2025 guesstimates ...

AI generated but you already know that, right?

Haven't done this in a while but here are some guesstimates
for 2025 as one cannot predict the future, ever. :)

• The dumpster fire known as the Agent Orange administration begins its first year.
• Fluoride may be banned in public water supplies thanks to RFK Jr., someone totally unqualified to run NIH in any way, shape or fashion.
• The tech bros, Musk, Thiel, Besos, among significant others, take over government.
• The MAGAs get screwed again. The difference from 2016 is that they finally realize the truth about Trump for the very first time.
• Education. in the land of free and home of the brave. continues to descend into an abyss of its own making.
• Climate change, the 900lb guerrilla, creates the new normal of weather anomalies 24/7.
• 2025 will be the hottest year ever recorded but we already know that, right?
• Israel, with US backing, continues its pursuit of genocide 24/7.
• China's becoming the next superpower while the US continues to lose ground.
• Ukraine becomes the next Korea with a DMZ separating Russia from western Ukraine.
• Inflation is here forever, thanks to resource depletion, climate change and environmental degradation.
• Countries are splintering thanks to climate change and the rise of far right politics.
• England continues to go third world.
• AI's everywhere, AGI's possible entry rises up near the end of 2025.
• Facist capitalism and Neo-feudalism, thanks to gross inequality, goes prime time.
• Inept politicians pander to get reelected as the government slides into incompetency.
• US threatens Iran with Bibi's urging as Israel continues to run US foreign policy.
• Politicians continue to be bribed with pennies on the dollar.
• The Trump cabinet slides into irrelevancy due to unqualified entities running the show.
• The US becomes a cold, tech driven haven controlled by AI and the tech power elite.
• Women's rights no longer apply.
• Christian Nationalism becomes a thing.
• The supreme's corruption becomes obvious to the max. 
• Analog computing begins to drive AI.
• Life, or remnants of same, will be discovered on Mars.
• US debt explodes with the advent of Trump's tax breaks for the rich.
• The grift is on once the lame duck agent orange assumes office on January 21, 2025.
• The death of empire for the US looms.
• Job replacement via AI moves into high gear as unemployment rears its ugly head for real.
• How much longer can the bubble, known as the stock market, continue to expand to red giant territory?
• The ability to generate stuff at the same rate as 2024 begins to shrink thanks to GW.
• The Arctic and Antarctic continue to melt at record pace.
• Greenland may become part of the US if Trump has his way due to China's interest in gaining access to the world's largest island due to its incredibly important geographic location. Why? because of GW opening up trade routes, thus creating opportunity and competition among nations wanting to control the region for profit and power.
• The same goes for the Panama Canal.
• Quantum computing finally becomes real.
• Quantum AI and the road to the Matrix becomes possible.
• The multiverse becomes a thing.
• Serious medical advancement, with the aid of AI, goes primetime.
• In the end regarding the art of prediction, one never knows, do one? - Fat Waller

Unforeseen consequences ...

Adam Perez for The New York Times

When it comes to harvesting crops, immigrants play an incredibly important role as they pick the crops needing harvesting. This is fact but facts don't matter to agent orange and ICE as it's IMMIGRANTS, not the possibility of food shortages when there's no one to pick said crops.

To whit

California is by far the largest food producer in the United States. In 2023, our state’s agricultural economy was worth nearly $60 billion. The state’s roughly 63,000 farms grow over a third of all vegetables and around three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced nationwide.

The lettuce and tomato on your hamburger very likely came from California. The almonds and pistachios you snack on as well. There’s a good chance the olive oil on your pasta is from California. Did you pair that with a glass of wine? Probably California, too.

This bounty all depends on a reliable, skilled and experienced labor force that is overwhelmingly made up of immigrants: Over 80 percent of California’s hired farmworkers surveyed between 2015 and 2019 were from Mexico, and more than half were undocumented. Nationwide, an estimated 80 percent of farmworkers were born outside of the United States, and around half are undocumented.

