Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 12, the Deflect and Deny edition.

October 2, 2026.

We are, of course, about one month away from the General Election and it's universally agreed that, at least as of right now, the economy is not doing well, which is to say that it's not doing well for average people.  Having said that, all the monkeying around Trump has done with the economy has not resulted in a general collapse, as some feared.  This tends to give credence to the assertion that some make that the American economy in general is so strong that it tends to keep on chugging along in spite of everything.  

Having said that, prices on many things have gone up, and are now at the paint point for average people.  Beef prices, for example, are up about 25%.  That can't really be blamed on Trump, as its due to a historically low cattle heard, but Trump's efforts to address it were pretty much non existent at first, and the ineffectual when they were tried.

Beef Imports Haven’t Lowered Prices As Hoped. ‘I Told You So,’ Says Wyo Rancher

Addressing the price can only really come through a recovery of the North American herd.  Trump's constant crazy hatred of Canada and Canadians isn't helping this at all, as Canada is part of the North American market.  Mexican cattle, which had been banned from coming into the US due to screwworm, which we're not hearing much about, which is concerning, have started to come back in. That is likely to  have some effect.

Petroleum prices have shot up enormously since Trump started an ill advised and poorly planned war on Iran for no real discernable critical objective.

Wars are inflationary by their very nature, but attacking a critical global petroleum supplier is definitely going to be inflationary, and this is set to really start hitting home.  Everything in the US, whether it moves by truck, by rail, or in the air, uses petroleum.  That impacts the price of 100% of American goods.  Gasoline, Diesel fuel and Aviation fuel is way up in price.  Heating oil is up 50% to 70% just as we're entering the season where it starts to be used on the East Coast. NOAA, which usus science, predicts a warm winter in the East, like last years, so that might not be as impactful as it could be.  The Old Farmers Almanac, which I put no stock in whatsoever, predicts a cold winter.

An interesting side impact of the cost of things is that even Wyomingites are looking at electric vehicles.  I overheard a conversation the other day in which two people were wishing to get them, and they're both highly conservative individuals.  A report on increasing EVs appeared in one of the local online journals today.

Is Wyoming Going Electric? EV Registrations Surge Tenfold In Two Years

There are still a lot of naysayers out there, but there were when automobiles started to become common for that matter.

Anyway, the Trump Administration has handed out its flood of excuses for all of this, starting at first with "it's Joe Biden's fault".  Everything is Biden's fault according to Trump, whom while he routinely falls asleep in public still calls Biden, on occasion, "Sleep Joe".

The it's all Biden's fault is no longer selling very well so the "it's not much to pay to keep Iran from getting a bomb" has been tried and is still being tried, but it's not selling that well . First of all, well informed people know that while Iran is a very secretive state, the evidence that it was about to make a nuke is thin.  And frankly Israel's major early role in the war made it pretty clear that this was a joint Israeli American adventure in which the Trumpites had been heavily influenced by Israel.  That's adding to an anti Israeli sentiment that's been building in the US for several years and you'll even now hear, in response to the suggestion that it's all worth it to keep Iran from getting a bomb, that maybe we don't really care if Iran has a bomb.

We didn't care enough about North Korea having one in order for the US to attack it, and Trump loves the communist leader of North Korea.

So that excuse isn't working either.

So time to distract.

The government just announced that children under 16 years of age are being automatically enrolled in "Trump" savings accounts. The Government, which has no money whatsoever as it's borrowing piles, will place $1,000 of the money it doesn't have into such accounts, but parents need to claim it.

Will this achieve something?

Well, it might, or might now.  Truth be known with inflation being what it is, $1,000 that can't be touched until a person is 18 years old isn't going to seem like that big of a deal right now  But it might turn out to be.

Trump also promised people $5,000 if the GOP retains both houses of Congress, but then that would require Congress to do it, and Trump earlier promised everyone a $2,000 tariff dividend.  The government handing out cash it doesn't have isn't a good idea and frankly I thought it was a horrible idea when President Biden started handing out cash during COVID.  I've heard the Trump proposal compared to that, and that was a bad idea.

