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Ho-kay, I notice that responses have been down the last few days, likely because our retirees are now looking for work to compensate for their sinking 401(k)’s.
Tell me, should I feel sorry for the farmers?:
Farmers have been Trump’s most loyal constituency and overwhelmingly backed him in the 2024 election. Now they could be one of the groups hardest hit by his trade war, potentially forcing a political reckoning in red states as small- and mid-sized farms struggle to stay afloat and big farms lose their export markets.
“If we have problems selling those goods in foreign markets, we see low prices. That’s what we saw in 2018, and that was just a trade war in China. With the announcement yesterday, not only are the tariffs larger than those in 2018 on China but they’re also affecting a lot of other markets, particularly for soybeans,” said Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist. “These are all big unknowns because we just haven’t seen anything like this.”
The Trump administration’s sweeping firings of thousands of USDA staff, including employees engaged in farmer-facing work like farm loan officers, and ongoing freezes of federal grant and cost-share programs have only added to the economic uncertainty.
I only speak for myself when I say: Fuck all you idiots who voted for all the trouble you’re now facing.
That goes double for these guys:
President Donald Trump has gone from mocking Canada as “the 51st state” and demoting its prime minister to “governor,” to threatening military invasion of Greenland, to siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin over Ukraine’s fight for freedom, to insane tariffs that are making a mockery of international order.
Trump even said he wants to sell allies nerfed versions of U.S. warplanes.
“We’d like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right,” he said on March 21.
Just imagine how that was received by U.S. allies.
So it makes sense that Europe has decided it won’t depend on the United States as a military backstop for its security, committing nearly $900 billion to its massive military spending spree.
Yet the mere threat is a challenge to Europe’s sovereignty, particularly as the U.S. government has broadcasted that it no longer shares Europe’s values.
No one is interested in working with a United States that can turn on a dime depending on the whims of idiot voters in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, and the GOP is certainly not interested in preventing crazy despots from flying its banner.
Which leads to no weapons deals for the United States. And would you believe that Trump is pissed?
Yes, Trump (aka ‘Krasnov’) is hurting the very companies who have been core supporters. Sad. This makes for some good weekend reading. I’ll forgive you if you skip the rest of this magnum opus and just read the linked article. AKA the Steele Dossier.
Fringe Figures Wield Power. Irresponsibly:
Laura Loomer had President Trump’s full attention.
Sitting directly across from the president in the Oval Office, Ms. Loomer, the far-right agitator and conspiracy theorist, held a stack of papers that detailed a litany of accusations about “disloyal” members of the National Security Council. The national security adviser, Michael Waltz, had arrived late and could only watch as Ms. Loomer ripped into his staff.
Fire them, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Waltz, according to people with knowledge of the meeting on Wednesday. The president was furious and demanded to know why these people had been hired in the first place.
The events of Wednesday and Thursday, with more than a half-dozen national security officials fired on the advice of Ms. Loomer, unsettled even some veteran Trump officials. But the situation perfectly encapsulates Mr. Trump’s longtime penchant for soliciting information from dubious sources. The difference now, in Mr. Trump’s second term, is that he has fewer people around him who try to keep those voices away.
In a social media post on Friday, Ms. Loomer explained why two of the people who lost their jobs this week were on her list. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, had been chosen by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Ms. Loomer called a traitor. And General Haugh’s deputy, Wendy Noble, was close to James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence and fierce critic of Mr. Trump.
Laura Loomer. RFK Jr. Yes, the lunatics are running the asylum which, unfortunately, is the United States.
Speaking Of RFK, he wants to keep America fat:
Medicare and Medicaid will not cover blockbuster drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity, the Trump administration announced on Friday.
The Biden administration in November proposed allowing the public insurance programs to expand coverage of the anti-obesity medications but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now says that is “not appropriate at this time.”
![Little Feat • “Fat Man in the Bathtub” • 1976 [Reelin' In The Years Archive]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uRhMgIztVpc/hqdefault.jpg)
Uh, no, I won’t. There’s no topping that! Is it true they’re not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame? AYFKM?
What do you want to talk about?