These immigrants are nothing less than the backbone of America’s food supply, doing jobs that few native-born Americans seek. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting them now will have real consequences for all Americans, very likely including higher grocery prices and fewer options in the produce aisle.

Blowback looms in the land of the brave and home of the free and we all know about the consequence of unforeseen consequences, right?

A gully erosion in Australia caused by rabbits,
an unintended consequence of their introduction as game animals

The list of these fubars know no bound including ICE and Agent Orange.

Funny or Die rules ... :)

Funny or Die rules! Just discovered this gem with Agent Orange and yet another epic rant. :)

When Donald Trump is your driver, he cannot stop talking about the border, and you cannot escape this waking nightmare. 

Gotta do another Funny or Die Agent Orange post. :)

Every Trump speech feels like you're trapped in a car with him

Agent Orange in '24

USA divided into Red-Blue nations based on geographic areas of strength 

and ability to control transportation links.

Every time I get a message from the dems humping for money, I get even angrier as it's all about the money in enabling pols to do the only thing that matters, getting reelected. The incompetency and corruption plus the politicization of virtually everything is a total turn off. Lastly, allowing politicians to limit access to books or violate civil rights including the right to abortion totally boggles the mind, especially when said prohibitions nearly always refer to Jesus in explaining to us rubes why this is the proper way to live one's life. With this in mind, yours truly agrees with Andrew Tanner in terms of Trump not only getting the GOP nomination but also having a real shot, god forbid, to becoming POTUS yet again as the dems just don't get it in any way, shape or fashion. 

Question, since Kennedy, when has any president really asked the cosmic question, WHO ARE WE? or laying out the real issues in non BS terms as to why this nation is going crazy as today, it's all about politics, not competency and ethics in terms of discussing how this once great nation can become viable once again if one has the guts to kill off the two party mantra of us against them. We have been betrayed by our so-called leaders, bought and paid for by the MIC, big corporations and the ultra rich while people, without hope, thanks to Ronnie gutting the manufacturing prowess of the country by making modern China, are really pissed and rightfully so as they have been sold out by the powers at be without question. The notion of Joe running yet again scares the crap out of me and the lack of a true political operative having real power to shake up the status quo regarding the dems points to Agent Orange possibly becoming president for a second time in 2024. Tanner's piece is spot on and the dems should read it closely as Trump has malignant charisma to the max, something Biden and DeSantis will never have, and ... he has millions who will vote for him until the end of time. WTFU dems as the map above shows just how divided America has truly become.

Look, I know that pretty much everyone is exhausted by politics.

I feel you. I really do.

I have spent way too much of my time over the past seven years struggling to develop a working theory of Trumpism.

I want him to go away so I can forget about politics and move on to more important work, like making video games that better classic titles like Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

They adamantly ignore the deadly fact that just about 44,000 voters spread across Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin gave Biden his electoral college win in 2020. The percentage margins were 0.24%, 0.31%, and 0.63% respectively, and the swing for each from 2016 was 5.37%, 3.81%, and 1.40% in favor of the Democratic challenger.

Democrats new semi-religious fealty to their team has blinded most of them to empirical facts — or, at the least, discouraged too many from telling the truth about the terrible cliff America is casually dancing right next to.

In moments of crisis, people tend to gather in groups based on shared truths. And the USA has been in a deepening crisis since the turn of the millennium, one driven by ancient natural forces of decay.

A simple diagram of how communication works at a fundamental level. Welcome to the OOD loop! 

(I drop the A because action is implied) 

Here's the OODA loop for real. :)

American political debates are now almost entirely rooted in moral speech. This is a sign that American society is deeply divided into separate truth spheres, with your beliefs as interpreted by others automatically placing you on a team.

A fancy way of saying that people tend to form cliques that look down on outsiders. What goes on during lunch hours in high school is also, ironically, reflected in how voters naturally divide into tribes.

Last but not least, the next paragraph explains why John Roberts is the worst chief justice in history.