The Administration also just sent out $500.00 checks as supposed refunds for Obamacare overcharges.  They seem rather strategically placed, however.  

Anyhow, stayed tuned for coming attractions. The trade war with Canada is just starting, the war is no where near over, and prices are really set to climb.  Trump has less than thirty days to address all of this, or even some of it, which won't be easy at all.  Voters who are inclined to vote their pocketbooks are likely pretty much set in their opinions by now.

October 6, 2026

Casper's Grant Street Grocery closed.

Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Grant Street Grocery in Casper Wyoming is the only surviving small neighborhood grocery store in the town and even advertises the same.

Opened in 1921, the store was converted into a specialty grocery store and deli some years ago, and features meats and cheeses, as well as many other items, that are unlikely to appear on the counters of regular grocery stores.  It's featured here for its simple sign, as well as being a remnant of something that was once very common, a neighborhood store.

President Trump signed an order allowing for the temporary sale of red diesel, which you tend to only find easily in farm country, for regular diesels.  Effectively its a sort of kind of temporary suspension of the Federal tax on diesel.

I'd quite frankly question the Presidents ability to legally do this, but if I see red diesel for sale, I'm buying it.  

I probably won't find it for sale.

October 7, 2026

Something is definitely going on.

Bush-Wells Sporting Goods to close its doors at the end of the year

The store has literally been in business my entire life.

Paramount Skydance took over Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday giving the company, now just called Skydance, CBS, CNN, Paramount+, and HBO Max

Tribal Data Center Study Had 'A Lot Of Options', But Community Said No Thanks

October 10, 2026

And also 

2026-009  Emergency Relief Permits for Transportation of Oversize and Overweight Loads of Agricultural Products 

2026-010  Executive Order Recognizing and Adopting the Federal Monitor Carrier Safety Administration Hours-of-Service Waiver for the Intrastate Transportation of Gasoline and Diesel Fu

On the red fuel order, some states, or at least Montana, have warned diesel users that they're not lifting their provisions. Also, red diesel stains filters and engine parts, so when the suspension ends, and you take your truck in to be serviced, you may have a lot of explaining to do.

And now this:

Trump is so desperate to put the economic destruction of the Iran War behind him that he's made a deal with Putin to import diesel fuel.  

First of all, this isn't enough diesel to make any sort of difference and I frankly do not think it will even occur. But more significantly he's made a deal with a country that is engaged in a completely immoral war against a neighbor and losing, and by doing this, helping them.  The US, it might be noted, has just acted to increase sanctions on Russia.

Totally inexcusable. 

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 10, The Autarky Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Adam Smith, Alcohol, Autarky, Chuck Gray, Economics, Ignorance, Nazi Germany, Petroleum, Stupidity, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, Wharton, Wilhelm Röpke, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

A Trump appointee admits Biden won 2020.

This is interesting. A This Week interview of Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Karl: Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?

Wright: He was president for four years. Clearly so. 

Karl: He clearly won the election?

Wright: I’m not an election evaluator but it sure seems to me like he did.

That's a crack in the dam. 

Downfall. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Twelfth Edition. He's insane, we all know it, and he's in power. This will get much, much, worse.

Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.  One man worried his cabinet who planned around a possible mental collapse that didn't come, the other is having a mental collapse and his cabinet is doing nothing.

We later learned that in 1973 as Nixon came under increased pressure due to Watergate, his aids feared he would do something rash.  Nixon was reacting badly under the stress.  He was lashing out.  He was drinking heavily.

Of course, in the end, he resigned.

Donald Trump, who like Hitler doesn't drink, is visibly collapsing before our eyes.  He's obviously been in a state of mental decline for a decade now, and its increasing.  He was heavily impaired when elected, making any rational person wonder why he was elected to the office, other than that people the weird insurrectionist feared that Joe Biden's dementia was too advanced to allow for him to hold office again, something that history should not forgive Biden for.  Even that doesn't really explain it, as Harris was the alternative in the end, for people who play along with the two party system nightmare that actually doesn't have to exist.

