President TACO considered it a “nasty” question when a reporter asked him for his response to the recently coined acronym, and “name” for him.
politics“Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country that people didn’t think it was going survive,” Trump said. “And you ask a nasty question like that. It’s called negotiation.” — “Don’t ever say what you said because that’s a nasty question.”
“Japanese universities and students are scrambling for information after the U.S. government paused its student visa application process just as preparations for overseas study from the new academic year get underway.”
This is so unneccessary, so uncaring, so absurd. It accomplishes nothing, and places an unneeded burden on international students which enrich our country, and contribute to our economy. To mention two, Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s and Google’s CEO, was an international student. So was Sergei Brin, the co-founder of Google.
japan politicsPresident “TACO” sure is fitting and ironic for someone who is, amongst many, many, many other negative traits, a racist.
politics“The U.S. Republican president’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat has created what’s known as the “TACO” trade, an acronym coined by The Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Markets generally sell off when Trump makes his tariff threats and then recover after he backs down.”
This is not to say that we are out of trouble. Far from that, we are in a deep, deep mess. I don’t think our democracy will survive. Yet, if it weren’t for our judges (not the sycophant ones), we would be in much much worse shape as a nation.
politics“On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.”
In the US we are now living in a Soviet era period of hypernormalisation, which “captures this juxtaposition of the dysfunctional and mundane”. Hypernormalisation describes life in a society where two main things are occurring.
“The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.”
In other words, “this is fine”, while fire burns everything down meme.
politics“Eichorn and four other Minnesota Republican senators proposed legislation to the Health and Human Services committee that would label “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness.
Their bill describes the faux “syndrome” as the “acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump.”
And on the same day he was arrested.
politics“Senator Justin Eichorn was arrested Monday night around 6 p.m. for allegedly soliciting a minor for prostitution, according to a statement from the Bloomington Police Department.” […] “Eichorn, 40, is married and a father to four children. Police found two iPhone, an unopened Trojan condom and $129 in cash upon his arrest, according to the Guardian.”
As expected, Trump wrote expressive, warm, candid, full of love, respect, and remembrance words for today’s Memorial Day on his Truth Social account. I am not going to link to it, nor repeat them here; you can find them easily if you use your search engine of choice.
Whatever you do, do not go to Fox News’s comment section for a matching or related headline. You will shed IQ points fast, and lose faith in humanity.
politicsI know it is a complex relationship—just like any other big company CEO—that of Tim Cook and Trump. Yet, Tim should have never donated money to Trump’s inauguration, nor attended to it. If favours were what he was after, he failed. He should have known better.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s [sic] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” he said. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
Since when does a US president have the rights to interfere with free commerce, without congressional oversight?
apple politicsThe US House of Representatives (controlled by the GOP) approved Trump’s “one, big beautiful bill”, which “will add about $3.8 trillion to the federal government’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade”. In case it wasn’t noticed, that’s trillions.
politics“The bill also slashes spending in other areas, including hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while rescinding a series of clean energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022. And it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.”
— NBC News
Well, well, well. This just keeps getting “better”, eh? But “criticism of Waltz”, according to Trump, was “unfair”. 🙄
politics“A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.”
Oh boy! Half a trillion dollars for a “Golden Dome” aimed to do precisely what, and why?
“The Golden Dome, however, would be many times larger [than Isreal’s Iron Dome] and designed to combat a wider range of threats, including hypersonic weapons able to move faster than the speed of sound and fractional orbital bombardment systems—also called Fobs—that could deliver warheads from space.”
I was under the impression that Xi Jinping, together with Vladimir Putin were Trump’s “friends”. With the countries those two represent out of worry—they are “friends”, right?—who has the threat capability this upcoming “golden” dome is mean to protect us from?
politicsWe really don’t want that. Alarmingly, we are so close to it becoming a reality!
politics“Your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a catch me if you can kind of regime … where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.”
I forgot to come around yesterday to drop a note to mark a transgression, an indignity, handed over the American people by our own Justices. Never too late, though. Not for this. A brief excerpt from Justice Sotomayor’s opinion.
“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
American democracy is in real peril. It is not an exageration.
politicsMike Pence declaring his presidential candidacy is a joke, just like Ron DeSantis, and Trump before them. But hey, look back at the four years we had to endure. Anything is possible. Yes, even that remotely unbelievable absurdity.
politicsThe president of a nation that is waging a war on another (being the aggressor!) is saying that the Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow is “a clear sign of terrorist activity.” Allow me to pull out the tiniest of all violins in my collection, to play something for Putin.
politicsWhy would any associate justice on the US Supreme Court by exempt from the law? Why do they enjoy such impunity? Who watches the watchmen?
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