Tag: FAFO

A Little Thought

Yes, this is about politics. The life aspect called Fuck Around, Find Out. Trump voter edition.

A woman posted about how bereft she was. She met a boy when she was sixteen. He was her first in all relevant ways. In love, they married and had a child.

She voted for Trump. She doesn’t say why. But that love of her life is an ‘illegal’, as the political shorthand is used. Even though he’d been in the United States before he could walk and lived here and here alone all of his life. He’d tried a few times to become a U.S. citizen. For sundry reasons, it wasn’t accomplished.

Now, fulfilling his campaign promises, Trump’s forces came and took her man away.

I surely do feel for her and her daughter. I don’t want to pile on. Explain, this is what you voted for. Nor remind her that her vote was going to upend many other people’s lives.

I really just wished she had listened to Trump before she voted. Thought about the ramifications of his promises. Then made her vote. And I want to ask her, what lessons will you take from this?

Yes, that’s what I wonder.

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Thirstda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Spinal Tap should be proud.

Preppers are in a tizzy.

Several CEOs met with O2. That’s the One Orange. Frequently living in Florida, he allows time off from his busy golf schedule to sign executive orders. Many of those EOs are about tariffs. That’s what has the preppers wringing their hands. The CEOs run big box stores. They’re retailers. They were warning Trump that the tariffs would soon cause empty shelves, falling sales, and failing consumer confidence so Trump needed to back off tariffs. Which, despite declaring that he never would, Trump did. Because the CEOs are wealthy O2 backers. If not for them, and other millionaires and billionaires, Trump may not have made it back into the White House to bless the world with chaos. Now, this chaos was completely predictable. Trump said he was going to tariff every jot and tittle entering the United States. So it is tres amusing that these big box stores are worried.

The preppers were worried because, doom buying. They wanted to know what is not going to be on the shelves.

The preppers should talk to the truckers and the west coast ports. Because Trump isn’t worried about it.

Stuff enters the U.S. through those ports. Port authorities, freight companies, and dock workers say the ports are gonna be ghost haunts. Nothing is expected in. As critically, little is getting shipped out from the United States. Thanks to sharp price increases caused by the tariffs, orders for U.S. goods are being cancelled. These cancelled orders and empty ships are causing a productivity slow down. People are being laid off or terminated.

Gee, that worked out swell, didn’t it, MAGA?

Sanity was the first casualty of Trump’s personal economic war.

Stability was the second.

Third are workers, soybean farmers, and truckers. All are facing layoffs, or increased costs and decreased profits, or business shutdowns. Trump did the same thing in his first term. Enjoying that experience so much, he’s turned the craziness up to eleven.

Yes, that is a Spinal Tap reference. Spinal Tap used Trump logic to explain why their music is louder.

The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary’s director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out a selection whose control knobs all have a highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10. Believing that this numbering increases the highest volume of the amp, he explains, “It’s one louder, isn’t it?” When Marty asks why not simply make the 10 setting louder, Nigel hesitates before responding: “These go to eleven.”

h/t to Wikipedia.org

Fortunately for truck drivers, the UAW, soybean farmers, Boeing, and big business in general, they supported Trump’s re-election campaign. He told them he would raise tariffs. They supported him and his positions and voted him into office. They now have what they wanted.

Right?

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Thirsta’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s Trump’s morning in America.

“The stock market is down over fourteen hundred points,” my wife greets me.

“Hey girl,” I answer. “Good morning.”

If my wife seems gleeful about the stock market, it’s because she’s angry. Bottom line, she’s in the FAFO camp. Reads ‘The Leopard Ate My Face’ tales daily. Spoons up all those tales about Trump supporters and apologists who are now Trump victims.

Trump said he would do tariffs when he ran for POTUS in 2024. Professional economists have almost all agreed, bad, bad, bad, bad, terrible idea. Trump always thinks he knows better than everyone else. He usually doesn’t. I mean, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino.

Facts don’t matter to Trump. You knew that if you watched his tariff announcement yesterday. He displayed a chart with bogus tariff info. It shows tariffs imposed on U.S. goods. Almost all those supposed tariffs by other countries are inflated by significant amounts.

With almost no surprise, then, worldwide markets dropped after his tariffs announcement.

Some people rationalize what Trump is doing as necessary. They prophesize Trump’s tariffs will bring jobs back to the United States. Factories will spring up like mushrooms after a rain across the nation. And those factories won’t use robotics, as many modern factories do. No, they will employ human, American workers. Even though the U.S. must import many of the raw and finished materials used in modern products, imported materials which will be high-priced due to Trump tariffs, those goods produced in these new factories will be amazingly cheap because they’re made in the U.S.A. There won’t be any profit taking and price gouging, because that’s not how corporations work in the United States. And the workers in those factories will be magnificently compensated for their hourly labor because companies in the United States are known to generously pay hourly employees. Why, it’ll be the greatest economy ever!