A major difference between late stage Nixon and late stage Trump, other than that Nixon was not insane (a major difference) is that Nixon was surrounded by sane, if not always admirable, advisors.  Trump is surrounded by sycophants.

That's a huge difference as we now know that Nixon's advisors consulted amongst themselves about his mental state. They were worried about it.  None of them were as deeply loyal to Nixon at all costs as Trump's sycophantic advisors are to him.

Many, including me, have wondered how it is that Trump's cabinet hasn't acted to replace him.  Heather Cox Richardson, in one of her video shorts, has provided the answer.  The people surrounding Trump have nowhere else to go.

In Trump's first administration his cabinet included sane people.  Trump didn't know how to take office and in fact his natural laziness kept him from really ever fully forming a government.  That natural laziness came into effect when he was elected a second time.  He was kept from acting like a king in his first term as his advisor wouldn't let him, and he didn't like that.  In his second term he wanted people who would slavishly do what he wanted without question, and he got them almost exclusively.

If you look at the current cabinet you can see that, with perhaps two or three exceptions, it's wholly made up of people for whom Trump is their only chance. Some may be rich, but wealth is credited much more than it should be as allowing for intellectual independence.  People lavish praise on Trump not because they believe it, but because they are his willing concubines and have prostituted themselves to him.  Some of these people are outright dim.  Some have just sold their souls and know that when Trump falls, they fall with him, as Richardson has noted.

Why these people are in this position is another matter.  Some got there as they believe in Trump.  Others were placed their by forces supporting Trump, knowing that he was too lazy to actually do the work to pick competent people.  The Heritage Society, for example, saw Trump as a hollow vessel they could pour their radicalization through.

Trump's cabinet, therefore, is much like Hitler's.  Where was Goebbels going to go?  And Trump's true followers are much like members of the German SS, who fought to the bitter end.  They didn't see a future, literally, in a post war Germany where they figured they'd be killed, if not by the Allies, then by the Germans.  MAGA still shows up like the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the SS Charlemagne, the French SS unit that went down fighting in Berlin.  They thought the alternative to that was a bullet in the back of the head.  Real Trump loyalist show up as they fear that if Trump fails, or more likely when he does, they're era is over.  And like the SS in Berlin, they fanatically hope that Der Fuehrer will pull off a miracle, which he won't, or that they'll be saved by some mysterious outside force at the last hour.

That won't happen either.

Many people have wondered how the Germans were so cowed by a leader who was sending them into a disaster.  It can't be said that Americans are.  Only 30% of Americans actually support Trump.  Probably an equal if not larger number outright hate him at this point.  If the election was held today the Republicans would loose both houses, and in November when the election is held, they will.  

But here's the dangerous thing.  Between now and November the leadership of the US is in the bunker and Der Fuehrer is insane.

I've long held that Trump would be removed in 2026 by the 25th Amendment.  I hadn't considered, however, the points Richardson raises.  He still might be but as she notes if Trump goes down, they all go down with him. They're a bunch of cowardly sycophants and they do not appear to be willing to save their country any more than Goebbels was.

Still, even in Hitler's cabinet not everyone was unquestionably loyal towards the end.  Himmler actually serious considered trying to cut a separate deal with the Allies and effectively remove Hitler via a coup.  There was even one SS member in the July 20 plot.  It remains possible, but only barely so, that the cabinet will vote to save itself.

We know that at least a few people in the cabinet likely are willing to do that.  J. D. Vance is one.  Marco Rubio another.  Both of them hope to be President and neither benefits from going down with Trump.  I've long thought they were playing out this string until they could act.  But two men alone won't get it done.  There's likely a few more, but only few. None of the ass kissers in cabinet meetings are amongst them.

