stevenkesslar

I'm thinking as a treat we should raise some money to send @Barknaway to Trump Gaza for a week. What do you guys think? This is a good news, bad news thing. Good news is @Barknaway has obviously spent lots of time and energy finding and posting stupid, useless, and hateful MAGA videos every day. The videos suck. And I stopped watching them after 50 or 100 proving just how dumb this all is. I guess I learned something from that. But the effort itself is amusing. It's like watching white mice racing around uselessly, lost in a maze. Kind of amusing, if you and not the mice. Personally, I think @Barknaway deserves a treat. Sadly, there is bad news. Ai and Trump Gaza is cool and what not. But there is a real world out there. And, truth to be,@Barknaway is failing. Since @Barknaway started his journey in his personal hate maze, Trump has lost like 8 points of net approval. In the poll average he is close to the tipping point of disapproval already. Yeah, we've seen this movie before. We know where it goes. Dead DEI babies in Africa don't mean nuthin to obedient MAGA pups. The real shit starts when they cut Medicaid. Try taking food away from your sick dog and see what happens. The great thing about a week at Trump Gaza is @Barknaway can spend even more time finding and posting even more hateful and stupid videos. The two things seem to be related, actually. The roughly half of America that voted against Trump is solidifying around the reality that this is truly horrible and hateful. What a surprise! The roughly half that voted for Trump is holding on for now, barely. Agait, wait for the Medicaid cuts. And look out below. I'm a dog lover. I don't want them barking with broken legs. For now, Trump Gaza is all the rage. We could maybe even have some Tik Toks of some hot Muslim pool boys!

C'mon. @Barknaway. Be a good obedient MAGA puppy. No snarling or passive aggressiveness. Now that you have found your voice, I can see why you only post dumb Tik Tik shit I stopped watching. I don't like things that make me stupid. That said, I'm hoping you will double and triple down. 20 videos a day? 30? 50? 100? Step it up! The videos are dumb and boring as shit. But this project is entertaining. I've always wondered what happens when someone fills their brain 24/7 with lies, bullshit, hate, and just plain utter stupid. Will I come to this website one day and your brain will have exploded and be splattered everywhere? Will you get a brain worm like RFK Jr. and just post more and more stupid and irrelevant shit? Meanwhile, every time I see your icon I know you are shouting, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm a dumb fuck!" No one cares, no one watches, and we all think, "Yup. He's a dumb fuck and proud of it." So please post a lot more videos. We have like four years to go. You need to show some dedication to your MAGA cause. And I'm amused. And thanks for the entertainment! Don't have hateful Tik Tok videos. I'm just an old fashioned gal, like my Beloved Sister In Cock. So I'll post this.

Unbelievable. No logic, no strategy, no allies, no plan, no chance of success. Just 100 % Trump egomania and Trump stupidity. That AI insanity sums it nicely.

It’s the Health Care, Stupid. Forget DOGE. Republicans are playing with political fire as they move to gut Medicaid. This just in. The Republican Party is not the party of the working class. Yup, you heard it here first. In order to be a centrist working class party, Republicans actually have to be a centrist working class party. Going after Obamacare in 2017 and Medicaid now is a betrayal of Trump working class voters who wanted lower prices. They will get less affordable health care instead. As that article details, there are moderate Republican House members who represent centrist working class districts. And they would like the Republican Party to be a centrist working class party. Oh well. Better luck next time. This is playing out just like 2017. The Republican Party is run by billionaire special interests who want tax cuts for themselves. And destruction of consumer protection and safety standards they don't like, like with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau holding Wall Street accountable. Steve Bannon can talk all he wants about a populist working class party. How long did that last in 2017? Did Bannon get his tax increase on the rich to help the working class? Nope. They gave huge tax breaks to the Republican special interest donors and tried to kill Obamacare. The momentum is all on Trump's side right now. And I'm glad. In a few months all these moderate Republicans will be very nicely gutted and bled out. They may be the walking dead for another year, like in 2017. But the billionaire fat cats like Musk and the right wing ideologues will do the throat slitting. Democrats don't even have to lift a finger. California may have been the canary in the coal mine in 2024, oddly enough. We ejected three Republican House members who had struggled to keep power for a few terms. All three districts were centrist and disproportionately minority districts. All three were swept out because they couldn't defend what Trump's Republicans actually do, but don't say.