Citizens United and the associated flood of money into politics is the main cause. It turned American democracy into an explicit pay-for-service game where the extremely limited amount of work Congress gets done in a given legislative session means everyone has an incentive to delay any work that might direct lawmakers’ attention away from their special interest.

Getting reelected.

We are in deep shit but there are options ...

 

A raspy-voiced President Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter former President Donald J. Trump during the debate on Thursday.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

We are in deep shit ... Agent Orange, serial liar but in good form as one possessing malignant charisma, successfully beat down Sleepy Joe, a man dealing not well with the ravages of old age, in a presidential debate for the ages. As an old geezer myself but not showing signs of dementia as of late, felt real sorrow because anyone possessing in depth knowledge of how governance works, would have made short work of Trump without question. 

As often I said to friends, Paddy Chayefsky would have been deemed crazy in predicting a scenario as absurd and insane as this but here we are as we move toward an election of truly terrifying implications if Trump wins, a notion voiced by this rube for well over a year and a half as the Orange Cheeto is Gladstone Gander, a guy blessed with not only a teflon suit able to ward off truly dreadful events that would send yours truly to jail for years but also is blessed with incredible luck in in beating Hillary in 2016 against all odds and now competing with a compromised Joe Biden in 2024.

Gladstone Gander

Question? What should the dems do? For starters, dump Biden and pick California Governor Gavin Newsom to go after Trump with a younger guy able to deal with an obnoxious old bully with no redeeming qualities AFAIK. 

President Biden hoped to build fresh momentum for his re-election bid by agreeing to debate nearly two months before he is to be formally nominated. Instead, his halting and disjointed performance on Thursday night prompted a wave of panic among Democrats and reopened discussion of whether he should be the nominee at all.

Over the course of 90 minutes, a raspy-voiced Mr. Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter a sharp though deeply dishonest former President Donald J. Trump, raising doubts about the incumbent president’s ability to wage a vigorous and competitive campaign four months before the election. Rather than dispel concerns about his age, Mr. Biden, 81, made it the central issue.

All eyes are on Gavin Newsom for a reason. Several, actually.

Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

Time to make the move now ...

When cameras captured California Governor Gavin Newsom walking into CNN’s spin room on Thursday evening, flashing his Hollywood smile before the presidential debate in Atlanta, a few political observers in his home state rushed to social media with some version of the same annoyed question.

“Why is he there?”

Newsom was there to cheer on President Joe Biden before his debate with former President Donald Trump. “Biden is confident,” Newsom told reporters. “He’s got a record and he’s got a vision for the future.”

A couple of painful hours later, after a debate in which Biden, his voice raspy and halting, looked every bit of his 81 years, that vision for the future seemed cloudy. Biden’s pale and frail appearance led to immediate and widespread speculation that he would be pushed to decline the Democratic nomination. And that kind of talk, in turn, leads quickly to Newsom.

Of the many prominent Democrats with aspirations for higher office, Newsom is arguably best equipped -- in fundraising chops, in messaging and in campaign infrastructure -- to step up in an emergency. And this is, by all indications, an emergency.

For VP, Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan works for me.

Gretchen Whitmer

And so it goes. K. Vonnegut

Hopper

A Bug's Life, Pixar's action comedy for the ages, introduced a villain for the ages, Hopper, a power hungry grasshopper actually possessing no power at all when the ants finally wake up and realize said villain is a paper tiger after all, a reality that may actually mirror what's beginning to happen to Agent Orange now that Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden in the most important election this country is having since the Civil War. With this being said, the fever dream of The Donald may finally be ending if  Buttigieg's right regarding the insane, would be dictator who aspires to be king, if the orange menace wins the presidency in 2024.

Photo illustration by Devin Oktar Yalkin

This past month has been one of the most consequential and dizzying periods in modern American politics. It began with President Biden’s disastrous debate in late June. Then came an assassination attempt against former President Trump. A week later, President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. And now Harris is already the de facto Democratic nominee.

What I’m hearing you say, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is if Donald Trump is defeated in this election, then perhaps the Republican Party can be freed from his grip?