Which brings us to this.  Over the next few months things are going to be extremely bad.  Trump's mental state is declining so rapidly it's difficult to gauge.  He's going to pull out of the war he joined with Israel which will be a major defeat he can't disavow.  The economy will not rapidly recover and he can't blame that on Biden.  He's lost the Hispanic vote and he  won't be able to get it back.  The Arab American vote which dimly voted for him is lost as well.  The people who are left in his cabinets who openly support him increasingly look like outright kooks.  The financial flood to his family is not being ignored and is very likely to result in post Trump criminal prosecutions, maybe of Trump himself.

And yesterday, a judge made clear that his obscene bordello on the Potomac addiction to the White House will never happen.

He's a desperate, and demented, man.

Trump, from now to November, will try to steal the November election.  He's already trying.  And he'll do every odd thing imaginable or never imagined to try to deflect attention form his failure.  There will be no limit to what he will try.  Invasions of Cuba and Greenland are possible, with Cuba almost a certainty.  Deals with Russia, or China, or whomever.  Attempts to cancel the election, or seize the polls are probable.  Ignoring the courts a near certainty.

The 25th Amendment should save us from this but might not.  Impeachment of Trump should occur, but will not, unless there's a massive post November shift in Congress.

Instead, expect things to get worse and worse.  And expect the few members of the administration who aren't willing to go down in the bunker to start resigning.  Vance can't, Trump being removed or dying in office is his only hope of being President. Rubio can, and he will, likely before November.

April 6, 2026

Trump's mental status is collapsing.

That post, posted on Easter, read like something a drunk man would post, and frankly but for the fact that we believe Trump doesn't drink, this post would receive that speculation. 

This post has renewed public demands for invocation of the 25th Amendment, and it should.  Trump is insane.  The reference to God in Arabic is insulting to Muslims, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with Iran or its leadership.

We're committing war crimes under the leadership of a madman.

I'll note I'm not the only one whose concerned.

I'd originally posted that yesterday as a standalone, which I've taken down as I've posted it here.  But what I'll note is that Klungman doesn't say what a lot of us are thinking.  Trump is, in my view, edging up on using an atomic bomb.

In normal times, which these are not, there'd be sufficient people around him to probably put a halt to that. Now there aren't.  The cabinet appears to be nearly complete flunkies.  We'll know this is true if Trump remains in power this week.  The military is being stripped of those who oppose rationality.

We not only live in dangerous times, we live in times in which the most powerful nation on earth is governed by a madman.

At this point anybody running in the fall with an "Endorsed by President Trump" (this means you, Delgenfelder) is absolutely unqualified for office.

By the way, the man whom Evangelicals and some others routinely praise as a great Christian spent the day riding around in Washington DC and visiting one of his golf courses.  No attendance at church.

cont:

Today is a very special day. It's a day where we celebrate Jesus. It's a day where we celebrate religion. It's an honor to be the president. Our country is doing so well. We've broken every record in the stock market. We've broken every record in our military. And what about the rescue?

Donald Trump in an Easter speech.  He's insane.

cont:

If I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil, because it's there for the taking…Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home. If it were up to me, I'd take the oil. I'd keep the oil. I would make plenty of money.

Trump. What a morally bankrupt human being.

cont:

I'm polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela. So after I'm finished with this I can got to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won't take long. I'm good at language. I will go to Venezuela. I'm going to run for president.

Trump again.

There are a pile of these from today.  Trump is bat shit crazy.  Supporting him at this point is criminal, and not invoking the 25th Amendment is as well.  He's completely, utterly, insane.

April 7, 2026

Today we have the news that the insane Donald Trump, in addition to declaring his intention to run for the Presidency of Venezuela (don't discount that with any of the numerous excuses his apologist give for his bat shit crazy statements, we should assume he means it), is defending his statement about keeping Iranian oil on the basis that he's "a businessman" and "to the victors, go the spoils".

Today we're promised a full slate of war crimes.

We offer here a bit of a note.