If you believe all that, I have an automobile manufacturing plant in Ashlandia to sell you.

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Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The Great Deflector blames ‘globalists’ for the market drops.

Later in the same press event, Trump again blamed globalists for the market downturn. “I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country’s going to be, and they don’t like it.“

What an absolute crock. Couldn’t be the old standard of people and institutions who invest in the stock market were protecting their profits and selling stocks, could it? Oh, no, he has to pull up some bullshit bogey man.

Then again, PINO Trusk isn’t a deep thinker. Not a sharp guy. Doesn’t understand the global network of finance, manufacturing, and supply chains at all. Nope. He prefers a stone-age ‘isolationist’ approach. Thinks that will ‘make America great again’.

Meanwhile, treating your friends like shit ends up with them getting pissed at you and treating you like shit.

Ontario cancels Starlink deal over US tariffs — Italy may follow due to US pullback from Europe

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he would cancel the $100 million deal the Canadian province signed with Starlink in response to Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. He’s also imposing a 25% tax on electricity exports, with New York, Michigan, and Minnesota being the most affected. CBC also reports that U.S.-based companies are banned from procurement contracts with the province.

X Threatens Our Democracy. Canada Should Ban It

Last year, as the U.S. government debated and then followed through on banning TikTok, Republican lawmakers advanced numerous arguments against allowing a hostile foreign power to control a significant medium of public discourse.

They said a social media application owned by someone who is close to an autocratic leader might be used as propaganda.

They said the amount of data harvested by the app from users’ phones could pose enormous security risks, providing information to the security services of a hostile power.

Of course, I might be in the minority in my concerns about PINO Trusk.

What Big-Business Leaders, Including Democrats, Say Privately About Trump

One Wall Street executive told me that Mr. Trump remains better than any of the alternatives. Another — citing Elon Musk’s government shake-up — said he likes what he sees so much, he now regrets voting for Ms. Harris.

It wasn’t just that this group resented Mr. Biden’s intrusive regulatory policies. They didn’t like diversity, equity and inclusion policies either — or anything they derisively described to me as “woke stuff.” Now executives and bankers alike (my circles tilt a bit toward Wall Street) are celebrating early signs of a reversal.

I’m not really astonished by claims that business leaders ‘favor’ PINO Trusk’s trash and burn approach. Stories are rising across the political spectrum about people who first cheer the Trusk Regime’s behavior. Then they’re personally affected, and the song they’re singing goes from praises to complaints. So, as PINO Trusk burns supply chains, declares tariffs (and reverses them), and alienates markets and customers outside of the US, we’ll see how they’re feeling in a few months. Sure, they’re wealthier; their wealth cradles their asses as we go through chaos and inflation.

Or, as Paul Krugman stated it, One thing that really struck me from Rattner’s piece — something I’ve heard from other sources — is that big businessmen think Elon Musk is doing a good job. I guess this is one of those cases where power and privilege make you blind to things that are obvious to everyone else.

After all this fucking around, I’m waiting to find out.

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s good to laugh out loud in the morning. Which I did today, reading of a new Republican plan.

Republicans say states are pulling a fast one on Medicaid

Republicans in Congress see a way around the $880 billion budget shortfall they need to fill to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.

States aren’t going to like it.

To qualify for federal Medicaid dollars, states must also kick in their own matching funds. GOP lawmakers want to stop states from taxing insurers and health care providers to raise that money, a maneuver that would leave states with a $612 billion hole in their budgets over the next decade.

This is fucking hilarious. The GOTP are amazingly ignorant. Which states depend most on Federal Medicaid? Why, the poorer states. We know this from studies, statistics, and history. For example, West Virginia, one of the nation’s poorest states, are solid Medicaid recipients. Guess what? They won’t have this money.

Guess what else? They solidly voted PINO Trusk into office.

Can you guess what other states fit a similar profile to West Virginia? If you guessed red states, reward yourself.

So here goes the GOTP, chasing some illusion of cleverness and logic in a move that will spite their supporters. It looks like if anyone is pulling a fast one, it’s the GOTP. Wasn’t PINO Trusk just bloviating a few days ago that they wouldn’t touch Medicaid? Oh, but that’s right, what am I thinking? He can’t be trusted. Everyone except his supporters know that.

