Heil, Caesar!

Another dick-tator with a golden comb-over.

On the first day of July, the month named for Julius Caesar, the Senate bent to its dictator’s will and approved his giant, ugly-ass, abortion of a bill.

Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina— who will not seek re-election after Orange Julius Caesar threatened to find someone to primary him — were the only Repugs to vote nay. All others assumed that fabled position.

Prince MAGAbelly had to cast the deciding vote, and now this huge, loathsome turd must float back to the House for resolution of the changes made in its version. A vote there could come as early as tomorrow.

Might there be a few hurdles involved? Hear ye, hear ye, from Ye Oulde New Yorke Times!

Hurdles, you say? It is the hee, and also haw. The majority in the House makes the Senate look … well, senatorial by comparison. The Senate is up to its saggy tits in senile old hoors, to be sure, but the House is the political equivalent of a Bizarro World Alice’s Restaurant, where you can get anything you want, including Alice, her husband, Ray, Fasha the dog, the entire complement of the Group W bench, and maybe Officer Obie too, all rolling around in a half-ton of garbage, if that’s what blows your skirt up.

So poor people will starve, get sick, and die, rich people will get richer and write letters to their senators complaining about how they have to step over the stiffs on their way to the squash court, and Elon Spunk will start a new political party in a frantic attempt to … save us from ourselves? Nope. To put himself back in the news cycle as anything other than a bad joke, despised even by the people who bought his cars.

Better debug that exploding Starship stat, bruh. I hear OJC wants to claw back your subsidies and deport you to Mars, and for sure he’ll make you drive your own paddy wagon.

Mayday!

The Soma Pescadero rocks.

We didn’t smash the State yesterday.

Herself had just returned from a nine-day trip, so she got caught up on her trail running and weight training while I settled for smashing a few climbs on the Soma Pescadero in my best socialist-red cycling kit.

I feel some remorse over not making our local May Day march, which drew either hundreds or thousands of people, depending upon your news source.

But I’m certain there will be other opportunities to hit the streets for a cause instead of just ’cause. I mean, fascists gonna fascist, amirite? We will not lack for opportunity.

Case(s) in point:

West Coast ports are bracing for a tariff-related dent in import volume:

This means that Beelzebozo’s recession has already begun:

And businesses are already planning to share the pain with their customers as tariffs start nibbling away at their bottom lines:

One thing I keep seeing in stories like these is the shock — shock! — among Beelzebozo Believers that they will be among those assuming the position as his “deals” go down.

Consider Michelle Hall, a 48-year-old secretary in Snohomish, Wash. She found shopping online with Temu “addicting and fun” — until she noticed the “import charges” piling up.

See you on the barricades, Michelle. I’ll take a day off the bike if you’ll take a day off from shopping.

There’s a new tariff in town

The “Rubáiyát of Owe-More Khayyám.”

Hoo-lawd. Anybody’s portfolio turn into a postcard yet?

In case you’ve missed Paul Krugman, he’s speculating over at Substack that Elon’s Hitler Youth may have cobbled together the tariff scheme using ChatGPT and/or other A.I. models.

In my post immediately following the Trump announcement I speculated that Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger kids might be responsible for those tariff numbers. That now looks like a distinct possibility.

Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.

Again, I’m not being snobbish here. When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves. How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?

Good time to be heavily invested in the knee- and elbow-pad markets.

La mordida

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was less of a peace treaty and more of a détente, which is the French for “a pause while reloading.” | Photo lifted from RMPBS.

From the Feb. 2 edition of “Today in History,” by The Associated Press: “In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, officially ending the Mexican-American War.”

I guess nobody told the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus. Los siento mucho. Incoming!