Trump reminds me of Mr. Mayhem on the Allstate commercials

 Shock and Awe.  The DOGE.  Have Musk and Trump showered together yet?  Do we really need cancer research?  When am I going to get my tax refund?  Will Trump change the street cleaning days in Yonkers?  Layoffs of thousands of federal workers.  When can I expect my first DOGE check?  Will Medicaid still cover nurse visits?  When is ICE coming to Yonkers?  Trump wants Zelensky to pay the money back with rare Earth minerals.  Like what?  Hannity was more interested in what Musk had to say.  Why does Musk want the personal details of millions of Americans?  When are we going to Mars?

Chaos.

I'm sorry, what?

 So I'm reading on my phone Sen. Ted Cruz is in talks with Denmark about purchasing Greenland.  Why Cruz?  Why not the My Pillow guy?  How come Ronald Reagan never thought of this?  Welcome to the political Twilight Zone.  The bizarre Trump presidency continues. 

Do we really need health inspectors?  You know those folk who protect us from things like rancid meat.  With this billionaire punk nothing is off the chopping block.  Musk is not interested in the policy of attrition.  Say a company or agency has too many workers when they leave or retire you don't replace them.  Not dramatic enough.

A LONG four years with the joyless prick in office.  What does Melania think?

Everything but the cost-of-living

 Being a foreign policy hero.  The DOGE.  The term "government efficiency" always strikes me as an oxymoron.  When is Homan going to go after the lettuce pickers, the masonry workers, the diner cooks and the fence installers?  Is Trump going to tariff the Aleutian Islands?  A Trump Hotel on the Gaza Strip?  Panama Canal. Greenland.  Canada.  Gulf of America.  Rare Earth minerals in Ukraine.  Cutting the Defense budget in half.  Would Reagan have done such a thing?  Dementia in overdrive.  Why doesn't he make a peace treaty with the fairies?  The MAGA cult and OAN applaud his every move. EVERYTHING but the price of eggs and Fancy Feast.

Oy vey!

Mindless in Gaza

 In addition to Canada Greenland and the Panama Canal Trump now wants the Gaza Strip.  He said at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it would be a good idea if the U.S. took control over it.  I didn't know Gaza was for sale.  Trump says it could be rebuilt into a Riviera of the Middle East but first the Palestinians should get out and live somewhere else.  Egypt?  Jordan?  Yonkers?  Many are calling this a call for ethnic cleansing but it is sure to appeal to the far-right elements in the Israeli government. 

Every president tries their hand at peace in the Middle East.   The Trump Plan a golf course some hotels and casinos in Gaza but no Palestinians allowed.  Is there a Nobel Prize in the works?

Make America Great Again just not yet

 Or as my Momma used to say it has to get worse before it gets better.

I think;)

Trump is just a sad sack at this point. He's joyless.

 He always looks angry.  He's a political grinch.  He's trying to be a micromanager with his endless executive orders trying to dictate things like what federal agencies can and cannot say.  Nobody likes a micromanager.  It's actually the opposite of true conservatism and limited government. He's mean-spirited as if he feels having empathy and compassion are unmanly.  He's impulsive with tariffs and says Americans can expect some pain but he ran on optimism and making a better economy for all.  Ronald Reagan actually embodied true optimism and hope.  Trump is depressing in tone and substance.  He makes it up as he goes along.  At work we call this bullshitting your way through.  May well go down in history as a bizarre presidency and not much else.  His first term seemed more muted even normal to a point say what you will.  It's as if his political id has taken over.  I spend more time cringing than clapping lately.

It's still way too early but the trajectory is bad.

Tariffs on Greenland?

 I'm not getting it.  Nobody wants to retire and move to Greenland.  It's a strategic military location and is said to have rare mineral resources.  OK.  25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting today but Trump cut China some slack with only 10% tariffs.  His endgame may be to end the federal income tax and fund the government with tariffs.  Is he shifting the Overton Window?  What's the deal with Greenland?  Can't really put a golf course there.  The subject never came up on the campaign trail.  Look every president does things we disagree with.  Biden didn't do enough to protect the gray wolf.  There was his covid authoritarianism.  I always thought it would be interesting to have one of the Star Trek spinoff shows do an episode on the crew encountering the race of Covidians who always stand six feet apart and worship a Fauci-like figure but I digress point being Trump is taking things to another level and how did the National Review become part of the MAGA cult?  When he's done deporting can he get back to the price of Fancy Feast?  Health care?  Families shouldn't have to go bankrupt because somebody has cancer.  Homan is in his glory but can we take a breather?

BTW can Trump at least slip in a stimulus check or two to my direct deposit?

