Thank you! 
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Hmmm… Today they were telling us rate cuts are expected and that business should increase. In an employee meeting. At the “mortgage giant” where I work.
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They are, functionally, terrorists. Causing pain is the end goal. And there’s this huge overlap in this administration with apocalyptic fundamentalism, too, where there’s no concern or planning for the future because there’s the belief that there is no future, that the world will be ending soon. It’s quite the combination…
Less answers and more just demanding, “Stop beating your wife,” made to someone who is unmarried, single and, in fact, only dates men. Though it sounds like the trade negotiations with Japan were worse in some ways, because the US essentially had no (consistent) demands. It was sort of, “So America, what do you want?” “Well Japan, what have you got?” “That’s not how this works.” I keep thinking of the first 30 seconds of Alasdair Beckett-King’s skit:
(We’re never getting that happy ending, though, even after Trump is gone.)
Leaving aside his continued insane treatment of Carney, I was fascinated by Trump’s comments on the trade negotiations, because they’re complete gibberish. Like total nonsense, even for Trump. It’s fascinating to watch reporters try to divine Trump’s intentions/position/thinking on the trade war, because they have to do some serious sane-washing to do so. E.g. this whole thread:
Her conclusions here are actually the opposite of what Trump is saying (he’s talking about charging countries to buy things from the US), but what Trump is saying is insane gibberish (that goes against everything he’s previously said), so one has to assume he “actually means” the opposite, just to make it make any sort of sense. But really, the only thing that you can directly take from his comments is that he has no understanding of how tariffs work, has no idea what he’s talking about and is generally confused.
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Because it’s not a governance approach, it’s a mobster approach, or a fascist approach. Either way, the point is that you can’t respond, and there is nothing you can do to stop what’s about to happen to you. At best, by displaying complete and total submission, you might avoid the death of your whole family.
The point is not the question, the point is the way they’re asked. They don’t care about the answer, the message is entirely in the asking.
Death of Stalin time. Or death of Lenin.
On his death, the Inner Party will give him his apotheosis. In the background there’ll be a political bloodbath, and whoever comes out on top will present themselves as Trump’s true heir, to take the MAGA cause into the future, who alone carries the true vision.
Trump is never going to appoint one. Partially because he’s thoroughly demented, and doesn’t understand anything, but mainly because he has always been utterly unable to comprehend the concept of “other people”. As a malignant narcissist, he is also a solipsist. He is the world and the center of the world and everything that exists exists in relation to him. As far as he’s concerned, when he dies, the entire universe ends, if he’s even able to comprehend the concept of his own mortality.
He will not designate a successor. He will, however, wave the idea in the faces of people as a reward, or a bribe, or a threat.
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Even more, if a possible successor appears naturally I think Trump would turn against them. There is only one hand that wields the ring and après lui, le déluge.
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I mean, even our bestie Egypt is cozying up to China now…
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Remember when the Governor of Maine had an exchange with trump at the Governor’s thingy at the White House about cutting off funding over Title IV android she said “see you in court”?
She did see him in court…
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Ah, the United Soviet Socialist States.
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Yeah. Here’s a good example of stuff that will not survive Trump’s passing.
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Same-same.
I’ve gotten too busy at my jobs to track the U.S. news as well as I did in 2024. So now, for better or worse, I am treating this bbs as a kind of collective stringer where I get a fact-based first approximation.
My thanks to you all.
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You GOTTA get all the way to the end…
Usually, a deacon would grab your shoulders with the grip of the Iron Sheik’s claw move and literally shake the devil out of you until you said “Jesus” enough times to satisfy them. When it happened to me, I would just say His Holy name really fast, like: “JESUSJESUSJESUS!” But if they STILL wouldn’t let me go, I would speed up by just yelling “GeezGeezGeezGeezGeezGeezGeez!” (After a few years, I came to the conclusion that, apparently you couldn’t get Jesus on the Main Line unless you said his name seven times)
When I asked my grandmama why I needed to yell Jesus’ name really loud in succession, she told me that there’s power in the name of “Jesus.”
I was gonna ask why we didn’t pray like that all the time, but I didn’t want God to smite me. I’ve never seen God smite someone, but if smiting was worse than being hit with my grandmama’s switch, I didn’t really wanna find out. Plus, they usually tarried on the high-level sinners. And since I was a good kid, the deacons with the king fu grip rarely selected me for their TarryQuakes – so I didn’t follow up.
As I grew older, I slowly started to sin more. I started using my “carnal mind.” I got one of those “rap boy” thug haircuts. I even missed church services to go the skating rink where they play that “boompity boomp” music. By the time I reached high school, my mom made a deal. As long as I attended ONE DAY of tarry service, I could miss the rest. Now, my best friend, who was more of a heathen than I was, attended the same church as I did, and he had the same deal with his mom. So, of course we decided to attend on the same night. We took our pillows. We kneeled and…
ALL the deacons started walking toward us.
I mean… I THINK they were walking toward us (I keep my eyes closed when I pray because… SMITE)
Jesus’s Faculty Members got my homeboy first. I could feel their divine aura (and their spit) from every deacon, minister, elder and anyone who carried a white handkerchief surrounding him. I peeked out of my left prayer eye and saw them shaking TF out of him. I don’t know if teenagers can get shaken baby syndrome, but I’m sure my homeboy is gonna have a little bit of CTE when he gets older. When I saw them on my him, I knew I was next, so I ramped up my “Geez’s” to superspeed, hoping the Sweet Chariot was not coming to carry me home.
So I waited and chanted. And I waited. And chanted. But they were praying for a long time…
Now here’s the thing:
The Rest
I be falling asleep.
I have never understood people who say they “couldn’t sleep” because I can sleep like a motherfucker. It’s my greatest gift. Plus, chanting “GeezGeezGeeez” repeatedly in multiples of seven can become hypnotic and my eyes were already closed. So I fell asleep on my knees with my face on the pew. I didn’t even notice that they had finished with my homeboy until they shook me awake.
Now, if you are as talented a sleeper as I am, you don’t just wake up gradually. So when they shook me, I may have cussed a lil bit while shrugging them off. Of course, that made them shake me harder while demanding that “Say Jesus!” “Say Jesus.” “Say Jesus!”
I said it loud. I said it fast. I said it clearly. I screamed it. And then after screaming his Holy Name 539 consecutive times…
I stopped.
I just refused to do it any longer.
I opened my eyes and just sat down in my seat.
But they didn’t stop. They stood over me, showering me in Jesus spittle. The more I stared, the louder they got. It was a tarry stand-off.
Them: Say Jesus!
Me:Them: Say Jesus!
Me:Them: Say Jesus!
Then they stopped.
They just left me alone and tarried on someone else. To this day, no one has ever said anything to me about it.
Now I’m not saying that prayer doesn’t work or that there’s no power in a holy name. But it didn’t make the words or the prayers MORE powerful. To be honest, I believe they were subconsciously trying to prove THEIR POWER to everyone else. And in doing so, they made themselves look silly and made their words LESS POWERFUL.
This story is about Donald Trump’s executive orders.
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And apparently (though I’ve not see the video, just read a report) after Trump said ‘never say never’ Carney was seen to mouth ‘never, never, never, never’, directly contradicting Trump in public and demonstrating in a trivial way that he is not going to be told what to do and what not to do by Trump.
He should have said it out loud.
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Goons and thugs. Goons and thugs, just like every other fascist regime in history (and every mob boss).
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