Showing posts with label Agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agriculture. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 8. $40,012,700,535,679.44
The National Debt at some point on August 21,
Republicans are flocking to decry it, after having participated in causing it.
They didn't cause it on their own, but they sure helped. And Trump has spent money like a drunken sailor.
Part of the reason that Trump spends this way is that Trump drank deeply of Peter Navarro's economic kool aide.
Navarro believes heavily in tariffs and Trump, whose always liked the concept of tariffs, but who appears to no longer understand how they work, liked what Navarro had to say.
Tariffs have always existed as a means of boosting local businesses. What they really are, is a species of sales tax. The concept is to make stuff coming in expensive so that people won't buy it, and will buy something made locally instead. That's about it.
The problem is that when you do that, you have to actually be making the things locally. Tariffs might have made good economic sense if the US had started easing them in during the late 1960s when the post World War Two economy started to fade. But we didn't, as we saw no need to.
By the 2020s, it's really a little bit late. In fact, it's way late. The world's economy is now highly integrated, surpassing the level that had only previously been obtained prior to World War One. We don't have what people complained about, for example, in the late 60s and early 70s of cheap Japanese products taking the market (something that wasn't anywhere near the threat it was imagined to be). What we have instead is an economy where anything serious has parts made all over the globe. Nothing you are using, if has multiple parts, was "made in America". It was made all over.
Given that, what tariffs really do is simply make everything more expensive. It'd take at least a decade for high tariffs to "bring back manufacturing", if it can do that at all.
Whether it can ever bring in jobs is questionable at this point. Since January 2025 the US has in fact lost manufacturing job, with about 75,000 departing . Trump likes to claim that new factories are springin gup all over the place. In fact, a factory construction boom peaked in 2024, under Joe Biden, and has been crashing since.
It may just be that it isn't the late 1890s any more.
So all the Trump administration has really done is ineffectively switched income tax for a national sales tax. It's hurting everyone, and it is largely illegal, resulting in a lot of the money being collected, having to be sent back out.
Congress can fix this, if it has the will. Republicans right now are pretending that they do, but with few exceptions, like Thomas Massie, they're rank cowards and voted for Trump's economic fantasies. It may take a Constitutional Amendment to force the matter, which at a bare minimum should provide that save in the time of war and bona fide emergency, the budget must balance and retire a portion of any built up debt, with taxes to automatically rise to balance any budget that isn't balanced.
What needs to be done first of all is to get the budget under control. That would technically be easy to do. And part of that needs to be a sincere effort to eliminate the debt. It's now completely impossible to do so rapidly, so it'll have to be done slowly.
On expenditures themselves, the Federal budget breaks out this way:
Social Security: 22%
Medicare: 15%
Net Interest (on the national debt): 15%
Health (including Medicaid): 13%
National Defense: 13%
Income Security: 10%
Veterans Benefits and Services: 6%
Social Security is in trouble due to slow down in population growth. Nothing can be done about that or should be. Medicare is in the same boat.
National Defense should be cut by 2/3s. That can be done by eliminating the insane level of weapons expenditures and by going to a reserve based defense. That'd help, but that won't accomplish everything, obvious. Military retirement age should be changed so that thirty years rather than 20 are the qualifying number. That'd help a bit.
Indeed, there are actually a fair number of Federal jobs that require twenty years in order to retire at some level. Save for policing roles and military ones,. Fed retirement should require thirty years and only be capable of being drawn when you reach 60 years of age.
And yes, this is a crisis.
So, you might perhaps note, you are a Distributist. Does this square with Distributism?
Overall it does. At one time I would have considered tariffs a policy option to address foreign manufacturing, but nothing fails like failure and its obvious that isn't the solution to that. Boosting U.S. manufacturing has to come some other way, and frankly technology is probably what would do it. Technological revolutions tend to bring industry to where they occur. Our problem here is that this is entirely in the hands of the super wealthy right now, who don't have your interest or that of the country's in mind.
