Category: Trumpism

Muzzled!

Mocking Furriners, Trumpism

Here’s one that got me giggling:

Donald Trump will not be given the honor of addressing Parliament during his state visit as Emmanuel Macron did this week, The Telegraph understands.

The date of the US president’s trip is being deliberately timed for mid-September, when there is a parliamentary recess, handing the UK an excuse for not offering the speech.

Mr Trump is also not expected to visit Buckingham Palace, which is being restored, or enjoy a ceremonial carriage ride down the Mall in London – features of many past state visits from world leaders.

I’m sure the “deliberate timing” was to prevent Trump from embarrassing the Labour Party with his normal “fuck you” style of speaking in the Commons, and his uncomfortable (to them) habit of telling it like it is, e.g. “You assholes locked up an old lady for an angry tweet?  WTF?”

Never mind. I’m sure his press conferences are going to be epic — if the Brits allow them to be published or aired, that is.

The only way this could be more fun is if the Brit government were having ArgyPres Javier Milei and EyetiePM Giorgia Meloni over at the same time, for a threesome (so to speak).

Nope

Conservatism, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Trumpism

Let me make myself crystal clear on this topic:  every single time in the last century and a half that some asshole has tried to create a third political party (e.g. Theodore Roosevelt’s  Bull Moose, Ross Perot’s Reform) the net result has been an electoral victory for the Democrats.

So Elon, buddy, unless you want to see ALL your good works on DOGE and such overturned, quit this bullshit about forming a new “America” party.  You’re acting like a spoiled child who fucks up everyone’s Christmas because you got a green bicycle with 3-speed gears instead of a red one with a 10 speed.   Yeah, the BBB wasn’t everything we wished for.  But it sure as hell was better than anything else on offer.

Because make no mistake:  if Musk’s little exercise ends with the fucking Democrats taking control of the White House and/or Congress (which is what history tells us will happen), they will reverse everything that Trump has managed to get done:  closing the border, ending the USAID boondoggle and hamstringing the loathsome Dept of Education, to mention just three of the domestic wrongs righted.

What this steaming bunch of Communists will inflict on the world with their pathetic attempts at foreign policy of appeasement of shitholes like Iran and China cannot be imagined.

Here’s what I hope, if Musk gets this silliness operational:  that Trump ends all repeat all subsidies for the “alternate energy” industries like wind power and electric car manufacturers — because in the latter case, all that will happen will be that expensive electric cars like Tesla will have to face sky-high retail prices (in a market that is already in a tailspin as ordinary people turn away from the Duracell models), resulting in Tesla pretty much becoming an expensive toy for rich people.

And Tesla isn’t Ferrari, in case nobody’s noticed it before.

Oh, and one last thing.  There’s no need for a third political party in the U.S. because we already have one:  it’s called “MAGA” and it’s not a party but a movement.

One would have thought that a smart guy like Elon Musk would have figured this out.:  politics is the art of the possible, not the display of spite when the possible wasn’t perfection.

If Musk had always let the perfect be the enemy of the good, his rocket program would have ended after the first failed launch.  Why he now wants to embrace that policy ideal makes me wonder if he is as bright as everyone seems to think he is.

And finally, there’s this:

Quit co-opting our patriotic symbol to further your own little ego trip.

Tit For Tat

Foreign Affairs, Trumpism

Seems as though there’s a fair amount of angst and anguish about Trump’s BBB proviso that (loosely explained) says:  “If you tax us, we’re gonna tax you right back.”

In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Bessent said the legislation includes new tools to retaliate against countries that impose what he called “unfair foreign taxes” on American firms — including digital services taxes and top-up levies under the OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) global minimum tax framework.

“The U.S. tax system will stand next to what is called Pillar Two, and other countries are welcome to relinquish their fiscal and tax sovereignty to other nations,” Bessent said. “The United States will not. So this bill will allow us to prevent our corporate revenues from being drained into foreign treasuries—and that is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

At the heart of the plan is a new measure that would impose escalating surtaxes on income earned in the U.S. by companies, individuals, and even governments from nations that target American firms with extraterritorial taxes. The same countries could also face higher withholding taxes on U.S. investments and tougher rules under the Base Erosion and Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT). Sovereign wealth funds and central banks from those countries would lose long-standing exemptions and become subject to U.S. tax on their holdings.