Often people with a psychotic criminal drive they cannot control hope for intervention.  Trump is so out of control right now there's more than a little reason to believe that he's hoping for the same.  He has no way out, he's lived a life of utter depravity.  The 25th Amendment and hope supervision get him out of the mess he's created, and frankly away from a host of people he probably doesn't like.

Cont:

Even this threat is immoral.  

If carried out, it's murder.

Only the immoral will support a thing like this.  Donald Trump is a deranged monster.

April 9, 2026

Having learned that being a demented madman didn't impress Iran, he's back at it again with Greenland.

This man needs to be removed from office now.  The 25th Amendment needs to be applied immediately.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Eleventh Edition. He's insane, and we all know it. Somebody close to him is watching it.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump, Mental Health, Saudi Arabia, The Madness of King Donald, United States and Israel v. Iran

Chris Christie on the Baby Boomers. How to make an entire demographic outraged with one fairly truthful comment.

Chris Christie said this in a C-Span interview. 

Baby boomers—the most selfish generation in American history, the most self-centered generation, the least sacrificing generation American history. You look at Biden and Trump in particular, and they personify that

I commented on it on Twitter, defending what he said.

There's a large element of truth to it.

People reacted overall to the statement with outrage.  Lots of Boomers died in Vietnam, it was pointed out.

Biden and Trump sure didn't serve in Vietnam.

Christie is fat, was all some people could say.  Well, yep, Christie is fat, and Biden and Trump are demented due to age.  I'll take fat over demented  (indeed, from personal experience I'll note that demented people really like to point out when somebody is fat, oddly enough, and Trump does that a lot).

There are "some" good Boomers.  Oh come on, there are lots and lots of good Boomers. Defending a generation with a reserved "some" means the person making the statement basically agrees with the underlying comment.  

"Biden isn't a boomer".  True, he was born in 1942, not 1945.  But as one person posted in reply to that, "he's close enough".  

"Christie is a boomer".  Yeah, so what?  And to add to that, he really isn't.  Both the Biden comment (1942) and this one  (Christie was born in 1962) point out that the guardrails to generations are somewhat fluid.  Moreover, the fact that late Boomers in no way whatsoever fit into the Boomer generation has caused later demographers to define them as being in Generation Jones. Their experiences, including getting the shaft from Boomers, is completely different from the real Boomers.

And indeed, Boomers just can't grasp that.  There's a lot, and I do mean a lot, of discontent, and even outright animosity, towards the Boomers, and its largely justified.

Boomers are a unique generation.  There are a lot of them, for one thing, but they also came into the country at a unique time. They were the children of the generation that was young during the Great Depression and which fought World War Two.  We're not going to use the "Greatest Generation" moniker here, as while that generation is admirable, it doesn't deserve that title.

The World War Two Generation was a broken one.  As with the Boomers, you can't take a sweeping statement like that and apply it to everyone, but there are generational characteristics.  That generation's attachment to home and family was weakened by the desperation of the Depression.  As an example, my mother was pulled out of school at age 16 in order to work, and while she was always close to her family, she left home when still a teenager as she was tired of her income being treated as just the family's, and not her.  Her mother begged her to stay, and then begged her to return.  She didn't (she lived with an uncle who gave her a job across the continent).

And an entire generation of men was trained to kill with a large number of them actually experiencing that.  Killing other people, particularly in that fashion, is not normal, and every other human vice opens up after it.  Not everyone who killed or was trained to kill engaged in that vice, but more did than Americans cared to acknowledge.  That helped bring about postwar domestic instability everywhere, with some of those Boomers born not so much into idyllic families but into ones that were struggling with parental infidelity, violence, brutality and alcoholism.  Not all, to be sure, but more than you might suspect.

They also came home to a United States in an economic boom which meant a massive transfer in economic status for people who hadn't expected it and who didn't really know how to handle it.  Those pictures of ideal American families in the 50s don't address a culture that was beginning to be taken ever by consumerism.  

By the time the first Boomers, the real ones, were entering their adulthood all that was in full bloom.  And their parents wanted them to be free of the horrors that had been inflicted upon them, so they handed them educations and businesses when they were young, not trying to really hold on to them.