Additionally, our current President is addled and looks back with romanticism on the past . He's actively working to destroy American industry as a result. Electricity is the future of transportation, not petroleum. Wind, solar and nuclear are the future of power generation, not coal (Trump does support nuclear). We need to really get with the program and we can do that through regulation. Phasing out fossil fuels should be an economic priority for obvious reasons, and an environmental one for obvious reasons, and a defense one for obvious reasons.
August 22, 2026
Another Trump Call For Imported Beef Riles Up Wyoming Ranchers
This is really an example of ranchers and farmers being members of the Leopards Won't Eat My Face Party.
Why ranchers and farmers vote for Republicans is beyond me. So they're getting screwed by Trump?
What did they expect?
U.S.-Canada trade talks collapse just before deadline for tariffs
Using debt to buy back debt:
We're in huge financial trouble.
August 23, 2026
Trade talks between the US and Canada ended and the countries are now in a trade war. Canada has made it clear that the US is about to suffer through energy imports.
August 24, 2026
From the CST:
Well boo hoo, cry me a river.
I'm a cattleman and frankly we're amongst the most reliably stupid voters for the GOP there is.
Vinegar Hill posted this yesterday:
The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.
An old friend of mine who is a rancher has been somewhat active in this year's election cycle. He is, of course, a far right Republican.
I say of course as just about every rancher and farmer in Wyoming over the age of 40, and quite a few over the age of 35, are diehard right wing full blown MAGA Republicans. Below the age of 40 things start to change a lot. Most are Republicans, but a lot aren't diehard. They're Republicans the same way everyone in Wyoming is a Republican, pretty much. Generally conservative.
But above 40, they're in lockstep with Donald Trump.
My friend, this cycle, had a big Chuck Gray up near the DOT fence. This wasn't too surprising as his grandson works for Gray.* **
Well, now, all of a sudden the noted friend is posting on the disaster of letting foreign beef into the country. So are a bunch of other ranchers I know.
The Republican Party has been pretty much screwing ranchers and farmers since 1929. It was the Democrats who save farmers and ranchers during the Great Depression. Most small and mid sized ranches would have been utterly destroyed but for the Taylor Grazing Act.
The Trump Administration, for its part, looks at farmers and ranchers the way the Democrats once looked at African Americans, people who could reliably be counted on to vote for the party no matter what. In recent election cycles African Americans proved they were no longer reliable. So far, people in Agriculture aren't showing any thought at all.
Indeed, they're showing cognitive disconnected.
This morning I've seen all sorts of complaints from ranchers about how they're getting killed in this economy, as noted.
And now Trump's bringing in below market cost foreign beef.
No shit. YOU VOTED FOR IT.
Inflation, particularly of fuel, caused by Donald Trump's pet illegal war. The same with fertilizer costs.
WAKE THE CRAP UP.
The GOP is not coming to save you. It's coming to screw you.
Indeed, trade talks just broke off with Canada.
Double digit inflation, caused by a massive rise in energy costs, is about to occur.
Footnotes:
Gray has more affection for Trump than Natalie Harp and Melanija Knavs combined.
The grandson is an interesting case in and of himself. He's undoubtedly the first member of his extended family to go to university. He's in law school right now. He's also a diehard MAGA, and indeed, maybe even beyond that. Now the question of how that happens is another matter.
The common myth, and it is a myth, about young people in conservative homes is that they go to college, where they lose all of their values, and their faith, emerging hardcore screaming liberals if not Bolsheviks. This is, it is believed, because they're indoctrinated in college by leftist professors.
It's largely bull and in the scientific disciplines definitely bull. Majors in geology, for example, aren't going to have time for liberal indoctrination.
For that matter, majors in English probably don't either.
So what's going on here.
Well, a person from a really conservative Protestant background may in fact find a lot of what they learn in college shocking. The Earth isn't 5,000 years old. Evolution isn't a fib. Conquering the West wasn't bringing enlightenment to an oppressed people and, in fact, some of those being conquered where already Christian. The US isn't bestowed by God with a new Israelite like mission, and for that matter, the modern state of Israel does some outright horrible things.