I think so. I made myself watch the first couple Republican presidential debates, and we had a lot of Republican candidates this cycle. There were still some things that I thought were pretty fringe, and just about everything I heard I disagreed with, but apart from some of the darkness of Vivek’s populism, you could be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a more normal Republican Party. Look, we have fooled ourselves many times before into thinking that the fever would break. We thought it would happen before he was elected, when the “Access Hollywood” tape revealed that he had boasted about sexual assault. We thought it would happen when he was defeated, but he wasn’t in 2016. We thought it might happen after Jan. 6, and it very, very nearly did. So many of the people who are now kissing up to him basically turned their back on him then. We got so close to the fever breaking, but it didn’t quite break, because Republicans found that their access to power still depended on their standing with Donald Trump. If he leads this party to defeat a third time, I believe that the self-interest, just the internal power dynamics of the G.O.P., the very power dynamics that have kept them enthralled to him, even though so many of them know better(notably including, by the way, JD Vance, who, back when he was speaking truthfully and for himself, referred to Donald Trump as an idiot and compared him to an opioid, which is an exceptionally dark thing to say about somebody if you are from or connected to Appalachia as JD Vance is, right? And that was in public. In private, comparing him to Hitler, and now turning around and supporting him) — all of that finally breaks loose if they realize that attaching yourself to Donald Trump doesn’t just destroy your character; it destroys your access to power.

If is a big word ...

With arms outstretched ...

Donald Trump committed the one sin that even his base cannot forgive.
Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images

The pose is perfect. With arms outstretched, the orange menace, unlike Hamlet, mangles his to be or not to be speech with consummate skill. He, like the vapid and sad July 4th celebrations, highlighted with the most untalented artists this rube had ever seen while taking all too long to finish their acts, lurched out of existence as intense thunderstorms went through in DC, forcing folks to temporarily evacuate to avoid getting electrocuted. 

The astronomer Carl Sagan once described Earth as a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. “Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot,” he wrote.

Donald Trump took the stage on Saturday night imagining himself the master of the universe, not the temporary custodian of a country born around the same time as the hot-air balloon. The last decade was proof that “divine providence” had made Trump president for America’s 250th anniversary of independence, his aide Stephen Miller posted on social media.

Not even apocalyptic lightning bolts, which caused a four-hour delay, could stop Trump from putting his personal stamp on history. So, would we get a Gettysburg address for the 21st century? A deathless line like “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? Or a noble call to service reminiscent of “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”?

Alas, we did not. In blowing out the candles on the nation’s birthday cake, Trump committed the one sin that even his base cannot forgive, especially after 12 hours of waiting in sun, wind and rain. He was actually quite boring. Which proves that, like New Year’s Eve, big birthdays often tend to be anticlimactic.

This sad spectacle on the National Mall featured Teleprompter Trump, the one who has been warned by his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to stay on script and at least pretend to sound presidential. But every now and then, like a glitch in the matrix, he reverted to his petty grievances and obsessions.

Lightning strikes behind the illuminated Washington Monument, as people gather
to watch 250th anniversary fireworks. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters

“They estimated 375,000 people before everybody had to leave,” he began, referring to a chaotic evacuation caused by the weather. “They now have 150,000 people.” It was a wildly exaggerated claim from the man who said his inauguration was bigger than Barack Obama’s.

Trump and his wife, Melania, belatedly appeared on a temporary stage between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial that conveniently blocked views of his lurid green reflecting pool, which he has attempted to renovate, with farcical results. The set was framed by blue lights and had a red-and-white arch, all against the backdrop of an animated, billowing presidential seal with the words “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one.

The president spoke with the hubris of one of those emperors that Sagan was so sceptical about. “For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light and the glory among all the nations of the world,” he said. “All over the world they try to be like us. Nobody can be like us, and with God’s help, we will always be the best, or even better. We are going to be better.”

Yes we will, once agent orange and his crew finally disappear into the dust bin of history ...

as quickly as possible.

Testing the waters ...

