Word on the street

 Is President Trump will soon officially recognize a Palestinian State.  Angling for a Nobel Peace Prize to show Obama.  Meeting with the Saudis, the new Syrian president putting Netanyahu on the back burner for now.  Helped free the last American hostage without his help.  Rumor has it he has cut off direct contact with Bibi.  As part of the nuclear energy agreement with the Saudis he has dropped the Biden era stipulation that they recognize the State of Israel.  Also got a major investment deal going.  More than major.

Down through the decades with each succeeding president the Middle East has taken up way too much of our foreign policy time.  If he does officially recognize the State of Palestine I'll give him more than a few points for this.  Would be a good legacy if he controls the other zaniness.  So far Trump is an assortment. 

Ever have a conversation with a Trump cultist?

 It's spooky.  I personally know at least three of them.  Now we all have our political leanings.  I'm not talking about those who are supportive of Trump but the true believers out there.  When you gingerly and politely bring up even a mildly negative point about Trump they rationalize it.  There's no hesitation about it either as if they've imbibed the talking points. They agree with and defend EVERYTHING the man does and says.  For me personally Trump is not positive.  He doesn't inspire and unite and has no real gravitas for the most important position in the land but for them it's always the Democrats and the media's fault.  The Trump cultists it's a phenomenon. 

Should be interesting

 The new American pope Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago now Pope Leo XIV was a heavy retweeter of Trump criticism on social media before his election to Pontiff in particular re Trump's immigration policies.  Trump said on his Truth Social the first American pope in history is a great honor.  I say it would be great if Leo and Homan shared an ale together.

Stay tuned......

A conclave and Nancy Grace will be in her glory

 Diddy trial to start any day now with jury selection still underway.  Don't know the questions the potential jurors get.  "Did you ever see the music video 'Hypnotize' with Biggie and Puffy?"  Got to thinking if I had even a fraction of Diddy's money uppermost for me would be major home improvement e.g. electric staircase going up into the attic with wifi and cupholders.  Telescope up there too.  Kitchen and bath remodel.  The backyard - Inground swimming pool, small Chinese garden/pond with exotic fish, some Greek statuary here and there.  It would never dawn on me to run a sex trafficking ring.  He ain't livin' right.

The Conclave - I don't follow the stuff.  Mainly older Italian guys with a few Africans thrown in the mix.  Keep getting videos in my YouTube feed about the last pope of the End Times but I don't get my theology from Mel Gibson.  You have your Catholics who are more into bingo and bake sales then you have your more eschatologically-minded Catholics who speculate about Antichrist stuff.  YouTube sends me things all the time I never searched for.  A gorilla fighting an alligator.  Clickbait.

So we got a couple of topics going.  A diversion from the usual Trump stuff.

2 dolls instead of 30

 Trump has announced 100% tariffs on all foreign-made movies.  It's hard to figure out why certain things bug the man.  Said in an interview with NBC News he's not sure if he believes in due process or not.  Does he not know how to bone up for interviews?  MTG no longer a fan.  You kind of want to forget he's president.  He's like a kind of depressing backdrop as you go about your life.  Won't seek another term.  On a brighter note they told me at work the bird flu is over.

Papa Trump

 I had to cogitate on this one.  By now we've all seen the ai-generated image of Pope Donald.  In and of itself this is not that offensive.  Put it in the mildly amusing folder but I think the timing is bad and he seems to have succeeded in angering the bishops.  In my view it's unbecoming of a serious Administration.  Imagine if Uncle Joe had done this.

Just my 2 cents.

The PBS thing is to distract you from not getting your $5,000 DOGE check

 Trump is the everything but the cost-of-living president.  Trump also wants to defund NPR through executive action.  Actually ending taxpayer funding for both NPR and PBS would require an act of Congress as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created by that body in the first place.  I don't listen to NPR so don't have much to say.  As for PBS let's say they do have a political slant most of the shows on PBS have nothing to do with politics.  Saw a sewing show once that put me to sleep.  Bob Ross takes the edge of a rough day and you have your penguin documentaries and cooking shows and music specials.  Also a lot of stuffy British fare.  Don't watch PBS as much anymore.  Heavy channel-surfer or just watch YouTube.

When is Trump gonna take over Yonkers?