Faced with that onslaught, young people are in fact faced with the choice of accepting that Pastor Jim back at his own do it yourself Evangelical Church is flat out wrong on a lot of stuff, and Mom and Dad are ignorant, or concluding that everything they're being taught is a fib.
Most will conclude, to some degree, that Pastor Jim is wrong on a lot, and that Mom and Dad are ignorant on a lot of stuff.
Now, I'll note, this shouldn't impact member of the Apostolic faiths at all, but in the US some Apostolic Christians are heavily Protestantized and have bought in, through ignorance, to a lot of what the Evangelical far right believes.
Anyhow, a lot of this is about to collapse on an enormous scale, as we'll soon see.
**There was a good Republican candidate running against Gray, Christensen. He had worked for the BLM.
Well, we're getting instead a Californian who worked for his daddy's radio station.
He's completely correct.
Cattlemen and farmers will sit around in gatherings and support Trump on every other horrible thing he does, and then they're surprised when he turns on them.
Now they can share the pain they helped bring about.
On Canada, the Canadian government is absolutely furious over demands that were made of the country, including that Canada abandon the use of French and that it agree to mirror the US's trade polcies.
One Canadian figure called the demands "insane".
This administration at this point is so stupid on these matters its indescribable.
August 25, 2026
It's pretty clear that the Trump administration has no idea whatsoever as to what it's doing.
Last edition:
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 7. The jackass in a tin barn edition.
Sunday, August 23, 2026
The Agrarian's Lament: The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.
The Agrarian's Lament: The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.: An old friend of mine who is a rancher has been somewhat active in this year's election cycle. He is, of course, a far right Republican...
The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.
An old friend of mine who is a rancher has been somewhat active in this year's election cycle. He is, of course, a far right Republican.
I say of course as just about every rancher and farmer in Wyoming over the age of 40, and quite a few over the age of 35, are diehard right wing full blown MAGA Republicans. Below the age of 40 things start to change a lot. Most are Republicans, but a lot aren't diehard. They're Republicans the same way everyone in Wyoming is a Republican, pretty much. Generally conservative.
But above 40, they're in lockstep with Donald Trump.
My friend, this cycle, had a big Chuck Gray up near the DOT fence. This wasn't too surprising as his grandson works for Gray.* **
Well, now, all of a sudden the noted friend is posting on the disaster of letting foreign beef into the country. So are a bunch of other ranchers I know.
The Republican Party has been pretty much screwing ranchers and farmers since 1929. It was the Democrats who save farmers and ranchers during the Great Depression. Most small and mid sized ranches would have been utterly destroyed but for the Taylor Grazing Act.
The Trump Administration, for its part, looks at farmers and ranchers the way the Democrats once looked at African Americans, people who could reliably be counted on to vote for the party no matter what. In recent election cycles African Americans proved they were no longer reliable. So far, people in Agriculture aren't showing any thought at all.
Indeed, they're showing cognitive disconnected.
This morning I've seen all sorts of complaints from ranchers about how they're getting killed in this economy, as noted.
And now Trump's bringing in below market cost foreign beef.
No shit. YOU VOTED FOR IT.
Inflation, particularly of fuel, caused by Donald Trump's pet illegal war. The same with fertilizer costs.
WAKE THE CRAP UP.
The GOP is not coming to save you. It's coming to screw you.
Indeed, trade talks just broke off with Canada.
Double digit inflation, caused by a massive rise in energy costs, is about to occur.
Footnotes:
Gray has more affection for Trump than Natalie Harp and Melanija Knavs combined.
The grandson is an interesting case in and of himself. He's undoubtedly the first member of his extended family to go to university. He's in law school right now. He's also a diehard MAGA, and indeed, maybe even beyond that. Now the question of how that happens is another matter.
The common myth, and it is a myth, about young people in conservative homes is that they go to college, where they lose all of their values, and their faith, emerging hardcore screaming liberals if not Bolsheviks. This is, it is believed, because they're indoctrinated in college by leftist professors.
