[ Posted Friday, June 13th, 2025 – 17:55 UTC ]
It has been a week of dangerous precedents being set -- and it's not over yet.
One precedent that didn't get much media attention (but which is truly disturbing) was Donald Trump giving a nakedly political speech to American soldiers in uniform, where he pre-screened the crowd for both looks and ideology. One memo sent out before Trump arrived specified: "No fat soldiers." Another stated: "if soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience, then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out."
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[ Posted Friday, June 6th, 2025 – 18:31 UTC ]
The world's richest man and the world's most powerful man got into an online fight yesterday, which began when Elon Musk tweeted out: "Donny Trump is a poopyhead!" -- to which Donald Trump immediately responded: "No YOU'RE the poopyhead Elon!!!"
Well, no. That's not actually how it happened. But it's not that far from the reality, sad to say.
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[ Posted Friday, May 30th, 2025 – 17:43 UTC ]
This week, Wall Street figured out something about Donald Trump (that Vladimir Putin has known for quite a while now) and gave it a catchy name: "TACO." This stands for: "Trump Always Chickens Out."
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[ Posted Friday, May 23rd, 2025 – 17:57 UTC ]
Once again, the Republican Party has laid out its real agenda, in the form of a federal budget. And once again, they have proven what their real priorities are: cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans no matter what -- no matter who has to pay for it, or how.
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[ Posted Friday, May 16th, 2025 – 17:08 UTC ]
Donald Trump seems to now be in full retreat on his trade war. Which is good news, since American consumers are the ones who would have paid the price for it all. The strategy for other countries to follow is becoming clear now -- just wait Trump out, and eventually he will cave on his own, due to political and economic pressures increasing on him over time.
This strategy worked wonders for China, as last weekend Trump dropped his tariff levels against the country by a whopping 115 percentage points. This was precisely what China had been demanding he do before any trade negotiations could even begin. All they had to do was wait.
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[ Posted Friday, May 9th, 2025 – 18:12 UTC ]
If you'll check a historic calendar (which is easy enough to do), you will clearly see that there are three possible days which could validly be celebrated as marking the end of World War II. They are: August 14th, August 15th, or September 2nd. The initial announcement of the surrender of Japan was made on August 14th, in Japan. Due to the nature of time zones, this happened when it was August 15th in America already. Then the formal surrender, which happened on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, was signed on September 2nd. The president at the time, Harry Truman, announced the United States would celebrate what was known as "V-J Day" (for "Victory over Japan Day") on September 2nd. So that would be the most likely day you'd expect any subsequent American president to announce as a new semi-holiday, since it was when World War II actually officially ended. But you'd be wrong.
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[ Posted Friday, May 2nd, 2025 – 17:30 UTC ]
Donald Trump hit two milestones this past week: his first 100 days in office, and his first quarter of negative G.D.P. growth. True to form, he celebrated the first of these with a rally, while blaming the second on Joe Biden. He even tried to front-load any bad economic news in the second quarter as Biden's fault too. Oh, and for good measure, Trump expressed a desire to become the next pope. Which would probably be fine with plenty of Americans -- as long as he quits his current job in order to do so.
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[ Posted Friday, April 25th, 2025 – 18:05 UTC ]
Let's start with some good news today, shall we?
Donald Trump's second-term honeymoon phase now seems to officially be over. As new polling continues to roll in (in advance of his 100-day mark next week), it seems to all be telling pretty much the same story. Trump is now in a neck-and-neck race for "fastest slide into disapproval ever" -- with himself. Only one other president in modern times has seen his job approval numbers with the public go underwater this fast, and his name was also Donald Trump (in his first term). It depends on the poll, but in some he's already worse than he was at this point in 2017. No other president was even in negative territory at this point, it bears mentioning.
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[ Posted Friday, April 18th, 2025 – 17:15 UTC ]
This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!
Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.
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[ Posted Friday, April 11th, 2025 – 17:40 UTC ]
James Carville's famous political maxim ("It's the economy, stupid") needs updating. As we all ride out the Trump Slump in various ways, what we've got now is: "It's the stupid economy." The people running things are stupid. They are making stupid decisions. They have no clue whatsoever what they are doing, and it shows. Stupid is as stupid does. Welcome to The Stupid Economy, folks.
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