“So then I says to the guy, I says, ‘Fuck you and your tariffs, you orange buffoon!’”
"Augustus uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself. ..."
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“So then I says to the guy, I says, ‘Fuck you and your tariffs, you orange buffoon!’”
If you're 60, 69.1% of all job growth since your birth occurred under Democratic administrations. If you're 45, that number is 74.7%. If you're under 28, the number is 100%. Happy Labor Day.
“Shock and awe’’ is how Maytee Pereira of the tax and consulting firm PwC describes Trump’s plans for drugmakers. “This is an industry that’s going from zero (tariffs) to the potentiality of 200%.’’
That’s starting to change. U.S. and European leaders recently detailed a trade deal that includes a 15% tariff rate on some European goods brought into the United States, including pharmaceuticals. Trump is threatening duties of 200% more on drugs made elsewhere.
Trump has promised to impose hefty import taxes on pharmaceuticals, a category of products he’s largely spared in his trade war. For decades, in fact, imported medicine has mostly been allowed to enter the United States duty free. apnews.com/article/trum...
By now, however, we should not be surprised that spineless Republicans desperate to keep cushy jobs would rather see the economy self-destruct than speak up and risk MAGA wrath.
... and his cultists with facts, and prattled on endlessly with gobbledygook (birds and windmills!) and conspiracy theories, Democrats would have drawn up impeachment articles or demanded activation of the 25th Amendment.
We know that had a Democratic president run up the debt to $37 trillion, started a trade war, knocked job growth down from the 200,000s to the tens of thousands, tried to fire a fed governor to trigger a flood of easy money, fired experts who had the temerity to contradict him ...
Throw in a Rube Goldberg system of inflation-producing, growth-slowing tariffs, and you have the most anti-capitalist president in the modern era.
Rattner noted that actions such as grabbing a 10% stake in Intel and trashing the independence of the Federal Reserve “bear resemblance to China’s state-directed capitalism.”
and wildly at odds with any sensible notion of how the relationship between government and business should be managed.”
Former car czar Steven Rattner opined in The New York Times, “Mr. Trump is muscling his way into our economy in ways that are alien to traditional Republican principles, alien even to what more interventionist Democrats have argued for, ...
Just as the First Amendment is too important to leave to the legacy media, a prosperous economy is too vital to leave to the Intel, Amazon, Space X, and other Wall Street spinners of conventional wisdom.
Republicans, before the Trump cult took hold, frequently railed against communist & fascist regimes that nationalized industry, indulged in crony capitalism, substituted propaganda for the free flow of reliable information. Well, well. How times have changed. contrarian.substack.com/p/the-most-c...
“People take things they know and misapply them,” Dunning said. “In his case, north is up and south is down, and I’m guessing here, because water flows down, if he opens up the tap, water will flow down from Canada to irrigate the crops in California.”
... he was hard-pressed to explain Trump’s belief that water from Canada somehow flows to California, except for their relative placement on a standard map of North America."
"University of Michigan psychology professor David Dunning, one of the co-discoverers of the “Dunning-Kruger effect” that describes how some people with little competence in any specific field nevertheless overestimate their level of expertise, said ...
A different friend, a fellow golfer who plays Trump’s courses, according to another top Trump adviser, was behind two separate conspiracy theories that Trump accepted as gospel.
“If you don’t have people close to him willing to stand up to him and tell him ‘no,’ then his crazy thoughts become crazy policy,” said one current top Trump adviser on condition of anonymity.
Bolton said. “But in Trump’s mind, if he knows something that the intelligence people don’t know or his advisers don’t know, it just verifies to him that he’s the only one who really knows everything.”
Getting to the root cause of Trump’s ignorance, which appears to be as broad as it is deep, is complicated by his tireless mendacity. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
A 2023 study published in the journal Vaccine found in a nationally representative sample of Americans that nearly 40% believed canine vaccines were unsafe and 37% believed that vaccines could lead their dogs to develop cognitive issues, such as autism.
As rabies seems to be spreading more in wildlife, veterinarians are especially worried about vaccine hesitancy spreading among pet owners, a dangerous trend that could lead to more dogs — and their owners — becoming infected.
The rabies virus invades the central nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms start.
“We are currently tracking 15 different likely outbreaks,” said Dr. Ryan Wallace, who leads the rabies team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Six deaths from rabies have been reported over the last 12 months in the U.S., the highest number in years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
Every U.S. Republican president for the past 100 years has resulted in a recession. Still can’t believe people don’t know this. medium.com/@davidkellyu...
Yes. Scotland would qualify.
No. Because Britain is not qualified for Europe yet. Many Brits are of course, but not the UK as a whole. The institution as such. Hungary and Slovakia are enough problems as it is.