Duh! Tens of thousands of dead women and children. It was the inflation, stupid. But there is no doubt based on vote totals on college campuses and wherever Palestinian Americans live that this hurt Harris and helped Trump win. And I think the American Jews that support Bibi The Baby Killer already vote Republican. Of course, Trump made glorious and everlasting peace with North Korea in his first divine incarnation. I'm sure in this Second Coming we will have peace in the Middle East, and the best casinos in Gaza ever!

Traitor Liar Trump

One Simple Question for Democrats What would the working class say? Ruy Teixeira Ruy Teixeira is a lot like Elizabeth Warren to me. He is passionately committed to working class populist economics. He is a permanent scold these days. But he is usually right, and well ahead of the curve. When he and John Judis wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in the dark days of W. and the Iraq War, it seemed like a liberal fantasy. I think it was the rise of Trump and his authoritarian working class populism that shifted Teixeira and Judis. They have been calling out the dangers of left wing college-educated elite and woke politics for years. Even though Judis himself used to work for In These Times, the democratic socialist paper. Times change. If there is anything they are particularly against, it is "woke". And for decades they have been right, and early. It took a few decades to get from W. in 2002, when The Emerging Democratic Majority came out, to the actual emerging Democratic majority under Obama, to the self-inflicted wound of too much wokeism under Biden and Harris. So I think he is right on the money that "what would the working class say?" is THE question Democrats need to ask constantly for at least a few decades to come. If I had to bet, I would bet that there is a better than 50/50 chance that Democrats will win in 2026 and 2028 just like we did in 2018 and 2020. Basically for the same reasons. The three biggest differences with Trump this time are more cruelty, more betrayal of allies, and more debt. So if the goal is to have the barest of majorities, we can let Trump solve that problems for us. If the goal is to do what Judis and Teixeira want, which is to have the power to enact a lasting FDR-like coalition grounded in working class economic populism, it is going to take a lot more. Like being able to win Senate seats in Ohio, or North Dakota, or Missouri, or Indiana. Which we held until 2018, six years ago. First, it will take some candidate that has gut appeal to the working class. But it will also take a shift away from culturally woke politics and toward real pocketbook economics. I think the hardest part for Democrats is not the progressive elite groups, like climate change ideologists, that Teixeira grew to hate because of their arrogance and purity tests. I think the biggest problem is rich donors and special interests. Basically all the ones that gave money to Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema to block raising their taxes or doing shit that working class people actually want. Like raise taxes on billionaires to fund things Medicaid and Obamacare. The working class like things like that a lot. On his best day in a decade, Trump could barely win 49.7 % of the vote. And it took global inflation that tossed out incumbents all over the world to even do that. So I don't believe for a second the death rumors of the Democratic Party. Which is what you will get a mouthful of if you scan the comments after Teixeira's article. Or watch @Barknaway's TikToks, which are stupid and quickly grew very boring. We did so horribly in 2024 that we actually picked up one House seat. That's not 1980 or 1984. Meanwhile, our neighbor Mexico elected a woman progressive populist from the incumbent party in a landslide. Because they did seem to ask every day, "What would the working class say?" They listened, and delivered - despite inflation that was just as bad.

We regret to interrupt your regularly scheduled TikTok lies and hate. DOGE shared its receipts — and some of them don’t match “Everyone is very well-aware they’re repeating the wrong numbers,” said one manager at a company on DOGE’s list of cuts. We now return you to your regularly scheduled TikTok lies and hate. Long live President Musk!