Trump 2.0 - Back With A Vengeance

 ICE raids, Homan to talk to Canadian officials, Colombia caves and takes in the aliens, Laken Riley Act, Gitmo again, political retribution, firing inspectors general, tariff threats, funding freezes, eclectic Cabinet picks, executive orders, rescuing TikTok, no DEI, calls to Denmark, J6 pardons, Trump threatens BRICS, Hannity interview, Trump offering to buyout federal workers, Meta to pay Trump $25 million, DOGE, Rubio to visit Panama, Israel/Gaza, Trump goes after Buttigieg over DC plane crash, Bob Menendez angling for pardon, Greenland for sale? Gulf of Trump.

And it's not even 100 days.

Of bluster and bullshit

 Should I keep my autograph book handy in case Homan and crew come to my workplace?  Greenland, the Panama Canal, the annexation of Canada, mass deportations...Trump is not going to invade a NATO ally.  It's not worth going to war over the Canal.  We never had a state the size of Canada makes no sense and we don't have the infrastructure for mass deportations.  Not so much in the hot air category though is a serious growing consensus that Trump is the one mostly responsible for this historic ceasefire/hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.  He even sent a Middle East envoy over there to take part in the negotiations and this is all pre-the Inauguration.  Biden has issues with Trump getting most of the credit.  Don't be jealous.  As for Trump being an expansionist president in the Polk tradition I highly doubt it.

So what is bluster, what is la mierda and what's the real deal here?  We'll just have to wait and see.

Bibi was only playing around

 He bombed a few hospitals in Gaza but Trump has promised "all hell will break loose" in the Middle East if Hamas does not release the rest of the Israeli hostages by the time he is inaugurated.  I almost said installed as Trump has a kind of monarch complex.  It won't be good for Hamas or anybody else he said.  WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Also where can Netanyahu travel these days?  The ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and the Polish PM said he'd arrest him if he comes that way.  Our own House in turn has voted for sanctions against the ICC.  If Trump follows through on his threat to unleash hell in the Middle East he too could wind up on the ICC docket someday.  Meanwhile Trump said he will sign 100 Executive Orders on Day One.  About what?  Sidewalk cleaning in Yonkers?  Also where is T. Swift these days?  Will she send a multi-million dollar aid package to LA County?

What happened to the drones?

 Lots of assorted topics out there not really coalescing into a blogpost per se.  The LA fires and the politics of the LA fires.  Elon Musk opiner-at-large now wading into British politics and the groomer gang scandal which is at least ten years old.  Melania's outfit at the Jimmy Carter funeral.  Congestion pricing in NYC.  TikTok.  Just off the top of my head 17,000 doctors signed a letter opposing RFK Jr.'s nomination to be HHS Sec'y.  That one kind of surprised me.  Diddy updates.  Mangione.  My God it's COLD outside!!!  The Trump Follies.  News cycle going too fast for me.

The drone thing.  Wha' happened?

Whatever happened to the mass deportations?

 We may need to strike the S off TDS and just call it TD or Trump Derangement.  The senior editors over at the National Review think taking Greenland by force is not a totally insane idea and Hannity is glossing all the lunacy over by simply posting Don Jr.'s nice video of his trip to the autonomous Denmark territory to make Greenland great again nothing bellicose about it (library word look it up). Meanwhile Germany and France are warning Trump over his threats.  Whatever happened to no new wars and working to end the ones we have now?  What does the MAGA base think of these latest developments?  Trump is either in the pre-Alzheimer's stage dementia or both.  There would have to be serious closed-door discussions at this point about possibly invoking the 25th Amendment Section 4 somewhere down the road.  Meanwhile Homan is probably thinking we got the buses all lined up for the migrants why are we now switching to geopolitics all of a sudden?  He ain't even president yet.

Hell's going on?  I'm willing to eat my vote.  Maybe they'll make a movie about it someday.  "Life Inside the MAGA Cult."

I didn't vote for Trump so he could rename the Gulf of Mexico

 I also didn't vote for Trump so he could use military force to take Greenland and take back control of the Panama Canal.  He didn't rule that out at his Mar-A-Lago news conference.  Plausible scenario: Trump is officially deemed Nutz as per the requirements of the 25th Amendment Section 4 and JD Vance becomes president.  I don't hear other conservatives even talking about this despite Trump's growing list of strange obsessions.  Trump has lost sight of his own MAGA mission.  His mind has become like one of those Monty Python animated cartoons I watched growing up.  He and Biden can become roommates in some kind of ward or home (needs script).  Unless this is all shtick. 

Why not Puerto Rico becoming the 51st State?

 It's already a U.S. territory.  In the wake of woke Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's resignation Trump is again saying Canada should merge with the U.S. to avoid tariffs and enjoy lower taxes.  He also wants to buy Greenland from Denmark and says we need to retake control of the Panama Canal.  I'm getting a spooky feeling this is not going to be a normal presidency.