Brace yourself for the reciprocal wave if they pull this one off.

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Mundaz’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The FAFO tide is rising. Who knows what impact it will have? PINO Trusk is an obtuse and ignorant beast. His (their) decisions and actions keep reinforcing that impression.

Like, under Trusk’s guidance, funding has been cut to research projects at universities. Why, that only affects blue states, elites, and libruls, right? No! Not according to some red state folks like Alabama’s junior senator Katie Britt.

Britt loves her some Trump. “One candidate has already proven he’s more than up for the job – because he’s done the job successfully,” Britt wrote. “There is one candidate I know will secure the border — because he’s done it. There is one candidate I know will achieve peace through strength — because he’s done it. And that’s why President Donald Trump has my endorsement to be our 47th President.” Britt didn’t drink the Kool-aid (yes, a dated reference, so I hope you get it), she opened the package and poured it straight into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. Yum!

But those cuts PINO Trusk has made. Yikes!

Katie Britt vows to work with RFK Jr. after NIH funding cuts cause concern in Alabama. “While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,” Britt told AL.com.

So don’t cut funds to her state. Cut it in those blue states. They’re not conducting life-saving, groundbreaking research, no sir, nope. Oh, the idiocy, the selffishness, the myopic views, paint a picture of ignorance personified.

As PINO Trusk attacks clean energy programs, news report after news report shows that red states will lose more. Trump Is Freezing Money for Clean Energy. Red States Have the Most to Lose. “About 80 percent of manufacturing investments spurred by a Biden-era climate law have flowed to Republican districts. Efforts to stop federal payments are already causing pain.”

What? No way. I don’t understand. Trusk ran on the promise to gut these programs. So those red states didn’t vote for him and cuts to the programs running in their states…did they? Well, I’m sure they had good reasons to vote him and his promise to cut those nasty green energy programs.

PINO Trusk’s decision to shut down U.S.A.I.D. is having repercussions among the Trusk faithful, too. How Christian Groups Are Responding to Trump’s Foreign-Aid Freeze. “Among the organizations that lost funding are such Christian behemoths as World Vision, International Justice Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, and Catholic Relief Services, which at $476 million, was the largest USAID recipient in 2024.” Oh, no, who could’ve thunk it? FAFO, right? Sure you’re right.

And surprise, Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses! Well, that can’t be too bad, can it? After all, Trusk is a genius. He would’ve known that farmers and U.S. businesses and workers depend on that U.S.A.I.D. funds, right? Of course! So those businesss, farmers, and workers must all be wasteful, or the genius wouldn’t have cut their funding.

“USAID oversees projects such as food aid, disaster relief and health programs in over 100 countries with a staff of more than 10,000 and a budget of around $40 billion. Billions of those dollars flowed back into the American economy until President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on foreign-aid spending last month.

“Now U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo. That includes American farms, which supply about 41 percent of the food aid that the agency, working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sends around the world each year, according to a 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers.”

I’m sure that none of that will affect the unemployment rate, or other economic factors.

Trump should ‘get rid’ of FEMA, Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem says. Wow, Trusk is really going after that waste! Look how much was wasted by FEMA just last year when they helped states hit by wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and flooding!

“We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people who have these types of disasters like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California,” Noem told CNN’s Dana Bash. “But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed so it can be deployed much quicker.”

Sure! Because local officials without electricity, water, or resources on hand like temporary housing will just be able to snap their fingers and fix it all!

Somehow, this reminds me of that time when President 45 cut the pandemic response time back in 2020.

That worked out real well, didn’t it?

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Wenzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The stupidity, it burns.

“The Army Corps of Engineers suddenly opened up the dams of California’s Lake Kaweah and Lake Success over the weekend. The three day-long releases cost the two Tulare County reservoirs more than 2.2 billion gallons of water — and led to waves of ire in the state over the abrupt, Donald Trump-backed moves.” SF Gate.

Yes, that’s smart. About as smart as giving a toddler the keys to your car and telling them to go get more beers.

As smart of pointing a loaded gun at your own head.

Trump released water from those northern California reservoirs to fight the fires in southern California. That’s like sending a traffic cop to direct traffic in Pittsburgh when the accident is in Baltimore.

It will not help fight the fires in SoCal in any way, shape, or form. Instead, Trump has released water that planned for watering crops in the warm months of the year. You know, the months when rain and snow is not falling. During growing season. So he may have damaged the crops for the year by his brash foolhardiness.

Further, water in those reservoirs is used to fight wildfires in the north during wildfire season.

