Sofa-king These Down, Here

Johnson Blows His Antisemitic Dog-Whistle

House Speaker Mike Johnson was on GMA this morning, blaming George Soros for the protests at town halls held by GOP politicians.

We all know what he means by that.

Hawking These Down, Here

Don't Tune In Tonight

Don't watch the SOTU speech by the Felonious Agent Krasnov tonight. The one thing he craves is an audience and, if his ratings suck, he'll feel it.

Donnie's Middle-Class Tax Increase Began Today

President Donald Trump’s long-threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico went into effect Tuesday, putting global markets on edge and setting up costly retaliations by the United States’ North American allies.

And

President Trump has said “it’s a myth” that U.S. consumers will be paying for the tariffs through higher prices. But businesses dealing with cross-border trade with Mexico swiftly raised prices Tuesday.

Those who say that prices won't go up are eitther lying or they are denser than a lead brick if they truly believe that. The aluminum in everything from beer cans to trucks largely comes from Canadian producers because, thanks to cheap hydropower, they can smelt aluminum at less cost.

How much will this cost American consumers? More than any of the Felon's sycophants will admit. The prices for new cars and trucks are going to climb quite a bit. And when new car/truck prices skyrocket, so do the prices for used rides. We've seen this play before.

As for farmers, their exports are a prime target for retaliation.

Prices are going to rise just as inflation was easing. The economy, which was forecast to continue growing before the Fat Orange Bastard began mucking with it, is now forecast to contract.

A model utilized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta updated Monday to forecast an even steeper economic contraction, after first showing negative growth in its update last Friday.

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model had, up until the Feb. 28 update, been forecasting growth between 2-4% in line with most other models. ... But the Feb. 28 update of GDPNow saw a plummeting forecast from roughly that same 2%+ mark to -1.5%. The model updated Monday with an even more pessimistic outlook: -2.8%.

People who are under economic strain aren't schlepping their kids to Disney and other theme parks, so that'll hurt tourist states. Some red states slashed unemployment benefits, so those who will lose their jobs will suffer even more.

Looks like, thanks to the Trump Tariffs, we're heading into the Trumpcession. Be ready to see more homeless camps, a/k/a Trumpvilles, popping up here and there.

The Party of Hoover is living up to its nickname.

Don't say you weren't warned about this shit.

The Trump-Musk Looting of the Treasury

President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will create a strategic crypto reserve that will hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano.

Trump made the announcement Sunday on his Truth Social media platform, more than a month after he signed the Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology executive order, which created a presidential working group to consider the creation "of a national digital asset stockpile."

To restate this: The Orange Felon wants to take billions of dollars and give it to his crypto-bro supporters in exchange for...nothing. Because that's what crypto really is: It's nothing. If you're not a fan of "fiat currency", crypto is non-fiat currency. It's not backed by the full faith and credit of anyone. Crypto's nothing but a bunch of computer code that has value because people think it has value. It's a non-asset bubble if there ever was one.

Giving taxpayer money to the crypto-bros would be a really high-class heist. And you know, don't you, that both Musk and Trump will get their beaks wet in the deal.

The real difference between the Felon and the Rich Nazi is that the Nazi is better at his thievery.

Avatar Cat….

.... is just a photo I downloaded from somewhere ages ago. Chimp McFuckwit might have still been president.

America Joins the Axis of Evil

The Kremlin said on Sunday that the dramatic pivot in the foreign policy of the US “largely” coincides with its own vision, with Donald Trump described as having “common sense”.

The US president, who has often said he respects his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, has worked to build ties with Moscow since taking office in January, including twice siding with Russia in UN votes.

“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told a reporter from state television. “This largely coincides with our vision.”

If you know any Republican from the 1980s who was talking about the Axis of Evil, look them up in their nursing homes and ask them what the fuck is wrong with their party.

But it's probably more of a reversion to type. The GOP before WW2 was pro-isolation and pro-fascism. They haven't changed.

What has changed is that the Orange Felon has brought a mob-like sentiment to foreign policy, where there is nothing binding and breaking an agreement is routinely done. He bleats about not going to the defense of other NATO nations, conveniently forgetting that the only Article 5 action was after 9/11, when NATO airplanes helped patrol our skies and when NATO nations sent troops to Afghanistan.

The Bloated Ancient Bigot has sent this message to the world: America stands for nothing. America has no principles. America's word is not with the paper a treaty or agreement is printed on.

The Chinese see it:

The damage caused by Donald Trump to the United States’ reputation is creating opportunities for China, particularly with regards to Taiwan, according to a retired senior colonel from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Speaking to the Guardian in Beijing, Zhou Bo said that Trump was damaging the US’s reputation “more than all of his predecessors combined”.