Trump's First 100 Days in Office - Take a walk on the wild Right

 Arresting judges.  We don't need no Education Dept.  Bomb the Houthis.  Hey hey ho ho DEI has got to go.  You're fired then rehired.  Deporting the wrong people.  DOGE it baby!  Tariffs.  Trade wars.  Funding freezes.  Bibi.  Gaza.  Zelensky.  Putin.  Harvard.  You wanna protest on campus?  STFU.  Have you checked your cat for anti-semitism lately?  Executive orders.  Homan.  Cap'n Crunch.  Food dyes.  Measles.  Gulf of Trump.  Greenland.  Have you caught up on your texts today for maybe secret Yemeni war plans?  Closing USAID.  Who needs to eat?  Scale back the medical research grants already.  Cancer shmancer.  Low polls blame FOX News.  Tell the judges to go fuck off.  Bondi.  Patel.  Lawfare.  Trump vs. trans soldiers.  Canada as the 51st state?

Can Fall Out Boy make a song out of all of this?

The media made me do it

 Yes the left-wing media doesn't like Trump.   Never did.  This was really obvious during the campaign.  My daily newsfeeds were saturated with anti-Trump stuff.  If the media could have gone with Trump ate somebody's dog they would have gone with Trump ate somebody's dog.  Having said that Trump has tracked a nuttier course than I would have expected but conservatives are still blaming the msm.  Trump lost me after Gulf of America and Greenland.  The media didn't make him almost trigger a worldwide recession.  Not speedily correcting deportation mistakes.  Squelching free speech on campus etc. etc.  To paraphrase Flip Wilson's Geraldine the media made me do it.  Not good enough.  Doesn't wash anymore. 

Less executive orders mean less tangles with judges

 As a practical matter.  A wise young manager I had once said you have to choose your battles.  This does NOT mean the judges are right on all the issues.  They're not but many see themselves as gods, the most powerful branch of the government but that's a separate post and I've blogged about it.  Trump started his second term like gangbusters with a swagger and a new sheriff in town kind of 'tude.  Practical advice lose the 'tude!  You can't govern for four years on executive orders alone.  You're not a monarch.  If the issue is important enough yes have at it with a judge but you don't have to right every wrong or every perceived wrong in four years.  Leave that to the next guy or gal.  Trans soldiers there can't be that many of them let it go.  DEI I had to google what this meant but it seems to be taking up a huge chunk of the President's time and on and on it goes.  What does it all matter if most people are going to sucky jobs in the morning?

I don't know what the guy's doing.

Fighting Harvard doesn't help people put food on the table

 Or pay the rent or manage the mortgage or take the animals to the vet.  Most of us wouldn't be able to get into Harvard.  Most of us wouldn't be able to afford Harvard hence I hardly ever think of Harvard.  Much of what Trump is doing in his first 100 days, I mean the executive order stuff aimed at socio/cultural issues like DEI I would describe these actions as low-impact meaning they don't positively affect the average person.  Many of the Trump obsessions he's trying to codify into law don't help the bulk of Americans afford basic living.  Trump has so much on his plate it's just leading to political diarrhea and nothing substantive in his second term.  Harvard doesn't need the federal funding but that's besides the point.

Everything but the cost-of-living.

Pope Francis passes away one day after meeting with JD Vance

 There could have been a heated exchange about migration.  Maybe Trump wants to annex the Vatican.  A Homan/Francis meeting would have been most interesting.  The Breaking News - Pope Francis passes away at 88 after a bout with a long illness.

Kind of controversial among popes.  Not popular among the more conservative Catholics who felt he was confusing in his mixed messaging and didn't exactly uphold Church teaching at all times.  Big on climate change.  More liked among progressives is a fair assessment. 

Catholicism an ongoing topic of interest to me.  Varied and diverse.  Catholic prophecy - Fatima and LaSalette.  Rome losing the Faith.  Antipopes.  3 Days of Darkness.  Mystical phenomenon.  The Saints.  Keep getting Padre Pio videos in my YouTube feed.  He said cats are special and God put them into your life for a reason.  I love Church music.  Acoustics in my house of worship are bad.  Can't hear what anybody is saying or else I need an amplifier.  How much money do ushers make?  One Sunday morning usher looks like he came out of Hawaii Five-O.

Vance said he was happy he got the opportunity to meet the Pope.  Francis might have been wondering where is the Christian Brothers?

Elon Musk - the Sperminator and his mission to save Humanity

 DC Comics

So I didn't know the full breadth of this.  I knew Elon has like 14 children by 4 different women.  It's also well-known he is pro-higher birth rates.  That's a legit position imo about more in a minute.  What I didn't know is he actually solicits women online to be potential mothers to his future offspring.  He talks about surrogates.  Also didn't know about his compound in TX where such mothers are invited to live.  I'm leading up to something here wait for it.  So this movement for higher birthrates has a name - natalism.  J.D. Vance is a proponent although he's not taking it to another level like Musk.  Don't think Usha would approve.  OK so if your thing is if you think the average American isn't having enough children, that we haven't been reaching the most basic replacement level for a healthy population to sustain itself economically and in all ways then wouldn't you welcome

IMMIGRANTS

legal and otherwise?