It's largely bull and in the scientific disciplines definitely bull. Majors in geology, for example, aren't going to have time for liberal indoctrination.
For that matter, majors in English probably don't either.
So what's going on here.
Well, a person from a really conservative Protestant background may in fact find a lot of what they learn in college shocking. The Earth isn't 5,000 years old. Evolution isn't a fib. Conquering the West wasn't bringing enlightenment to an oppressed people and, in fact, some of those being conquered where already Christian. The US isn't bestowed by God with a new Israelite like mission, and for that matter, the modern state of Israel does some outright horrible things.
Faced with that onslaught, young people are in fact faced with the choice of accepting that Pastor Jim back at his own do it yourself Evangelical Church is flat out wrong on a lot of stuff, and Mom and Dad are ignorant, or concluding that everything they're being taught is a fib.
Most will conclude, to some degree, that Pastor Jim is wrong on a lot, and that Mom and Dad are ignorant on a lot of stuff.
Now, I'll note, this shouldn't impact member of the Apostolic faiths at all, but in the US some Apostolic Christians are heavily Protestantized and have bought in, through ignorance, to a lot of what the Evangelical far right believes.
Anyhow, a lot of this is about to collapse on an enormous scale, as we'll soon see.
**There was a good Republican candidate running against Gray, Christensen. He had worked for the BLM.
Well, we're getting instead a Californian who worked for his daddy's radio station.
Friday, August 21, 2026
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 7. The jackass in a tin barn edition.
We weren't really ready to start a new one of these, but Chuck Gray has been in such rare form recently as it starts to look like he's going to lose in ten days and his dreams of a carpetbagging political career be crushed, that it mandates it.
Gray, as Secretary of State, sits on a variety of state boards and has been using that position to attempt to advance his campaign for higher office, any higher office, all along. Generally in the global warming is a fib camp, he at one time was okay with development projects of all types but now is anti "woke wind". Lots of people don't like the viewscape and land use aspect of wind and solar farms, and he's hoping to tap into that dislike, but he's such a disagreeable pissant he can't seem to say it that way. Nor can he explain his prior positions.
The real gem in this is that he almost voted to preclude use of an access road to a power substation that provides power to farmers on the basis that it might receive electrical power from solar farms or wind farms or provide power to data centers.
When the State treasurer noted that this meant, he changed his vote, but had to blame the whole thing on somebody else.
Data centers are now big in the news around here, and for good reason. Gray is opposing them as he figures it's good politics. Put a gigantic strip mine in over the same area, and he'd be all for it. It's difficult to tell from one moment to the next if Republican candidates this year are members of the Flat Earth Society or Greenpeace.
Gray is particularly disgusting. He's consistently rude and nasty. It's difficult to understand why anyone would vote for him, unless they're really duped.
I wonder how this news works for people like Gray:
Huge 500-MW Solar Project Wants To Build Natural Gas Power Plant Near Glenrock
Some other economic news:
Wyoming’s First Nickel Discovery Heads Into High-Tech, High-Stakes Drilling Phase
Casper Couple Proves You Can Make Award-Winning Wine In Wyoming
Zoinks! Gas Is $6 A Gallon In Muddy Gap — That's 42% Higher Than Wyoming Average
Black Hills Energy wants to hike electric rates 32% in northeast Wyoming
An Open Letter to Scott Bessent: Why You're Wrong and I'm Right
But you're the one with power, so your error is dangerous
Why the US economy is ringing alarm bells
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. The screwworm edition.
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Today In Wyoming's History: Douglas Photographer Captures Historic Black Ranch...
Today In Wyoming's History: Douglas Photographer Captures Historic Black Ranch...: Douglas Photographer Captures Historic Black Rancher’s Homestead Under Milky Way
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Daylight Savings Time, Dangers, and Crabbiness.
This again:
In some ways I'm amazed that a body lead by a far right wing Evangelical zealot who formerly conceived of himself as a latter day Moses has time to do anything other than Trump's bidding.
But this yet again.