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. Alex Brandon/AP/File

Well, the first step to killing the 2026 mid terms has begun with Trump getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, thus attempting to eliminate the states' right to manage voting, something written into the Constitution with Amendment 10 on December 10, 1791.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States,
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The gloves are off. Will Steven Miller, the spawn of Goebbels, Peter Thiele or The Heritage Foundation prevail or will the courts and the people? The very existence of America is at stake here without question.

President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he will sign an executive order aimed at getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines seems unlikely to amount to much. He doesn’t appear to have any such authority, and legal challenges would surely follow.

But it was instructive in one way: It made clear the president elected to lead the party of states’ rights has very little regard for states’ rights.

Indeed, he almost seems to disdain them.

It’s difficult to read his comments any other way, especially as he has spent much of his second term attempting to chip away at states’ rights — or at least, the ones he doesn’t like.

While selling his new pitch to get rid of mail-in voting and voting machines, Trump included this remarkable pair of sentences.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

Trump has described the states as “agents” of the federal government before in this context, but without casting them as subservient to him personally.

This is a rather novel take on the Constitution, to put it mildly.

A man photographs himself depositing his ballot in an official ballot drop box in
Philadelphia on Oct. 27, 2020. Mark Makela/Getty Images

President Trump announced Monday on his social media site, Truth Social, that he plans to "lead a movement" to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines in the country ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Part of his plan includes signing an executive order that bars states from using mail ballots and potentially some voting machines. He said, without evidence, that voting machines are "highly inaccurate," as well as more expensive and less reliable than counting paper ballots.

"We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they're corrupt," Trump said during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House Monday. "And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it. It's the only way they can get elected."

WTF comes to mind here ... or, lets think about the chaos if Trump's MAGAs decide to take matters into their own hands regarding the voting machines part of the equation or possibly Agent Orange sending in the National Guard or Marines to take care of the "problem". A rather disquieting thought, right?

Project 2025 redux

President Donald Trump signs an executive order at an indoor Presidential Inauguration
event in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Project 2025's alive and well with Agent Orange, the new POTUS, actively signing executive orders designed to implement the Heritage Foundation's view of a far right America controlled by the rich and religious described with passion as the Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise.

To whit

Of the 26 formal executive orders Trump signed on Monday, 16 mirrored at least in part proposals from the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025 to reshape the federal government, according to an analysis by The Lever.

That includes orders that withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords, end Biden’s electric vehicle mandates, and increase oil and gas drilling in Alaska — all proposals that first appeared in Project 2025 months earlier.

It gets better.

Several architects of Project 2025 are now filling out the Trump administration. Russell Vought, the former vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s sister organization Heritage Action for America — who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Executive Office of the President of the United States — was nominated by Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the agency tasked with developing the president’s proposed budget and executing Trump’s agenda. Vought previously headed the agency during the first Trump administration. 

Trump nominated Brendan Carr to head the Federal Communications Commission, the same agency that Carr wrote a chapter about for Project 2025. In the chapter, Carr calls to end the censoring of “political viewpoints,” specifically singling out Facebook and YouTube’s censorship policies. 

As for billionaires, the tech bros are in alignment.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, recently announced that Facebook would begin promoting political content and end its third-party fact-checking program. Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, attended Trump’s inauguration. 

Musk as DOGE commander needs no introduction nor does Bezos

Regarding the environment ...

Other executive orders issued by Trump offer additional benefits to the corporate interests that backed the Heritage Foundation and his presidency. Several will roll back climate and environmental rules, as suggested by Project 2025. The moves are a win for oil and gas interests like Koch Industries, the petrochemical giant that funds the Heritage Foundation through its sprawling dark money philanthropic network.

Trump’s executive orders roll back Biden-era limits on oil and gas leasing on federal land, strip energy efficiency standards for household appliances, and eliminate incentives for electric vehicles. These victories for oil and gas interests were proposed in Project 2025, which instructed that a new administration “must immediately roll back Biden’s orders” on climate.

