Politics

Now that The Orange One is in office, he just doesn’t give a fuck. Honor fallen soldiers? Not when the golf course is beckoning. (BTW, he seems to think that everyone plays golf.)

Those mystery science characters have more sense than most of us apparently. A buddy says he is down a quarter million already. I got mostly out of the stock market when the pumpkin head was elected.

Ah…but the leopards are just chowing on faces.

Fellow Unbelievers,

Their ultimate Trump references were when they riffed on the character Trumpy in the movie Pod People. The Trumpy of today is certainly just as voracious and chaotic:

Fellow Unbelievers,

Here is a good place to showcase the humorous, even very prescient, refereces to Donald J. Trump on Mystery Science Theater 3000

TheEncogitationer wrote:

And, of course, the part of Donald Trump’s brain that pauses between thought and speech and speech and action doesn’t work at all.

This is spot on, of course. But I’m worried, in spite of the obvious harm of Project 2025 (“P2025”) as it is executed, that perhaps irrepairable harm is the goal of wannabee oligarchs. Or, may…[Read more]

Reg,

David McWilliams is right…up to the last sentence.

Interdependence of trade in all areas of the world will always exist due to comparative advantage that everyone has on certain products and services. Detroit cannot grow bananas as good as New Guinea and the Czech Republic can’t make coffee as good as Columbia.

But dependence on the…[Read more]

This is published by David McWilliams in an Irish broadsheet on Jan 4th 2025:

A country can threaten tariffs and talk tough when it is owed money. When it owes money, that’s a different story.

We are heading into a trade war. That’s what the United States wants and that’s what the world will get.

In 2025 it will become increasingly obvio…[Read more]

@PopeBeanie

There are other ways.

He might withdraw days before the middle of his term, continuing to rule through his veep and then seek a second term again in the next election, which I think may be perfectly legal.

He might elect a proxy (Don Jr.?) to stand in for him while he rather blatantly is the true President, also probably…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

A psychiatrist explains why Trump wanting a third term (and by extenstion of his logic, to never leave office) was inevitable from the start.

He also says that the 12th and 22nd amendments together prohibit a president from becoming a president a third time, but I saw an explanation, I forget from who, saying Trump might be able to…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

The tariff thing might be a way to gain control of taxation from congress for king tRump. Add tariffs as a tax, cause recession so billionares can buy up stocks, then be the hero calling for sweeping income tax reductions, stock market bounces back. Rich get richer.

There’s a strong argument that the new oligarchy can treat this…[Read more]

The tariff thing might be a way to gain control of taxation from congress for king tRump. Add tariffs as a tax, cause recession so billionares can buy up stocks, then be the hero calling for sweeping income tax reductions, stock market bounces back. Rich get richer.

While the judge did the right thing in dismissing charges with prejudice, I’m sure prosecutors holding charges in abeyance to extort someone’s cooperation is pretty much standard practice, though I suspect most often it’s done to get an underling to rat on a more important target.

A psychiatrist explains why Trump wanting a third term (and by extenstion of his logic, to never leave office) was inevitable from the start. And, amazingly, it has nothing to do with facing prison after leaving office.

Yeah, Pope…

It is dismal, so many people available for Trump to purchase. However, the grass roots rumblings have begun. When the recession hits, Trump is gonna need extra strength Depends ™.

Is this, or is it not outright corruption of our courts, legal establishment, and politicians in power? This explanation is from a Democratic senator.

14-1/2 minutes long

Yay, Rand Paul! I’d forgotten about him for a while.

1-1/4 minutes long

The video with Jason Stanley on Amanpour referred to a Guardian article on the topic of how the Trump admin wants to define university policies and practices. As Enco notes, they can do this when they have powers of the purse. (Yo MAGA, the left may have set the scene, but you made governmental interference inevitable.)

Excerpt from the…[Read more]

PopeBeanie,

This is a moment in our political history when grabbing power with big money, packing SCOTUS starting way back with ignoring Obama’s SCOTUS nomination, GOP demanding full political loyalty to Trump’s takeover and narcissism, promotion of conspiracy theories, Christian Nationalism, other false narratives, even growing support for Put…

[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

In other words, it takes more than just making stupid noises on EuroVision or not furnishing the apartment for me to use the term: “Fascist.”

Same here, actually. And using that word lowers his credibility, imo, while I guess I took advantage of the clickbait opportunity when I posted it here.

However, I’m not con…[Read more]

The concept of “government free” free market is so cute. The drive for any company is always to monopolize, crush start-ups, control pricing and optimize profit over any and all social, environmental, or human welfare concerns. As an engineering manager with a 20 million annual budget working on a 250-million-dollar project; I was high enough to…[Read more]