Harriet is apparently having none of it. She stated:
The Sunshine Protection Act robs Wyoming farmers and ranchers of precious sunlight and ensures the first hours of a student's day is in darkness, The government isn't funded, our elections aren't secure, and Wyoming's legacy industries need help.
I will not vote for a time-wasting bill that puts Wyoming in the dark.
That's the sort of nasty attitude that some Wyomingites have come to love about Harriet. Sure, she'll say bad things about their educational level, but she's mean.
Um, anyhow.
The line about our elections not being secure is 100% pure bullshit and Harriet knows that. She's willing to lie for Trump if it gets her votes. She never really said the 2020 election was stolen, as she couldn't bring herself to lie that big, but lying gets easier for people over time. Now she's willing to lie about election security. That's reason enough to retire her from politics right now.
If she's sent home (she won't return to Wyoming, I'd wager) she might want to familiarize herself with agriculture again. Hageman is from a ranch/farm, but her comment about robbing "Wyoming farmers and ranchers of precious sunlight" is flat out stupid. I've been around agriculture my entire life, and it's one of those occupations that doesn't pay any attention to the clock at all.
A lot of big agriculture activities start "when it gets light". Light comes, when it comes. It doesn't matter what the clock says.
For that matter, generally, what actually happens is people get where they need to be an hour to 30 minutes before the sun comes up and drink coffee until it comes up, then they start working. That isn't impacted by the official time schedule at all. Generally, if you are working cattle, you start when you are sure you can see them.
I've never ever heard a rancher or farmer say "oh gosh, look at the time".
The concern about school children, however, is more merited. The experiment with lengthened daylight savings time under 1974's Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act, done to conserve energy, did prove to result in increased early morning deaths, including deaths and injuries to school children. When you start to get as far north as Wyoming you are starting to put kids out for school in the dark already.
Additionally, people flat out hated it.
I can remember the experiment from the 1970s, because I can recall walking to grade school in the dark. We walked, but I only had .2 of a mile to go and I didn't have to cross any dangerous streets. Still, I wonder if parents today would regard simply walking that distance too risky.
Not that it would matter today. At that time we went to the school within our boundary and if parents didn't like it, their option was to look for one of the very few religious schools there were, with St. Anthony's being the biggest one. Interestingly, while my extended family is a large Catholic family, none of us went there. I was told my parents had thought about enrolling me there, but there wasn't room at the time.
I frankly don't think going on year around Daylight Savings Time is a good idea. I'd like the natural time, year around, and I don't see a good reason not to return to it. Daylight Savings Time doesn't save any daylight, it just makes you start an hour earlier in the day than nature would provide.
Still, I can't help but find Hageman's Grand Master Crab Blaster response amusing. "We control Congress and cut taxes and now we're bankrupt and I have elections that I want to help steal. .
Things that would be best done in the dark.
Related threads:
Hey, wait a minute, didn't the Government make daylight savings time permanent?
Saturday, July 4, 2026
Tuesday, July 4,1826. The Fiftieth Anniversary of American Independence.
July 4, 1826 was the fiftieth anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, of course. By that time the country had not only achieved independence, but it had also survived a second war with Britain, one which the United States provoked and which nearly caused New England to succeed from the union. And it had grown from 13 states, to 24.
The United States in 1825/26.
It's probably best remembered in the United States for being the date on which both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died. What's even more peculiar about that, however, is that while 90 year old John Adams was living in Quincy, Massachusetts and 83 year old Thomas Jefferson was in Monticello, Virginian, Adams knew when Jefferson died, and commented on it.
The two men were not very much alike temperamentally. Adams was a lawyer and a farmer who first entered the public's consciousness when he defended British troops in court following the Boston Massacre. He was truly one of those rare characters who loved the law, something made even better for him as he was a circuit riding lawyer who also loved horses. Active in farming his entire life, he was more closely matched Jefferson's yeoman ideal than Jefferson. Somewhat taciturn, he dreamed of being a soldier at the beginning of the Revolution, but his talents lay elsewhere and he never was.