Trump also followed Project 2025’s directives to open up fragile Alaska wilderness to oil and gas drilling — even though the oil industry has been hesitant to take on such a project given the high costs and risks of drilling in far-flung, undeveloped land. In his executive order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” he reinstated a plan launched during his first administration to allow drilling and development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, which had received new protections under the Biden administration.

In closing, profit "trumps" climate change, a take resembling Custer's Last Stand in the cosmic scheme of things as nature always finds a way.

Lithograph showing the Battle of Little Bighorn, from the Indian side.

Democracies very bad year

 

Voters wait in a long line to cast their ballots at Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City on 3 November 2020. A sign of a healthy democracy or the opposite? Photograph: Nick Oxford/Reuters

Thanks to Agent Orange, and significant others, (W, the repugs, the Real Owners) the US has dropped big time in terms of being a viable democracy over the past 10+ years.

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.

The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91) and Slovakia (90).

This decline is reinforced in Democracy Matrix whereby the US ranks 26th and in the Democracy index, the number's 25.

Making sense ...

President-elect Donald J. Trump has accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the Panama Canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the decades-old treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times

As much as I detest Agent Orange, the notion of reestablishing control over the Panama Canal and gaining control over Greenland vis a vis China's incursions into South America and their increased interest in the Arctic due to Global Warming's opening of trade routes, makes sense if one adheres to The Art of War in being totally aware of an enemy's intent as said knowledge is essential if one is to maintain the balance of power, thus limiting the dire possibility of a war where nobody wins. How this can be accomplished and should this be accomplished are serious questions to be asked because the great game of politiis equates to the game of chess writ large.

To whit.

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

Strategic importance of Greenland cannot be overstated

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,” an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Chess pieces – left to right: king, rook, queen, pawn, knight and bishop.

Daffy Duck anyone?

 

Herschel Walker, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks at a campaign.

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Question, would you trust this man to run your business or go out with your daughter as these were the same questions asked of Agent Orange when Trump was running for president.

I think not but Herschel's not the chosen one for smarts, he's the chosen one to be a rubber stamp for the repugs.

ABOUT HALF OF Georgia voters cast a ballot for Herschel Walker on Tuesday. Most of these voters wouldn’t trust Walker to run the check-out at a Family Dollar. But that’s the whole point.

Herschel Walker has repeatedly proven himself to be stupid. Herschel Walker’s voters aren’t necessarily stupid. That’s too easy.

Georgia Republicans aren’t stupid. But they see safety in stupid politicians. The stupidity of Herschel Walker isn’t a problem for them. It’s a feature. And writing off Georgia Republicans as country idiots is a kind of smug, lazy thinking that oversimplifies a complicated political problem, not just in Georgia but across the country.

Herschel Walker was not nominated to govern. He was not nominated to bargain. He was not nominated to formulate policy. He was not nominated to exercise judgment. He was nominated to mash the R button whenever a vote comes up, no matter what.

“It could be Daffy Duck for all I care,” one such voter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at a Walker rally in Baxley, Ga. “Just get the Democrats out of Washington.”

Exactly.

The art of the lie

We all know what happened on 1/6/2021 but how this disgraceful event happened was based on the art of the lie, fueled by tech and encouraged by Agent Orange as gullible people or those who have little or no real education become the perfect  petri dish for disseminators to spread misinformation 24/7 to the great unwashed.

To whit ...

Bolshevism has proved some strange and disturbing things about human nature.

It is possible to make them feel and believe practically anything. And it makes no difference whether that “anything” is true, in our conception of the word. For the people who believe it, it becomes true. It attains validity, and all the powers [Page 913]of truth. Men can enthuse over it, fight for it, die for it—if they are led to believe that it is something worthy. They can abhor it, oppose it, combat it with unspeakable cruelty—if they are led to believe that it is something reprehensible. Moreover, it becomes true (and this is one of the most vital apprehensions) not only for those to whom it is addressed, but for those who invent it as well.  George F. Kennan

And this.