So, bang, bang, bang, that self-certified genius did damage to California, people’s safety and livelihood, and to the nation’s economy with one effort from his dim-witted brain.

How would it affect the nation’s economy? Simple supply and demand: less food causes less supply causes higher prices. They produce almonds, milks, grapes, walnuts, cherries, eggs and chickens, tomatoes, blueberries, and hay. No one uses those things, right?

Such a waste of BTW, San Jaoquin Valley voted Trump into office.

FAFO.

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Recently caught two Paul Krugman articles. I read one yesterday. This was the post where he shared his tale about why he left the New York Times.

His story illuminated a lot for me. As 2024 progressed and I read his opinions, I thought, what is wrong with Paul Krugman? He is so much less insightful and he seems to be leaning toward the NYT bothsiderism plague. I often found myself begin to read him and then close it because, meh. After he left the Times and began writing on his own, I discovered that he’d regained his sharpness. I’m so much happier to have him out of the NYT yoke and free to comment on the world again, especially the Trumpworld.

Times editors — who deny this — became heavy-handed about Mr. Krugman’s opinions and insights. They rewrote his column, forcing him to rewrite the rewrites. It all became so dumbed down that it wasn’t worth reading.

But he’s back, baby.

That’s a natural transition to Mr. Krugman’s column today: Trump Is Doing Exactly What He Said He Would. Who Could Have Predicted That?

When democracies die, big business and wealthy individuals often play a crucial role in their demise. They provide a would-be strongman with financial support; their control of or influence over news media ensures that he receives favorable coverage, while his opponents are trashed. They do this because they expect to be rewarded with policies that favor their interests and imagine that they will in effect be shareholders in the new autocracy.

What comes next is familiar to anyone who studies history (which the oligarchs don’t.) Eventually it becomes clear that they don’t own the dictator they’ve helped install; he owns them. Maybe they’ll like some of his policies, maybe they won’t, but in any case they’re not in control — and they soon learn that criticizing the big man isn’t just fruitless, it’s dangerous.

In the past this script has typically taken a few years to play out, but this is the internet age, so right now in America the process seems to be taking only a few weeks.

Yep, Paul Krugman nailed it. Trump forced the GOP to be remade in his own image as the Grand Ol’ Trump Party. He brought on billionaires who are interested in having power and money. So guess what, GOP stalwarts? You guys aren’t needed any longer.

MAGA supporters? Naw, Trump can show now that he doesn’t give a shit about you, either.

Rural voters and Evangelicals who said that he shares your values, tells us like it is, and says what we’re thinking? You must have been thinking that th United States doesn’t need a democratic republic any longer. You must have thought that your freedoms and rights would be okay because Trump is like us.

If you haven’t realized yet, he is not like you, not unless you’re white, male, wealthy, selfish, racist, and sexist.

As for you folks who thought he would end wars, cut inflation, and make the United States a better place to live, man are you in for a fucking awakening. Talk ’bout woke! You’ll be woke as the deficit climbs and supply shortages and high prices gut the economy. Bet you’ll be woke as inflation rises and rises.

Those of you who wrung your hands and whined, “The Democrats don’t care about the cost of living enough, so I’m voting for Trump,” have fucked around. If you haven’t found out, you will.

I’ll take it back to Paul Krugman’s post from today to close.

As I get ready to hit the publish button, stock futures are down — but not nearly as much as the situation seems to warrant. Investors still seem to believe that there’s a good chance that Trump will use some minor concessions (about what?) to declare victory and dial the tariffs back. As I wrote about the same time Goldman and Dimon were telling us to chill out, this market complacency is a self-defeating prophecy: muted market reaction makes it likely that Trump will continue and expand his trade war.

And even if some of the tariffs prove temporary, the Rubicon has been crossed. We now know that when the United States signs an agreement, on trade or anything else, the president will treat that agreement as a mere suggestion to be ignored whenever he feels like it. That revelation in itself will do huge long-term damage.

All of this was entirely predictable. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

0

Saturda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

We have a new version of The China Syndrome happening, right here in the U.S. of A.

The original idea behind the China syndrome is a nuclear reactor meltdown that causes the nuclear plant to figuratively melt through its containment building, and keep going until it goes through the earth and emerges in China on the other side of the world. In other words, it’s a baaaddd disaster. A movie starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemon, and Michael Douglas was made about it. Released in 1979, it’s called The China Syndrome.

That’s not quite what we’re talking now. Instead, we’re talking the nuclear family and some wrong-headed ideas about population growth. One of these wrong-headed ideas that China had was that they could control and direct their nation’s population growth by laws. See, their population was growing too much and too fast. Pursuing efforts to stop it, China’s government implemented ‘The One-Child Policy’. it was wickedly wrong in many ways, including what happened to female children because families wanted a male as their one child. Males were more highly prized than females in that society.

