted about it, repeatedly, and never realized that just the fact that someone thought he needed to take such a test raised a whole host of questions.

Age-related dementia is progressive and irreversible. It progresses at various rates, even in individuals, and along with increasing loss of cognitive abilities, it can cause catastrophic personality changes. While it can take people who have been pleasant all their lives and turn them into utter horrid monsters, I’ve never heard of a case where a life-long jerk got compassionate or thoughtful.

Trump is well into dementia, and propped up by his toadies and never held to account, so he’s only going to get worse.

I suspect that’s why Elon Musk has effectively co-opted Trump’s office. He’s a young, vicious, soulless libertarian with his own set of mental problems, exactly what the fascists want, and he’s there to “be” Trump long after Trump has forgotten he’s president.

I repeat. It’s only going to get worse.

There isn’t a country in Europe or Asia that hasn’t seen a peaceful and beneficial land fall to madness and destruction. Indeed, Trump is just an example of such madness that is presently expanding globally: Russia, Iraq, Iran, Hungary, the Philippines, Brazil, the list is getting longer. Eventually fascists/theocrats collapse due to corruption, cruelty and incompetence, but they can cost millions and even tens of millions of lives in the process. Best to avoid it in the first place, but humanity is flawed. As history shows:

An excellent summation of History’s Nine Worst Leaders by Conner Brighton can be found here.

https://www.worldatlas.com/history/history-s-9-worst-leaders.html

I have made light edits for clarity in both excerpts.

Commodus was the son of the previous emperor Marcus Aurelius and had been groomed for the position his whole life. However, despite his father’s best efforts, it would seem as though Commodus was destined for a life of selfishness and cruelty.

From a young age, he was justly hated by those around him for his inflated ego and lack of honor. The resentment held towards Commodus only grew when Marcus Aurelius suddenly died in 180 AD and his son came to power.

At no point throughout his twelve-year reign did Commodus show any concern for the well-being of the empire. He was much too concerned with holding lavish festivals, gladiatorial games, and extravagant parties for himself and the few friends he had in the Roman senate.

Commodus was exceptionally paranoid and routinely had members of his court executed for treason without the smallest shred of evidence. He also built up an obsession with becoming a gladiator himself. Something that was considered unbelievably low class for any decent Roman, let alone an emperor.

He would hold “fights” against other gladiators in a vain effort to prove his combat ability. These contests would of course be rigged in his favor. He never did kill any of his opponents but he was known to slice off the odd ear or nose depending on his mood. Commodus would often claim that he was undefeated in the arena and that there was not a man alive who could beat him…

…Commodus was so bad that his rule would spark an end to the Roman golden age and almost prematurely destroyed the Roman Empire.

If that doesn’t bear a ton of similarities to the tale of Donald Trump, I don’t know what does. I could picture him employing AI to stage gladiator fights between himself and his enemies, real or imagined, with predictably vainglorious results. Or continue what he’s already doing now, which is forwarding the absurdly over-the-top tractor art of him riding a dragon or blessing Jesus or looking compassionate and heroic.

There’s a temptation to compare Trump to the even more notorious Caligula, but Trump seems to have stopped raping virgins, and while he’s sent many jackasses to the Senate, he’s never sent a horse.

Robert Mugabe

Almost as soon as Mugabe took power, the standard of living began to decline drastically [in Zimbabwe]. Access to education and healthcare took an immediate dive. Even access to clean food and drinking water became a struggle.

In 1987 Mugabe declared himself the first-ever executive president. This made Zimbabwe essentially a one-party state in all but name. There were plenty of elections held between 1987 and 2017 but all of them were plagued with accusations of Mugabe using violence and political pressure to rig elections and intimidate would-be opponents from running against him.

Aside from the endless examples of political violence at the hand of Mugabe, perhaps his biggest failure had to do with his handling of the economy. By the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s once thriving agricultural sector of the 1970s was on life support. A series of droughts and decades-long mismanagement by inexperienced and corrupt officials led to massive food shortages.

By 2008 the nation’s economy was in total freefall with inflation reaching an unheard of 100,000%. Mass unemployment destroyed what was left of the middle class and thousands of Zimbabweans fled for greener pastures in neighboring countries.

Summary

Bad leaders come in all shapes and sizes. Mass killings and genocide are certainly good markers for an evil leader but a poor leader does not always need to be at the same level as Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin to be considered bad.

History is full of heads of state that were either way in over their heads or could simply not be bothered with the unique problems that their nations were dealing with. Perhaps through the study of history, we can spot similar patterns with our leaders in hopes of avoiding the same kinds of tragedies and mishaps in the future.