Lying as a political tool is hardly new. Niccolo Machiavelli, writing in the 16th century, recommended that a leader try to be honest but lie when telling the truth “would place him at a disadvantage.” People don’t like being lied to, Machiavelli observed, but “one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

When looking at the art of the big lie, Goebbels and Bernays were the Zen masters without question.

Joseph Goebbels

Edward Bernays

Any questions?

Algeria ...

Status:1830–1848: French colony | Part of France1848–1962:

As Mark Twain so famously said, History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. applies to Israel's push to complete the job of driving out the Palestinians from Palestine in 2023, a process started in 1948 when 750,000 suffered the same fate in an event known as the NAKBA. Complicit in this crime is the US supporting Israel without limit to include December 9th's US's veto of a ceasefire in Gaza, an initiative the rest of the world and the UN support without question. Now that the Biden administration is all in with Israel, factor in the real possibility of Biden losing the 2024 election to Agent Orange as Muslim Americans will no longer support Biden in any way, shape or fashion, thus equating to a dumpster fire of biblical proportions regarding Biden's chances as the atrocity in Gaza is becoming  more important than even the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution opening up the horror of Vietnam based on a lie.

On May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany signed the act of military surrender to the Allies. The next day, people all over the world, including in occupied Algeria, took to the streets to celebrate the end of World War II.

An estimated 134,000 Algerians fought with the Allies and 18,000 of them gave their lives to defeat Germany. And so, on May 8,1945, in Setif, a city east of Algiers, some 5000 “moslems”, as Algerians were called by the colonial power to erase their national identity, marched in celebration. But they also marched clamouring for the end of over a century-long French colonial rule over their country. French police seized banners and eventually opened fire, killing demonstrators. Clashes erupted with 102 French settlers killed.

In the following fortnight, a blood frenzy overtook French authorities and settlers who massacred some 45,000 Algerians. Rural areas around Setif and the town of Guelma believed to be sympathetic to Algerian nationalists were bombarded by the French air force. Settlers avenged their compatriots by hunting down and lynching “the savages”.

To establish themselves in Algeria and legitimise their presence there, the colonists had dehumanised the indigenous population to the extent of perceiving them as nothing more than vermin.  This allowed French colonists and their occupation army to kill Algerians in their thousands, with little or no moral qualms.

                        

Sound familiar? Israel will not win as Hamas will not be eliminated and the Palestinians will not quit. Kennedy knew this to be true regarding Algeria. Sadly, Biden does not regarding Palestine.

Kennedy was open about his support for Algerian independence even before becoming president.

In July 1957, as a young Senator, he delivered a historic speech criticising the Eisenhower administration’s political and military support for French colonialism and called on the US to support Algerian self-determination.

“The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile – it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent,” he said. “Thus the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free.”

He went on to explain how the French insistence to rule over Algeria, against the will of the Algerian people, is harming the US, NATO and the entire global community, and concluded that “[t]he time has come for the United States to face the harsh realities of the situation and to fulfill its responsibilities as the leader of the free world – in the UN, in NATO, in the administration of our aid programs and in the exercise of our diplomacy – in shaping a course toward political independence for Algeria”.

Kennedy knew France was fighting a war it can never win, and wanted the US to be honest with its ally. Today, the history is repeating itself. A leading US ally, Israel, is engaged in a war it cannot win against a people suffering under its occupation. But unlike Kennedy, the current US President Joe Biden is not living up to the occasion.

Rather than telling Israel the hard truth, that it can not extinguish the Palestinian people’s “eternal desire to be free and independent”, President Biden is unconditionally backing the ongoing colonial assault on Palestine.

Indeed, just as France was not “defending itself” when it killed hundreds of thousands of Algerians to stop them from achieving independence, Israel is not “defending itself” against Palestinians living under its occupation. It is waging a modern-day colonial war, trying to claim more land, and seemingly committing genocide in the process. Biden should learn from Kennedy, end its support for Israel’s unwinnable war and war crimes, and remain on the right side of history.

Baricades set up during the Algerian War of Independence, 

January 1960, Street of Algier [Wikimedia Commons]