Are you my nephew in disguise? 😉 He literally just sent me that a few days ago. But it was not meant as a compliment to Buffet. My nephew is more confident about his ability to use technical analysis to know when to buy and sell than I am of mine. I made the point, which he does not agree with, that Buffet always has the last laugh. Because he focuses on long term fundamentals - it's the profits and the economy, stupid! - rather than technical signals. That was my nephew's polite way of calling Buffet and me has beens, I think. 🙄 Those returns for either BK or the S& P are nothing to sneeze at. But Buffet does not outperform the way he used to. We both speculated it could be because Buffet is wary of tech stocks (but not Apple), and this bull market has been even more tech-focused than most. I still think Buffet will have the last laugh. So it is noteworthy that he has been selling and piling up cash. In fairness, he was doing it when Biden was POTUS, also. He clearly thinks the market and economic valuations he uses are stretched about as far as they ever go. Wow, people still use facts. Who knew? So the question is whether Trump and greed can stretch it even further before the inevitable collapse. Whether markets reach new highs, the value that is definitely added by Trump is he will run up the US debt to heights never seen before, even in World War II. Ray Dalio, who is always gloomy, is on a roll now saying if we don't bring annual deficits back down to 3 % of GDP, we are going off the cliff in no more than three years. Where is Bill Clinton, aka President Surplus, when you need him? Can I pass on the Epstein files, and take higher taxes on billionaires instead? One estimate I read is that annual deficits as a percentage of GDP are about 6-7 % now, and Trump's plans will get that up to 10 % of GDP. What could possibly go wrong? My nephew, like lots of Millennials and Zoomers, is cynical about government ever getting it right. He does usually vote Democratic. And he thinks Trump is a stupid moron. But he thinks in the long run Democrats will be glad Harris lost. Because Trump will own the train wreck that is coming. Since Trump has a stellar track record at bankruptcy, it is not difficult at all for me to imagine that happening.

Sorry. Can't resist. I'm just teasing. I agree with your basic point, and would go further. There are three huge winners for almost everything Trump is doing: China, China, and China. Xi must be absolutely delighted. And our allies, especially in Asia but also in Europe, are in shock. Congratulations, Xi. Even if Trump 2.0 ends as badly as Trump 1.0, and Democrats come roaring back like in 2018 and 2020 (we did gain one House seat even in 2024) there is no going back on this one. Everyone now knows for a fact that America is fickle and unreliable. That said, I found that meme maybe about a year ago and sent it to a nephew who is my partner in crime on stock trading. At some point last year I was into both FXI, a China ETF, and BIDU. I figured both were scraping long term bottoms, and poised for recovery. Probably correctly. But I got out of small positions with small profits on both BIDU and FXI to put more into US tech stocks instead. Meanwhile, I've been selling shares of FNGU (Facebook, etc.) at like a 200 - 300 % profit that I bought in late 2023 when tech stocks dipped. Don't count the US out yet. FXI has a one year return of 58 % as of today. Woo hoo. (Or is it Wuhan? LOL) But, their three year return is 1.69 %. China is coming off long term bottoms. The US stock exchanges mostly keep breaking records. My placeholder for stocks under Trump is an FT article posted right after he won. It predicted that we will have a stock sugar high, just like when Trump had a hog feed for billionaires and corporations in 2017. Poor things! They really need the money - not veterans or working class Trump voters. But within a few years, FT predicted, Trump will find a way to fuck it all up. I always think the past is the best guide. So I buy that. He'll fuck things up again, eventually. He's already off to a great start. Now I'm not even sure about a 2025 sugar high. Trump is doing so many things that will have so many unknown consequences that all bets are off. One reason to get scared from US markets is simply the degree of uncertainty based on his politics of retribution, and erratic behavior. The other thing that is for sure is that young voters, Black and Hispanic voters, and White working class voters who do not have a lot of wealth in homes or stocks, and are pissed about high rents, will not benefit from any of this. I read an article today about how The National Association of Home Builders is saying everything Trump is doing will make it harder to increase rental housing supply. From tariffs on construction materials to deportation of migrant laborers to cuts in HUD. The home builders are not left wing Bernie supporters. These signals could be canaries in the coal mine that things will end badly more quickly than in Trump 1.0. Anyways, congratulations Xi, and China. He's the big winner.