If the Crash of 2008 proved anything, beyond any doubt, it's this: When liberals win, everybody wins, including conservatives. When conservatives win, everybody loses, including, eventually, conservatives.
The threat is particularly acute because the US’s arch rival, China, is overseeing a rapid improvement in its education system. When it comes to “human capital”, America may have already been surpassed.
America is losing its brain power and it is jeopardising its place on the world stage. Once the world’s education superpower, the US is slipping down global rankings. With this decline comes a massive threat to productivity, economic growth and America’s national security.
Educational attainment in US schools has been in decline since the mid-2010s and plunged during the pandemic. It has not recovered. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...
What that guy says, sounds exactly like insanity. Fully developed and undiluted insanity.
Now, with US-India ties plummeting, New Delhi has a fresh incentive to ease tensions with Beijing. Trump’s trade war, analysts say, has upended decades of American diplomacy that cast India as a counterweight to China.
In recent days, China has unequivocally condemned the punishing 50 per cent tariffs on Indian exports, saying it "firmly stands with India" and denounced the US as a "bully".
... China and India are two ancient civilisations in the east, we are the world's two most populous countries, and we are also the oldest members of the Global South," he said. "It is vital to be friends, a good neighbour, and the Dragon and the Elephant to come together," he added.
The Chinese President also told PM Modi that the world is currently going through once-in-a-century transformations. "The international situation is both fluid and chaotic. ...
The closely watched bilateral began with a firm handshake, signalling the next step in rapprochement between the two long-time rivals while also sending a message to US President Donald Trump, whose tariff offensive has soured Washington’s ties with both New Delhi and Beijing.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping for bilateral talks on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin, seeking to recalibrate ties amid the tariff barrage unleashed by Donald Trump. www.indiatoday.in/india/story/...
... Now, he has arrived in Tianjin against a backdrop of souring relations with Washington – and as Beijing and New Delhi have moved to ease their own frictions, a nascent realignment that could imperil US efforts to cultivate India as a counterweight against a rising China.
Modi’s attendance at the gathering also adds heft to Xi’s guest list. The Indian prime minister skipped last year’s summit in Kazakhstan. ...
... at a time when the world’s leading superpower the United States under President Donald Trump is shaking up its alliances and waging a global trade war.
Chinese officials have billed the summit as the SCO’s largest yet, with the diplomacy and pageantry setting the stage for Xi to tout his country as a stable and powerful alternative leader ...
... a regional security grouping that has emerged as a cornerstone of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to rebalance global power in their favor.
Heads of state and delegations from across Asia and the Middle East will meet from Sunday in the Chinese port city of Tianjin for the two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), ...
Autocrats, populists, friends and foes, a strongman waging a war in Europe and the leader of the world’s biggest democracy will all be hosted by Xi Jinping this weekend at a summit designed to showcase Beijing as a global leader capable of providing a counterweight to Western institutions.
How Trump drives countries into China’s orbit. edition.cnn.com/2025/08/30/c...
Drudge today:
Taking their cues from modern warfare, the far-right American terrorist movement sees off-the-shelf or home-built first-person viewer (FPV) drones as a critical weapon in their own future war against the US government, which has American authorities on edge. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”
How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”
In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US.
That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government.
Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way.
Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control.
... to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”.
The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles ...
The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …
Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
That's you and your ilk acting against decent people: bsky.app/profile/caju...
She serves at the pleasure of that orange painted felon and wannabe dictator.
The last 3 years have been the hottest in around 125,000 years. CO2 levels are their highest in MILLIONS of years. But most people have no idea this is happening, let alone what it means for our kids’ futures. Our politics & media have failed our children. We should be furious.
Corporate America’s playbook: 1) Exploit workers to maximize profits 2) Use profits to buy Congress 3) Use Congress to pass union-busting laws 4) Use these laws to further exploit workers 5) Repeat Let's break the cycle and keep building back a powerful labor movement.
Pro tip for Canadian small businesses being hit by De Minimis: Translate your website to Spanish. Start selling to Mexicans. Also, look into using Mercado Libre (Latin America's "Amazon"). You'll prosper long term. #ElbowsUp #cdnpoli #vanpoli #topoli #tariffs #deminimis youtu.be/osN4-6nN0fY?...
Four nutcases right there.
There is nothing beneficial in conservatism. Nothing.
You are probably right. But in the meantime all other players in the economy will hedge their activities because of the uncertainty and of course they also will try to benefit from it. Whereas for the American participants all this will be only negative. Uncertainty is worse than denial.
edition.cnn.com/2025/08/29/p...
The CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has now been reduced to the CD, because apparently we’ve had to cut the control and prevention parts. Pls read, comment, subscribe... johnfugelsang.substack.com/p/the-measle...
... both with no regard for any democracy. Neither had the people. All they wanted was jobs and butter.
The concept of democracy was basically forced on them, the masses having very little appreciation or respect for it. Then, during the difficult postwar years, with the depression, unemployment, hunger and the Versailles treaty biting, the nationalists and the communists vied for leadership ...
"Wrong. After ww1 Germans were very much against having a Kaiser." No, they weren't. The Kaiser abdicated because the allies demanded it -not the German people. All people had been schooled an raised during the monarchy and with lots of aristocracy.
Who would have thought that we would have to live through and debate how to deal with the predicament of a fascist cult attempting to destroy a democratic republic, very similar to 1930's Germany? But the GOP knows exactly who Trump is, and they have delivered us into his hands:
No that wasn't the problem in Weimar. It was one problem, but not the decisive one. Decisive was that the nation was directionally lost and adrift. With the Kaiser gone, the vast public didn't even have an appreciation for that concept of Democracy. They were craving a Kaiser/leader replacement.
At the time of that interview, Vance hadn’t even been elected to the Senate yet. But today, his comments read like a blueprint for the program that Trump has pursued during his first 100 days in office.
... and when the courts – because you will get taken to court – and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, not (*now) let him enforce it.”
If he could give Trump one piece of advice, it would be the following: "Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,...
... That’s why it is necessary to make a radical break, he continued, and to start a revolution from above. "If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win the elections, then we've lost,” Vance said.
"I've always been very sympathetic to this idea that we don't have a real constitutional republic anymore,” Vance said in a 2021 interview . "What we have is an administrative state, right? The administrative state controls everything.” ...
... That is what Yarvin calls the "cathedral,” what Peter Thiel refers to as the "Ministry of Truth,” and what Vance has labeled "the regime.”
... From that, however, both Yarvin and Vance have drawn the rather audacious conclusion that the United States is now nothing more than a faux democracy – a country run by a bureaucracy that is permeated through and through by left-wing ideology. ...
Yarvin also coined the term "cathedral” to refer to what he describes as a liaison between journalism and left-wing academia – a union which, he believes, determines the zeitgeist and is similar in its effect to a dictatorship.
Ever since Vance was elected along with Trump, the ideas of the "Dark Enlightenment” have had a seat at the table in the White House.
The tech-billionaire Marc Andreessen, who famously turned away from the Democrats during the 2024 campaign and joined the MAGA camp, is a fan of Yarvin’s conviction that Washington bureaucracy must be destroyed.
Yarvin developed ties with the PayPal founder Peter Thiel, for whom Vance worked for a time after graduating from university and who later donated $15 million to Vance’s Senate campaign in Ohio.
And Yarvin delivered. His criticism of Anders Breivik did not focus on the fact that the Norwegian mass murderer slaughtered 77 people – but on the attack’s failure to produce a collapse of Norwegian "Eurocommunism,” as he wrote.
In Silicon Valley, though, he achieved cult status over the years among investors who were uncomfortable with the prevailing zeitgeist. In a climate where even the slightest verbal misstep could morph into a scandal, "radical chic” was suddenly far right.
His comments on slavery ("a natural human relationship”) have even managed to earn Yarvin fringe status on the otherwise scandal-resistant American right. Those who follow Yarvin have turned away from both democracy and established societal conventions.
"If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” is a statement typical of Yarvin. When he speaks, he sounds like an amalgamation of Carl Schmitt, the right-wing philosopher from the Nazi era, and the cultural pessimist Oswald Spengler.
"In 2021, Vance cited Yarvin’s work during a podcast with the blogger Jack Murphy – which is astounding insofar as Yarvin’s approaches democracy with a mixture of ennui and arrogance that recalls early 20th century Germany.
It's along article. But very much worth the read. It shows you what the US -and the world- is up against. This will get costly, deadly and bitter. www.spiegel.de/internationa...
They should also accept responsibility for the loss of human life and liberty that attends their dismantling of an imperfect but salutary federal government 250 years in the making.
In the words of Father Michael Pfleger, a priest for more than 50 years, they should look into the “mirror and address the violence coming from the White House … address the violence of cutting Medicare and Medicaid … address the violence of refusing to ban assault weapons.”
The Republican majority on the high court consists of six Catholic justices. They should be ashamed of the loss of life they are condoning.
Last week, by a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court allowed the National Institute of Health, the largest public funding source for biomedical research in the world, to terminate $783 million in medical grants on the thinnest of rationales: because they were “linked” to DEI initiatives.