His place in history is secure due to his being the second President of the United States, but by the 20th Century he was one who was very little focused on. His popularity enjoyed a resurgence, however, due to David McCullough 2001 book which is somewhat of a hagiography.
During his lifetime he had a falling out with Jefferson, who served as his Vice President, but they repaired their rift in later years.
If Adams was well known during his lifetime and the somewhat placed on the shelf, Thomas Jefferson has never been out of the public imagination. At the same time, probably no American President has had his character analyzed and reanalyzed as much.
From a Puritan background, Adams is problematic for modern American far right-wing Evangelist in that his religious views were unconventional. While a Congregationalist, he tended towards Universalist views and did not regard the Trinity as well founded. While we have argued here that the United States is a Protestant nation, figures like Adams cut against that argument. Adams was very much opposed to state established churches, for instance.
Like Adams, Jefferson was also a lawyer by training but what he really was by temperament and occupation was a planter. An absolute renaissance mind he dabbled in everything, including engineering and agronomy. One of the most influential figures of the founding generation, he served as the country's third President and was the first American President to engage in an undeclared war.
Regarded as a founding member of the Democratic Party, it was Jefferson's foresight that caused the U.S. to purchase Louisiana, converting the country from an Atlantic maritime power to a continental power. Arguably, no President is more responsible for what the US became than Jefferson, even though he did not see it becoming what it became. An Agrarian philosopher, he thought that it would take Americans 1,000 years to spread across the continent and that gave the country a 1,000 year chance at remaining a democracy.
Historians have been tortured by trying to define Jefferson's character ever since he died. He was clearly a genius but his personal life was often in grave conflict with his stated beliefs. Once hugely adored, in recent years his relationship with his sister in law and slave, Sally Hemings, has caused a great deal of debate on his personal morality.
North America with territories as claimed by the United States.
That the country had survived fifty years was somewhat amazing. The War of 1812, not well remembered in the United States, had been a US war of choice that had not been supported by New England and which the United States, in spite of what is commonly claimed, lost. The central seaboard South, which had favored the war, proved to retain a sizable population that retained strong sympathies with the United Kingdom. The US Army was twice very badly defeated by Canadian militias which gained ground in the Midwest, something also rarely noted. Only the logistical difficulties faced by the British and a high desertion rate of its troops kept the country from returning to British possession.
Last edition:
Thursday, March 24, 1825. State Colonization Law of March 24, 1825.
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Why the cowboy hat?
I'd note that the Father wears a proper ranching style cowboy hat.
Cowboy hats are something a person either looks natural in, or they don't. Not everyone who wears one is a rancher or a farmer by any means, but usually a person without a real rural background can't pull it off.
Notably this year Florida lawyer Frank Campman can't. At age 58, Chapman is a retired Florida lawyer who has the thick girth of somebody whose worked behind a desk. The hat he's chosen to wear, now that in his retirement he's relocated to Teton County and become a dude rancher, is right out of 1950s television Westerns and doesn't fit. It looks absolutely absurd. His boots look absurd as well, and he walks like they're hurting his feet. At least carpetbagging Chuck Gray hasn't tried to don a cowboy hat, which with his tiny physical size would be likely to cause him to simply disappear.
Locally, there's a lawyer whose a transplant from back east who wears a cowboy hat with a rolled brim, a gift from his spouse. He's a nice enough guy, but it looks absurd. In contrast, a local judge wears one that looks very natural, but he's from here.
Part of it is, I think, being comfortable in your own skin. We've all heard "fake it until you make it", but in truth, you can't.
Friday, May 29, 2026
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Belle Creek Branding
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Belle Creek Branding: Memorial Day is the annual day for the Kuhbacher branding in Montana. That's a great deal, because it works out for me to join in. Anoth...
Thursday, May 14, 2026
The 25th Amendment Watch List, Sixteenth Edition: The Addled.
May 12, 2026
Drugs coming by sea, by ocean, by water. A lot of people say, What do you mean by sea? Is it see? Like vision? No, it’s sea. SEA.