Now China faces a problem caused by an aging society. Oh, gosh, how did that happen? Could limiting child births have anything to do with that? Why, yes, of course.

And so we saw another edition of ‘unintended consequences’ demonstrated to us. You’d think that would make others think about trying such efforts.

But not everyone is willing to think and learn from the mistake of others. That’s the new China Syndrome.

All this comes to mind because of a new memo from the new Trump administration. New DOT Memo Directs Funds To Communities With Higher ‘Marriage And Birth Rates’.

WASHINGTON ― The federal Department of Transportation has issued a memo ordering programs supported by the agency to prioritize funding projects for communities with “marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

The article later notes:

Newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy buried his agency’s oddly specific requirement by describing the memo as focused on economic growth ― rather than population growth ― and echoed Trump’s criticisms of programs to improve diversity, equity and inclusion.

“The American people deserve an efficient, safe and pro-growth transportation system based on sound decision-making, not political ideologies,” Duffy said of the memo.

Ha,ha,ha, see what old Sean Duffy did there? He’s using ideology to make decisions and pretending otherwise. And he’s apparently doing it without any irony or self-awareness that he’s doing it.

Cause, gosh, the declining population growth in the U.S. probably doesn’t have anything to do with stagnant wages and misplaced priorities, such as pretending climate change doesn’t exist even as droughts, wildfire, and extreme weather events wipe out crops and housing, causing increased housing and food costs. Yes, and the low population growth probably has nothing to do with the healthcare insurance industry and their record profits and the high price of having a child. Nor does the low population growth have anything to do with the need to have both parents work because wages suck and the cost of everything is so high.

But no, let’s pretend that those things don’t matter. Have a child, get a road! There we go, that’ll increase the population. Makes total fucking sense. At least, in Trumpworld.

Sounds like more FAFO will be forthcoming.

8

Frieda’s Theme Music

And on the last day of January of 2025, rain fell on Ashlandia.

Yes, it’s Frieda, January 31, 2025, and rain is peppering Ashlandia. 41 F outside, ‘they’ inform us that it’ll edge close to 50 F before day surrenders to night. Visibility is limited by low, white clouds. Can’t look across the valley to see what’s happening there, or further up the southern range, to see if this precipitation has cast its lot with snow anywhere.

I’m happy with the rain, but not all in the household share the pleasure. Papi has traveled in and out in search of better weather. My wife said that at one point, she opened the door for him to come back in, but he acted like he wanted her to come outside. “I think he was saying, it’s raining, come out here and change the weather,” she related.

Alas, we don’t have the weather change app yet so we couldn’t help him. That forces him to go out and in and forces us to open and close doors for his travels. It’s become stale after ten rounds. We might be starkers by mid-afternoon.

Spending of starkers — no, I’m not going into politics yet. Too damn early to burst my spirit with tales from the dark side. I will say that I read that one Trump supporter, a Muslim, approves of Trump’s first days of activity. I’m waiting for the other shoe on that FAFO situation to drop. Like that man who wholly supported Trump’s actions until they came and took his wife away. Then, suddenly, he is crying, woe is me, and personally begging Trump himself to not take his wife away. They just don’t get it, do they? Trump and his minions care for no one but themselves. For that matter, Trump only cares about Trump. And he’ll lie in a breath without a thought. He’ll also speak without a thought, too, as he keeps proving. On further evidence, Trump supporters are like Trump in many ways, unaffected by these policies until it hits them, thinking only of themselves until it hits them, blissfully oblivious to what they say and do until it comes back and bites them in the ass.

The Neurons have brought up a 1993 Billy Joel tune. “The River of Dreams” is playing in the morning mental music stream. It has a sort of Gospel/spiritual flavor infusing it. The Neurons offered it to the stream after I’d gotten up in the middle of the night. Yes, a cat was involved. After taking care of the cat need, I had several needs, involving trips to the kitchen and the bathroom. I hadn’t turned on any lights, but we have several recessed night lights installed. Anyway, I also wandered to the window to check on the rain. That’s when the song came in. Joel sings, “In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep.” Seemed kinda apt at the time, in The Neurons’ opinion. Yes, although there are millions of them, the usually speak with one collective opinion.

Coffee is making its way through my systems, delivering whatever help it can. Time to fly. Hope your day is up to your hopes and aspirations wherever you might travel or whatever you do.* Here we go. Cheers

*Certain restrictions may apply.

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