The Baby Boom Generation early on figures that all the rules that preceded were stupid, and like people who succeed in business and life early on (the latter of which they really didn't), they came to believe they were really smart.  And they often held the generations, including Generation Jones, that came behind them in contempt.  Handed businesses, they wouldn't hand them over.  Handed advantage, they didn't see that they needed to help others obtain it.  Handed wealth, they felt free to use to use it for personal and societal destruction.

American society has become one, as one commentator noted, that's being run by oligarchs. Well, the Boomer focus on money, making it, and career, which really started to come into focus in the 1970s, helped get us there.  The mess they made of their family lives and indeed even the topic of sex, in which everything was all about themselves, has made a mess of domestic life that current generations are trying to fix.   

And they won't let go of things now.

And that's the main thing.

Now, let me take a step back.  I've written here as if all the Boomers are a monolith.  They are not. 

Thousands of men volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and a lot of them did not come back.  Environmentalism, which the Republicans have struggled against, was something started by their parents, but which was adopted to an enormous degree, had a huge positive impact, may have saved the planet for generations, and my save it in its entirety yet.  The same is true of conservationism, which dates back well over a century but which was very well expressed in the Boomers.  The combined legacy of environmentalism and conservationism is so deep that younger generations truly cannot grasp it.

So then, what of reality?

Well, the record is mixed.  It always was.  The World War Two generation did save the country, but in doing so they were rising to a challenge that they had to, and many sacrificed not only their bodies, but frankly their temperaments.  The Silent Generation built much of the post war world in their shadows and without their acknowledgement, even fighting a war without complaint that costs the US as many lives as the Vietnam War but which is in fact largely forgotten.  The country started yielding to the young Boomers by the 60s and in their heyday they tore everything down and when they went to build back up, they managed to forget and dump much of the humanity that had characterized prior generations, no matter how flawed they were.

So what now?

The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Boomers can rightfully take credit for some great things, although the current ones, in the age of Trump, don't seem to want to.  They can be blamed for a lot of things that caused the rise of Trump and MAGA, which is a movement largely in younger generations, something that's often missed.  The liberal "Me Generation" aspect of the demographic was harmful in ways that we are still desperately trying to recover from, and turning, oddly, to Boomers who exhibit the trait, such as Trump, to try to fix.

They won't.

The Boomers want to remain relevant.  Post anything on this topic and you'll be accused of agism.  But the truth is, they needs to step back to the sidelines now in everything they are in.  The biggest favor they can do for Gen X and Gen Y (it's too late for Gen. Jones, our day is already over having never started) is to step back, and out of the way.  If in office, get out.  If heading a business that isn't you alone, step down.  If hoping for a Bishopric, stop.

Time to yield.

It's Joe Biden's fault.

The future is clear.  AI will wipe out humanity and the only thing we'll leave behind is a clock which, every hour, has a demented orange haired cuckoo come out and say "It's Joe Biden's fault"!

Where's the outrage?

Kristi Noem didn’t approve FEMA rescue teams for over 72 hours after the Texas floods, following a rule she imposed that required her personal sign-off on any operation over $100,000.

Was there not a Barbie dress up outfit for the occasion?

This was pretty clearly going to cost over $100,000.

When Bush II was President, there was outrage that he didn't go to Louisiana to view hurricane damage immediately.

The very same thing was true when Obama was President.

Joe Biden took flack for not reacting to floods in South Carolina instantly.

Is anyone demanding that King Don put his golf shoes on the ground in Texas?

Not that I think it would do anything.  I always thought the outcry about a President not going to to a disaster was absurd.  Noem, however, deserves criticism here.

So, frankly, does the State of Texas, which falls into the "don't tax me" camp, and therefore has inadequate warning systems.

You do get what you pay for, and lack of payment can be tragically lethal.  That sort of tragedy is going to be increasing during the Trump era, and for quite some time thereafter.

