How does it make my life more affordable when Trump's tariffs are driving up the price of most things I need, and when the Republicans cut programs that help people, and they can't figure how to stop that stupid fucking war that he started for no fucking reason?
Like pretty much everything Republicans do these days, their push for "legislation" is little more than "Let's pull some shit that makes the rubes think we're trying to do something useful, but is really just the usual fuckery intended to make Democrats look bad, and keep us on the gravy train for a while longer."
It's not official - it's never official unless it's 100% happy talk bullshit - but DOGE is done.
Trump promised $2T in savings, enough to send every household a check for $5000.
Don't hold your breath.
Trump's fucked up COVID-19 response cost us more than it had to, so he doesn't get a full pass on that one. Let's be overly generous, and just say half of the $3.6T in increased spending due to COVID-19 belongs to him.
All told, in his not-quite 6 years in office, he's bumped spending by $6.6T - a trillion of that is just the increased interest we have to pay on the ten-year T-bills that make up the debt.
So he spends more while his tax cuts for plutocrats means we bring in less, and somehow the MAGA rubes still believe he's some kind of fucking genius business guy.
The current iteration of the GOP is there to serve the interests of parasite billionaires. If you think more than a handful of them are going to lift a finger to help you make your life just a tiny bit better, then you need to be paying a lot more attention.
They don't give one empty fuck about you or me or anything else - just power and money, and their vision of a Post-Government World Order - that's it.
Politics is supposed to be boring. I don't remember when or why I first got turned on to it. Maybe it was when my mom took me out canvassing for Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Maybe I felt it had a strong connection to sales - way before I even knew sales was something I'd end up doing. It's always just kinda turned my crank - talking with people, trying to get them to do something.
IDK. But like Belle says, I'm pretty sure it's supposed be a helluva lot more than entertainment.
We shouldn't be tuning in because we get a kick out of watching the antics of some jagoff who thinks his rhetoric is on par with Cicero, when he's just belching out the banalities he saw in the comments of some 3rd rate grifting "influencer" online.
We're supposed to be doing these things because we want to make life a bit better for each other.
How do views of Trump compare with other global leaders?
Across 36 countries, a median of 23% of adults have confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
These findings come from a new Pew Research Center survey of 42,151 adults in 36 countries, conducted Feb. 8-May 13, 2026. They are part of a larger report on global views of the United States and its president.
Where do people have more positive views of Trump than other leaders?
Colombia, Hungary, Israel and the Philippines stand out as four countries where views of Trump are more positive than views of other leaders we asked about.
In Colombia, 43% have confidence in Trump – higher than the 37% who have confidence in Macron and the roughly third or fewer who have confidence in the other leaders.
In Hungary, 44% have confidence in Trump, compared with around a third or fewer who say the same of Macron, Xi or Putin. Confidence in Netanyahu and Zelenskyy is even lower.
In Israel, 66% have confidence in Trump, while only a third or fewer have confidence in the other leaders. (We did not ask about confidence in Netanyahu.)
In the Philippines, 68% have confidence in Trump, while 61% have confidence in Macron and around half or more have confidence in the other leaders.
In some other countries, including several middle-income nations (as defined by World Bank lending groups) like Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria and Peru, Trump is among the leaders rated most positively. In most of these countries, confidence in Trump is similar to confidence in either Xi or Macron.
In three European countries – France, Germany and Greece – confidence ratings for Trump are among the lowest of the leaders asked about, often tied with Putin, Netanyahu or both. For instance, 16% of Germans have confidence in Trump and similar shares say the same about Putin (15%) and Netanyahu (15%), a sharp contrast to the 72% of Germans who have confidence in Macron.
Where do people have more negative views of Trump than other leaders?
Trump is either the leader with the lowest confidence rating or tied for lowest in many countries. This is the case, for example, in the United States’ neighbors to both the south and north:
In Mexico, 11% have confidence in Trump, compared with 18% who have confidence in Netanyahu. Around three-in-ten have confidence in Putin and Xi.
Canadians have similarly low levels of confidence in Putin (18%), Trump (20%) and Netanyahu (23%) and relatively more confidence in Xi (35%), Macron (59%) and Zelenskyy (65%).
In three European countries – France, Germany and Greece – confidence ratings for Trump are among the lowest of the leaders asked about, often tied with Putin, Netanyahu or both. For instance, 16% of Germans have confidence in Trump and similar shares say the same about Putin (15%) and Netanyahu (15%), a sharp contrast to the 72% of Germans who have confidence in Macron.
Trump tends to receive particularly low marks relative to other leaders in the Muslim-majority publics surveyed. Among Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, for example, only 4% have confidence in Trump – similar to the 2% who say the same of Netanyahu, but much lower than the roughly four-in-ten who have confidence in Putin and Xi. In Malaysia, too, Trump ties with Netanyahu for the lowest rating.
PCE rose at an annualized rate of 4.1% last month.
Back out the hikes in energy and food, and you've still got a rate of increase that's a point-and-a-half over what the Fed knows it has to be to keep the whole thing from getting crazy and blowing up.
IMHO, Republicans go on making a play for Plutocratic rule.
They push radical wackos in their primary elections - people who aren't very likely to win in the general election. And they have to know their wacko candidates don't appeal to most voters.
So it would seem they really are counting on a Jim Crow style scheme to keep people away from the polls.
With all the shit they're trying to pull - the campaign against Mail-In, threatening to order the USPS not to deliver ballots, vote roll purges, closing polling places, threatening to post armed "officers" at polling places, and and and. They're working hard to carve off a few percentage points - votes that would normally go to the Democrats - in order to eke out a few wins here and there.
It's the ugliest kind of politics, and I don't blame anybody for being repulsed by the process, and more than a little reluctant to participate.