One might mistakenly think Elon Musk is the incoming president

 Nominally tapped to cut government waste and inefficiency with Ramaswamy he sparked a MAGA civil war the other day (see previous post) and now writes opinion pieces for German newspapers.  Writing in Die Welt he said the AfD is the best hope for a dying Germany.  AfD is a fairly new political party there gaining a lot of populist support and could be a player in that country's upcoming snap elections on Feb. 23.  Could become a strong voice in the Bundestag or lower House.  I'm your Captain Google doing your work for you so you can relax.  AfD as in Alternative for Germany (Deutschland).  Many call it a far-right extremist and radical party mostly focusing on moving the migrants the hell out or in some cases at least forcibly assimilating them.  You will speak the German.  Vance also supports the AfD.  Many folk find Musk and Vance's support of the party alarming.  Homan might be considering some work over there when he's done over here.  Meanwhile Laura Loomer's blue check on X is currently under review.  I don't know what that means exactly.  In other news......

Forget about retaking the Panama Canal

 President-Elect Trump is putting too much on his plate.  Focus instead on 3 main areas: the economy, border security/illegal immigration and foreign affairs.  THAT'S IT and maybe scale back on the social media posts.

The Dummies Guide to the Middle East

 I'm not one of those knowledge off the top of my head type guys.  I'm more of a Captain Google tbh.  Wikipedia the Assad dynasty in Syria and you could easily go into the wee hours.  Get your brandy snifter.  Bashar al-Assad during his earlier life actually graduated medical school and then went to London to train to be an eye doctor but was recalled back to Syria after his older brother died in a car crash and he then became heir-apparent to the regime....military academy...Syrian occupation of Lebanon...Arab Spring...Syrian Civil War...war crimes...human rights violations...chemical weapons...the UN, Obama, Trump.  Turkey's Erdogan later became a kind of foe and worked behind the scenes...LOTS to go through.  Bashar al-Assad has now been ousted as we all know by rebel forces and the head of HTS an al-Qaida offshoot is practically running the new government.  Turkey is heavily involved and the new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to moderate its image.  Putin has granted al-Assad and his family political asylum in Moscow.  He may have brought a bag of gold coins with him.  He always wore nice suits and believed in climate change and even recognized the State of Israel in private.  Otherwise a brutal dictator.

There I've done my homework.  Trying to give this blog some heft.

The only problem is Woodward isn't a trash writer

 I'd sooner trust him than Tom Selleck trying to sell me a reverse mortgage.  Woodward's new book War - According to the book Trump and Putin had at least seven private calls since Trump left office.  Also Trump allegedly sent Putin Covid-19 test machines during the peak of the pandemic when there was a shortage.  Trump calls Woodward "a storyteller who has lost his marbles",

POT - KETTLE - BLACK

Steven Cheung Trump's communications director said Woodward's book is "the work of a truly demented and deranged man" who suffers from TDS.  Did he make up Watergate too?

There's other stuff in the book.  Lindsey Graham calls visiting Mar-a-Lago like visiting N. Korea everybody has to clap when Trump enters the room.  Biden's complicated relationship with Netanyahu and his angry tirades over the Israel/Hamas War yada Yada.

I'm no fan of the media by any stretch but it ain't Maury Povich writing.

Can Taylor Swift run?

This is all rather unprecedented.  If Biden does drop out of the race can the Dems just nominate anyone?  What are the parameters?  What are the protocols?  Trump vs. Newsom?  Trump vs. Michelle Obama?  Trump vs. Morning Joe?  How 'bout if there's no election and the country is adrift?  Let's just ride the wave and see what political shores we wind up on like a Gilligan's Island.  Is there a conspiracy somewhere?  What if Biden doesn't drop out?  I just heard he introduced Zelensky as Putin at the NATO summit.  Why do we need SNL anymore?  It doesn't seem quite fair to Trump that they can throw anybody up at this point.  You're prepping for one opponent and now it's maybe a mystery face.  Of course if Biden resigns the POTUS altogether Kamala Harris becomes president but that's the rational response.  Surreal political times.

The News is a bit off-center of late

Bill Cosby may spend the rest of his life in prison and President Donald Trump may win the Nobel Peace Prize. Haven't googled Bill Cosby's exact age of late. Could be 89, 97 or 105 but Justice has been served. Public disgrace and opprobrium not enough and I'm no legal authority but I thought there was a statute of limitations or something. The Hollywood academies have rescinded his many awards and mere mention and it's as if I Spy never existed. They finally realized Roman Polanski is a perv too and did the same such is the feminist juggernaut a little late in coming though. President Trump is seriously being mentioned as a viable peace prize potential winner with the upcoming Kim Jong-Un summit in Singapore the Stormy Daniels saga being merely a springtime diversion to fuel the news cycle. As an aside I don't see any more tip cups in Dunkin' Donuts and I have a chunk of change to spare. Are the clerks making too much or something?