“By the end of his second term, I believe America’s global image will simply become more tarnished, its international standing will just go down further,” Zhou said. The people of Taiwan “know that America is going down”, which “might affect their mentality” with regards to China.

He and his children will be a-mouldering in their graves before the United States regains the resepect that we so cavalierly threw away last Fall.

Unwelcoming These Down, Here

And this:

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

F-15:

In Case You've Forgotten, Bribing Trump Still Works for Really Rich Criminals

In December, Popular Information reported that Chinese [national] crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a new venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family. Sun’s purchase resulted in a cash windfall for Trump. On Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Sun sent a joint letter to a federal judge, asking for a stay of Sun's case. Today, the judge granted the SEC's request.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest. Sun was also charged with paying celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, and Soulja Boy, for endorsing his crypto “without disclosing their compensation,” which violates federal law.

A few weeks after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Sun publicly announced that he had become WLF's largest investor, buying $30 million of its tokens. ... Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun's purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported.

The article also points out that the crypto-tokens are, essentially, worthless. If it looks like a bribe, walks like a bribe and reeks like a bribe...

And yet Trump, that cheapskate, only paid 25 large in "campaign contributions" to get then FL-AG Bondi to back off her investigation of his shady activities. She sold herself cheap.

Here Comes a Nuclear World

Quite a number of nations live under the American nuclear umbrella, where they don't need to build their own nukes because the Americans have nukes and have signed mutual-defense treaties of one flavor or another.

But, as we are seeing in real time, the United States under Trump has shown itself to be a mercurial parter to whom agreements, let alone principles, mean nothing.

So I expect that a number of nations will, in very short order, quietly start (or restart) programs to acquire nuclear weapons. Some of them might be able to do that in a matter of months or a few years.

Here Come the Gay/Trans Witch-Hunts

DHS now permits its jackbooted, Constitution-shredding thugs to open investigations on people solely because they are gay, lesbian or trans. No other reason is now needed.

Some Conservatives Are Disgusted With the Party of Trump

Bret Stephens, for one, who wrote this:

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
...
Roosevelt and Reagan must be spinning in their graves, as are Churchill and Thatcher. It’s up to the rest of us to reclaim America’s honor from the gangsters who besmirched it in the White House.

Honor is not something that can be reclaimed easily. Being a dishonorable and treacherous person or country is a long-term stain. And it only takes one time to earn that label.

Trump demonstrated to the world yesterday that he is in thrall to Putin and that he is aligning the United States with one of the worst regimes on the globe. And the rest of the world got that message.

Also, this:

Caturday

Speck is hiding in the garage.

Life in a Country Where the President Is a Toxic Mixture of Neville Chamberlain and Al Capone

From today's meeting:

Khrushchev was right:

Watching the bullshit today was depressing. Ukraine is bearing the burden of Russian aggression and the Putinist in the White House is intent on rewriting history and blaming Ukraine for the war.

I have lived through a lot of crap in this country and I have never been as ashamed of this country as I am today. Thanks to the Felon's maladministration, the United States has shown itself to be a country that can't keep its word or live up to an agreement. Other countries can have treaties and agreements on topics ranging from security to trade, and all it will take is one maniacal moron who was elected president by a bunch of disgruntled crackers to blow it all up.

The Old Fat Fuck of Florida has demonstrated to the world that the United States is not a serious country. We cannot be counted on in a pinch, or, for that matter, at all. Chairman Xi is probably laughing in his tea at the prospect of crushing Taiwan.

The French have it right:

Vraiment!

And this:

Putin's poodles, indeed.

Because It's Friday

"Blue Peter":

Republicans Support Sex Traffickers (And Death Cults)

The Tampa Bay Young Republicans tweeted an invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to come speak to their group, drawing swift criticism for the outreach to the men currently facing charges for human trafficking and related offenses in multiple countries.

Between this and the Felon's administration putting the squeeze on the Romanians to let the Tates flee, it's becoming clear that QAnon was right: The government is a cabal of sex pets and sex traffickers.

Note, also, that GOP yammering about Epstein and his sex trafficking stopped the day after the election.

There would seem to be an argument that Republicans have become a eugenics party, that by cutting support for vaccines and combatting infectious diseases, that only those people will die and their party will gain power. They're also floating the idea of mass sterilizations of "lesser-quality humans".

The modern term for this Nazi bullshit is "necrosecurity". Those who die are "ungrievable subjects".

The GOP is an extremist and fascist hate group. That's beyond dispute, now.

The Corruption is Blatant

Musk wants to strip Verizon of a contract with the FAA and, surprise, surprise, surprise, award it to his company.

Corruption? Check. Undue influence? Check. Self-dealing? Check.

In normal times, he'd already be in custody for such blatant corruption. But since he and the Demented Felon are running the country like a fourth-world republic, it's to be expected.

Slicing These Down, Here