Donald Trump on the maritime transportation of illegal drugs. Absolutely nobody was confused on this topic, maybe other than Trump.
We have a man who is doing a great job. I knew it! Because he kept me out of jail for years. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. He kept me out of jail.
Ummm. . .
We're building a beautiful ballroom. I'm very good at ballrooms.
The ballroom, which will either never be built or will be ripped down, is a Trump obsession.
A new name I came up -- dumbocrat. I think that could be a good one. I've come up with some extraordinary names. But I was talking about Hakeem Jeffries. He's a low IQ person. He's a dumb guy.
Trump has an obsession on intelligence like only a man who isn't intelligent can have.
Without you, we have Somalia. A fine place where we have a congresswoman who brilliantly came over to the country by marrying her brother. That was the first law she broke. She comes from a country where they have nothing but crime, bedlam, filth. Elan Omar.
Ilhan Omar has been married three times, and none of her husbands were her brother.
This accusation taps into the deeply racist nature of a lot of MAGA in particular and the American far right in general. This has laid under the surface following the 1960s for years, but it resurfaced with the rise of Barack Obama which caused this demographic to flip out. Trump tapped into it early with his clams that Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya.
Funny thing here is that Obama and Trump share a common item here in that both of them were born to a couple in which one of them was an immigrant. In Trump's case, however, the immigrant was a white Christian, as opposed to Obama's. This item here really shows something that's deeply ingrained in the MAGA movement. It really doesn't like anyone who isn't white and it really doesn't like anyone who isn't culturally Christian.
Otherwise, it's perfectly okay with people like Trump, who marry foreign women of a certain appearance and then divorce them later on, and whose Christianity is a variant of it that doesn't really require any actual effort or adherence to the Gospel.
The people that did it -- these people did not work for me. They said they work for me. They come from a different part of the country. But they were good. The people that worked for me recommended it and they recommend we do it this way. But I recommended it to them because I'm very good at construction.
Tide D Bowl.
No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction - down! Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!! In the meantime, I’m off to China! President DJT
Donald Trump.
We'll address the super creepy "Trump babies" in another thread.
A note here. Trump's 18 month mark will be July 20, 2026. If I'm right, we're now in the final phases of his administration as he'll be removed by the 25th Amendment by then.
May 13, 2026
Trump, who came to office principally because he promised to deport the 10M to 12M illegal aliens in the US, most of whom are Hispanic, now wants to annex Venezuela, with a population of 31M, and make it a state.
Let's not pretend he's joking, he isn't.
The population of the US is currently 20% Hispanic. Annexation of Venezuela and making its citizens US citizens would convert the country to being a 30% Hispanic country overnight. MAGA has a strongly nativist anti Hispanic bias. It'll amusing how they bend that to supporting this, but they will.
The entire thing is amusing about King Donny. He's so dim that all he ever thinks about is the cash value of something, and Venezuela has oil. He apparently doesn't realize that Venezuela, which is a large country which would probably come in as more than one state if it did, is also a Socialist one. The Republican Party would be effectively dead, and the US would be far more left wing than it currently is.
This won't happen, as it would require the cooperation of Congress. At least I don't think it would. But the fact that MAGA will support this just shows how dim that movement is.
MAGA politicians, including Harriet Hageman and John Sycophant Barrasso, should be quizzed on this, and don't let them weasel out of answering or tell you its a joke. It isn't.
On issues closer to home:
Wyoming Cattle Ranchers Worried Over Trump Proposal To Lower Tariffs On Beef Imports
Farmers and ranches who supported Trump were reading something into him that just isn't there and will regret it.
May 14, 2026
This item raises some really good and interesting points.
Bare minimum, as the wheels come off the Trump administration he's getting increasingly erratic. Richardson proposes some darker motives, but even if there not there, there appears to be a dedicated effort to say things now to distract as things get worse and worse.
Last edition:
Ballroom Batshit. A demented president goes full bonkers. The 25th Amendment Watch List Fifteenth Edition and Court Watch Part VI.
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