The provision — found in Section 899 of the bill — is designed to pressure foreign governments to roll back taxes that the administration views as discriminatory and coercive. It would start with a five-percentage-point surtax and escalate annually to a maximum of twenty points above the standard U.S. tax rate unless the targeted country reverses its policy.

And the rightness of this approach can be gauged from the level of opposition from Global Capitalist Bastards Inc.:

Multinational firms, foreign banks, and global trade associations are mounting an aggressive campaign to weaken or eliminate the provision, arguing it could lead to retaliatory measures and complicate international investment.

Yeah, my heart bleeds for all those fat corporations and insanely-wealthy fucks whose international investments will become complicated.  This is aimed at the foreign governments who think that  theft   fleecing   taxation of foreign investment is okay if they do it, but not if we do it.

I know that a lot of what Trump does is just positioning — i.e. laying the battlefield for future negotiation — but this is one initiative where I hope he digs in and goes all the way.  Why should we support foreign governments’ enrichment programs at our own expense when we can’t do exactly the same to them?  Make no mistake:  these assholes are making billions of dollars out of this.

And lastly, anytime I see the words “OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) global minimum tax framework” involved in an argument, I want to reach for my AK.  No greater argument against globalization can be raised than when their principles are involved.

Feel free to bring lofty economics arguments to this post, because I will really enjoy shooting them down in flames.

Influx

Immigration, Trumpism

Alert Reader Pete D. sends me this report*:

First Afrikaners granted refugee status due to arrive in U.S.

The U.S. government has officially granted 54 Afrikaans South Africans, white descendants of mainly Dutch colonizers, refugee status and they are expected to land in the U.S. on Monday May 12, three sources with knowledge of the matter have told NPR.

(Note the little “colonizers” snark — it’s NPR, after all.)

And further down:

States that have agreed to take in the South Africans include:  Alabama, California, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York, Nevada, North Carolina and Iowa.

Not Texas, probably because we have enough / too many Seffricans here already.  And California and New York?  Wait till our newly-minted immigrants who choose those locations try to buy themselves a gun.  (Hint: it’s more difficult than in Seffrica.)

And lastly:

The UN’s International Organization for Migration had refused to be involved in the process.

Of course they would.  These refugees are whities;  only darkies qualify to be refugees because slavery (or something).

Anyway:  Welkom by die States, julle.  Veels geluk.

*Pete, buddy:  WTF are you doing reading NPR?

Cornerstone, Dislodged?

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Trumpism

Looks like the Trumpistas are aiming their harpoons at another whale:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said that the agency will review the agency’s endangerment finding — the “holy grail of the climate change religion” that has created over a trillion dollars in regulatory impact.

Wut dat?  Breitbart explains:

The finding stated that greenhouse gas emissions are an alleged threat to public health and welfare.

And when you look at the data which supposedly supports the finding, it, like most other “environmental” data, is a bunch of codswallop.

The EPA proceeded in an unorthodox manner. Slicing and dicing the language of the statute, it made an “endangerment finding” totally separate from any actual rulemaking-setting standards for emissions from cars. EPA argued it had the authority to do this because Congress didn’t specifically forbid it from taking this approach. By taking this approach, the endangerment finding intentionally ignored costs of regulations that EPA knew would follow from the finding — and indeed ignored any other policy impacts of those regulations.

Results (that you or I would care about)?

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, said that the EPA regulations that arose from the endangerment finding have contributed to automobile prices to rise from $23,000 in 2009 to nearly $50,000 now.

The EPA has relied on the endangerment finding for seven vehicle regulations that reportedly have an aggregate cost of more than one trillion dollars, according to the agency’s own regulatory impact analyses. 

We all knew that enviro-bullshit was behind so much of the price increases — that, and the raft of “safety” regulations that accompanied them.

My message to Sec. Lee Zeldin:

Get rid of that stuff.

Me, I’d like to see the FedGov refund some of that trillion-dollar price increase to everyone who bought cars and trucks — internal-combustion-driven cars and trucks, that is — from 2009 until today.

Why?  Because it was taken from these buyers by government malfeasance.

And if our current government wants to “claw back” some of that money from the people and organizations who instigated this swindle, that would be fine, too.