Connor Brighton July 30 2023 in History

That was just two examples. Monarchies often end up with a succession of bad or foolish leaders. Theocracies always turn awful because they all depend on the most talented snake-oil salesman convincing others that he knows what their silent and invisible god wants. It happens to Republics, of course. Some, like Germany or France, recover, usually at a ruinous cost. Some like Russia, just end up with a succession of bad rulers, no matter what they try. By Russian standards, Putin is actually somewhat benign, and believe me, that’s not saying much. On the rare occasions they get a competent and wise leader, such as Gorbachev, they promptly and utterly collapse despite that leader’s best efforts.

Americans have never been at this point before, and the fact that they have no real history of truly cruel and oppressive leaders makes them more vulnerable to this one. Americans used to see that lack as a strength and proof of the superiority of the Constitutional system. They had to do a lot of white washing to arrive at that conclusion, and America is known in Europe as a country that regrows its virginity on a regular basis. In truth, Americans are no better or no worse than the population of any other land, and like all the other nations that have been faced with imminent disastrous dictatorship, they will find they need to resist and fight the problem before it completely subsumes the land. If they don’t, they face decades of ruin and deprivation.

Will enough Americans see the danger in time?

 

 

 

 

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Heil Trump! — Leni Riefenstahl should have filmed the speech

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 5th 2025

I only watched the first half hour of Trump’s speech last night. I understand he raved and ranted and lied for a full 100 minutes, which puts him in line with other windy despots, such as Castro or Hitler or Mao. I’ve always wondered why dictators feel a need to orate at such length. Do they enjoy holding a captive audience? Or is there a deeper insecurity at work here? Braggarts often are compensating for something.

The speech was interrupted several times by chants of “USA! USA!” from the Republican side. One hears it often at international sporting events, and it’s usually good natured if a bit tiresome. But there was an edge, a bellicosity to the chant here that made it sound more like “Sieg Heil!” All that was missing was the stiff-armed salute. It’s a pity the camera angle couldn’t pick out faces of those saluting the dictator: I wondered how many wore the same joyous truculence of the true believer, and how many sneaked nervous glances about, too aware of the penalties for inadequate enthusiasm. (I wonder if anyone in the room looked for the same thing and had the wisdom to realize that the true believers would be the greater threat to Trump than the shivering cowards. When Trump’s programs implode and the public fury rises, they will turn faster and harder against Trump.)

“Never be the first to stop applauding” – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Trump got into the issue of waste in Social Security. Apparently he hoped a long list of patently untrue claims would give him some credence, but as usual, he over embellished, breaking down “recipients” by age groups—110 to 115, 116-125, and so on up to 350. That last one amused me: apparently someone filed for social security benefits either in 1675 or at the age of 260, when Social Security actually came into existence. I watched Mike Johnson shaking his head sorrowfully over that, and recalled that the man is a Bible literalist, which means he really believes Methuselah really lived to be 969. Maybe he thought the SS recipient in question was actually one of Noah’s children, and was just lying about his age in order to pick up girls. Was he first paid in ducats or florins?

Of course, there are no checks going out to people older than about 113. The December 2024 Social Security stats show that a bit over 89,000 people got payments, in line with the census report from 2020 which showed 88,000 in that age group. The database is in COBOL, which uses numbers like 150 to indicate that the person in question is dead.

But Trump has two audiences he wants to reach: those who are in on the con as part of his drive to flat-out steal the Social Security trust fund, and utter fools. If you believe him but don’t know which group you’re in, you’re in trouble.

Trump babbled about the “woke agenda” of course. Among other items that he considers woke: “biodiversity,” “transgenic mice,” and “discriminants.” As I said, his main audience is morons.

At least one Democrat, Rep. Al Green (D, Texas) stood and shouted “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” and “He has no mandate!” Mike sent the palace guard to evict him. It’s a pity the rest of the Democrats didn’t join him.

Still, Trump woke up this morning to a new crisis, which probably took the sheen off what he doubtlessly considered a wildly successful oration: the Supreme Court ruled that he must honor the contracts made from funds allocated by Congress to outfits such as USAID.

The ruling, which in any sane time would have been a 9-0 no-brainer, was dissented by Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Alito wrote the dissent, saying he was “stunned” that judges might think it is the duty of judges to adjudicate contracts under the rule of law. That is, after all, only the reason judges exist in the first place, and obviously is just some woke liberal crap and must be struck down. I wonder if any of those four have considered what may happen if they managed to rule against their own raison d’être. Of course, their masters at the Heritage Foundation probably have golden parachutes ready for when they finish selling out the country and there is no longer any reason for silliness like “Constitutional Law.”

But it puts Trump right up against that red line: does he abandon his efforts to dismantle the government by fiat, or does he defy the Court? Either way leads to the end of his government, either as a legitimate government or a government at all.

For all of us, the red line is here. And if he crosses it and defies the courts, then either Trump must go, or America does.

Your choice what to do next.

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