For the meantime, MAGA's should be howling.  Shouldn't they expect the same level of direct involvement that Bush and Obama had?

And for Federal help. . . Wyoming delegation. . . what are you going to do to help us. . . it's fire season.

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Second Edition.

Trump at a college commencement on May 1, 2015.  Probably a copyrighted photograph, but posted here under fair use to show Trump's bizarre character.

Barry R McCaffrey@mccaffreyr3 19h

Trump to rename Veterans Day as ‘Victory Day for World War I’ - POLITICO — This is nuts.

He's clearly nuts.  But not just nuts, he's stupid, and mean.

Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

There's an entire selection of recent news interviews recently where King Donny is rambling and incoherent, but here's another example of his oddity.  Trump is going to rename Victory In Europe Day to “Victory in World War II Day” even though it VE Day really was only a victory in Europe.

The war raged on against Japan after VE Day.

And for a complete collection of ramblings, etc.:

I don't know what Trump's talking about anymore and neither does he

The man is demented.

Of course, added to this pathetic scene, Trump posted a photo of himself dressed like the Pope last week.  

Donald Trump insults Catholicism.

This brought immediate condemnation, but it also broke "oh, it's just a joke".  First of all, for a dignified office, sophomoric jokes should be out of the question.  The man occupying the position that is routinely cited, probably inaccurately now, as the most powerful in the world, should not be acting like a 7th grader.  But he does so all the time.

Assuming it is a joke.  Quite a few things that Trump does that are not taken seriously turn out to actually be his real views.

I dare say that this sort of conduct by any other President in the past would have resulted in the invocation of the 25th Amendment by now.  It's not here, as those backing Trump need him for their agenda.  National Conservatism and Project 2025 depend on him.  His loyal base apparently has no problem with his antics, and those running the show depend on those people.  That probably explains why J. D. Vance is not President yet, as nobody can be sure of who, if anyone, supports him.

This will get worse.

May 5, 2025

Two gems this morning.

A tariff on foreign movies, and this:

Alcatraz is a National Park now. When it was open it was plagued with battling the elements.

May 5, 2025

Keith Olbermann@KeithOlbermann7h

Something that is underscored every time an actual world leader goes to the White House: Donald Trump is wildly and increasingly insane.

May 8, 2025

Reporter:  We are seeing the ports here in the US—the traffic has really slowed and thousands of dock workers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs”.

Trump: “That’s good, it means we lose less money”.

May 15, 2025

This is the guy running my administration. His name is Stephen Miller... We need a building like this back home.

Trump in Abu Dubai

We have costs are way down. Groceries. We have a term grocery. It’s an old term, but it means basically what you’re buying, food. It’s a pretty accurate term but it's an old fashioned sound.

Trump again.

March 16, 2025

Oh yeah. . . thats a comment by a "stable genius". . . 

May 19, 2025

Really losing it.

May 26, 2025

May 26, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Trump posted the following yesterday:

I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia! Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop. This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not “Trump’s,” I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.

More and more it's impossible not simply regard Trump as stupid.

June 4, 2025

Truly, this author nails the current situation:

The media has indulged in a lot of conveniently after-the-fact handwringing over Biden’s age and how Democrats dealt with it. The reality is that Biden was old but governed normally. Trump governs erratically because he’s unglued. That’s the true cover-up, one the media is enabling when they seem more concerned with the mental condition of a former president than the escalating madness of the current one.

Stephen Robinson, Public Notice.

June 5, 2025

You know, Ukraine had the most beautiful turrets. They call them turrets. The little towers. Beautiful towers. The most beautiful in the world. They're all now laying on their side.

Donald Trump.

cont:

Eggs have come down 400 percent. Everybody has eggs now. They have eggs for breakfast again.

Donald Trump. 

June 17, 2025

"We"?

"Sky trackers"?

"Stuff"?

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Labels: 2025, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Donald Trump, Gaza, Greenland, Gulf of Mexico, J. D. Vance, law, Mental Health, Stupidity, The Liz Cheney Maxim, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration

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