It's a little easier than going through life being a sperminator superhero out to save the Planet.  Contradictions and paradoxes within the Trump Administration.  I thank you for your time.

We're proud of our mistakes

 So yeah on occasion the Homan trawlers do pick up the wrong fish, small fry swimming the wrong way.  The gay hairdresser, the Maryland father and who knows who else off to that notorious El Salvadoran prison.  This would be less controversial if the problem were fixed right away.  Say put the wrongly snagged in a hotel room for the night with a flight waiting for them in the morning.  Perhaps throw in a $100 MAGA gift card by way of apology.  Instead we get Trump standing with the Salvadoran dickhead saying they can't do anything about this.  Administrative errors.  Wrongly interpreted tattoos.  A Homan hunch.  Whatever.  MAGA zombies like Megyn Kelly see no problem while Rogan offered only some tepid criticism.  The WH Stepford press secretary.  100 Days of Chaos.

Don'tcha just hate the bureaucracy?

Katy Perry in Space

 Could be a TV show.  The news is stranger by the day.  They just brought the dire wolf back from extinction.  What else can or might they resurrect?  Maybe they can bring back Cro-Magnon Man.  Upper management.   Maybe he can run for office.  I know we have that already.  My friend said once in the car they want to bring the Woolly Mammoth back.  I thought too much YouTube thought he was talking smack.  Maybe they can clone Homan.  Five Homans can get the job done five times faster.  Now when you google something you get an AI Overview.  How to make quiche.  AI the Chef.  AI the Carpenter.   AI the Plumber.  Does Trump plan on building some kind of vast prison system on Greenland?

I can't believe I'm living.

Leave and come back

 Sometimes I hear this when Trump is talking about the illegals or DHS might say it.  I don't know what this means.  To self-deport sounds like spontaneous human combustion.  Leave to where and for how long?  Then to come back the proper way and wear a suit and tie?  Maybe OAN can explain it.

Oy vey! - Team Trump giving off those creepy Orwellian vibes

 Fresh on the heels of almost ruining millions of Americans 401k plans (90 day tariff pause) Team Trump has announced they are going to be monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants seeking permanent legal status as well as the online musings of foreign students.  They're going to be looking for antisemitic posts.  Watch them conflate legitimate criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza with support for Hamas and Hezbollah and other terror groups.  No wonder Bibi was grinning on his recent trip to the WH.  I say this if the Trump Administration is going to get all pervy about people's privacy at least include a middle finger emoji at the end of the post.  The Peeps Administration:)

Trumpian economics is a lot like quantum physics

 

You can't understand it.  Looks like we're in a bear market now.  U.S. futures are way down and last few days Wall Street and the global markets have been tanking.  Sen. Ted Cruz is starting to get pissed and Elon Musk has been taking potshots at Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro.  Trump says it's all medicine to make it all better.  Just a spoonful of bullshit I guess.  The UAW likes the tariffs though.  Some House Repubs are worried and have put stuff on the table.  CA is looking to still do business despite the tariffs.  New cars sales are up all of a sudden.  Folks buying wheels now before the tariffs drive the prices up.  Pop a prozac?  Maybe stock up on the Christian Brothers.

We got enough on our plate.  My thing is Trump didn't campaign on bring the pain.

He's not wrong

 Obama on Trump

Okay I guess I'm not a team player but I agree with some of this.  It's not that I'm turning more liberal it's Trump doesn't understand the Constitution or appreciate American values like free speech.  Anti-Trump protests planned across the country today.  Conservative media will most likely downplay it but you don't have to be a liberal to have concerns about Trump.  Also on the Greenland front  the Danish PM reminded Trump you can't just annex a country.

100 Days of Chaos.

I can't be wrong

 Trump has a complex personality type.  Not sure of the exact clinical diagnosis but besides narcissism a key element is the attitude I Can't Be Wrong.  This is not uncommon.  You see it in the business world a lot.  Companies and corporations might do things that seem stupid to the average employee but they never reevaluate as they go along but just forge ahead anyway even if they eventually drive the company into the ground.  I've seen it firsthand.  Will never take corporate responsibility.  They can't be wrong.  It's a funny way to go through Life though with that attitude.  At the root of many problems.  Maybe this goes a way explaining Trump's popularity in a way he mirrors us.  It's frightening in a leader though.  He's not the cerebral type but the GeeeZers will always sing his praises.  

I see Dr. Phil has made a hard turn to the Right going on ICE campouts with Homan.  Do they roast marshmallows together?  BTW who the hell is this Laura Loomer chick some unofficial advisor to the president?