I'll defend polling in this sense. In 2024, and in most cycles, it has mostly been accurate. We knew this election was going to be close. And it was. Right now I think it is important because MAGA zealots want to claim Trump is more popular than ever. And he has a mandate to do lots of terrible things. The first part is half true. The fact that he has 48.5 % public approval today does mean he is more popular than ever. Which is sad. Of course, if @Barknway can believe that J6ers did not have weapons when they attacked cops, which most of the world and lots of judges and juries know from their own eyeballs is a whopping Trump lie, they can believe whatever they want about polls. The interesting question is why did Democrats reject the Sanders style of economic populism, while Republicans accepted the Trump brand of authoritarian populism? Sanders was at core about making the economy work for the screwed over working class, as Ronny outlines. Trump put his finger on the same cause and constituency, and came up with an authoritarian solution. He did not fix any of the problems Chieng outlined in his first term. Nor will he in his second. This is great news for billionaires, corporations, and all the winners in the income inequality divide. Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump's pollsters, said they modelled out how Trump could win and came up with a plan. He did not go into details. But I am sure part of it was that Trump absolutely needed to win the votes of young people who were in puberty in 2016. They have no real memory of Trump 1.0,. And many feel like Biden failed to keep their rent affordable or deliver on other promises, like student debt. I think their goal was probably to get 49.0000001 % of the vote, or whatever was needed to get an electoral college or popular vote win. And they got it, barely. So polling was effective in helping Team Trump figure out how to win the narrowest of victories. Democrats ought to be figuring out how to at least do that much. But the best thing would be to actually help the working class victims that Chieng describes. Trump can not and will not do that with his agenda. If Democrats want power, they will have to rise to the occasion and do that.

The whole thing is a stunning betrayal. Both of people outside the US - like Ukraine and democracies everywhere - and to his own voters. It will take years to understand the consequences. But they won't be good. What we know now is that Putin is happy, and Xi is happier still. It is a huge incentive for Xi to invade Taiwan and bring war to Asia. Why not? The US is feckless. I assume the people around Trump who are smarter than him think of this as realist politics: defocus on Russia to focus on China. But even if I start with that premise, it makes zero sense to start that by saying, "See. If you invade and have a genocide, no problem." That is what Trump just did. I'm all for cutting waste in the military. I find it hard to believe you can cut 8 % a year for five years without fucking over veterans. That is assuming Trump means what he says. Which is, of course, always a bad assumption. Republicans have already figured out they can not cut Musk's taxes without also cutting the Medicaid and food assistance Trump voters use. GOP House members in swing Hispanic districts are already complaining about it. As you said, Trump can not run again. So maybe he just doesn't care if they piss off Hispanics and veterans. Maybe it is about retribution against all the things in the national and global order that Trump feels grievances about.

Jared Polis: DOGE is ‘tearing down the old without necessarily having a more efficient way of doing it’ I think that sums it up. While he is unfortunately a DEI Gay hire, Polis is known as Gov. Efficiency among Democrats. So on matters like this, I overweight his opinions and experience. And I think the handwriting on the wall is basically, "They are good at breaking shit. Not governing." I mean, it's not like Trump won by a landslide in 2020 for his amazingly competent management of COVID. Ezra Klein argued recently that Polis is good at figuring out how to cut taxes, reduce costs, and cut regulations. And he does it constantly. I was with family in Denver for Thanksgiving, all Democrats. I asked the family members who lives there about it and they love the guy. Colorado had among the least slippage from blue to red in the 2024. My guess is Polis gave a good branding to the D label. I think Kasich and DeWine did the same in Ohio, focusing on good conservative governing and compromise rather than lies and bile. Which is why they win in landslides and have put good branding on the R label in Ohio. My MAGA niece who lives in Ohio of course thinks of DeWine as a RINO. She did not know he won re-election in a landslide in 2022, and did not know who Kevin McCarthy is. One of my brothers who was a university professor in Nevada nailed this point about a decade ago. He said the Tea Party legislature really seemed to want to tear down UNLV with no idea of how to rebuild what they destroyed. It was just take a sledgehammer and feel good about breakin shit. Since then the state has pretty much been run by Democrats. That said, it was also ground zero for where inflation and high rent really hurt lots of working class people. That got them a Republican Gov, barely. Breaking shit is not going to help Trump, and it is already showing. Democrats should focus like a laser on how to get through to and help working class people. Polis is a great example of how to do the efficiency and good governance piece. Trump and Musk are not.

Well, good news, bad news. Hate to sound selfish. But good news is I am learning a lot from @Barknaway. I've always wondered, "What happens when you fill a mind with ignorance, lies, and hate?" This is like a master class in how to fuck up your brain with bullshit. Yeah, it bores me. But at least I learn something. Bad news is if the point is to help Trump, it ain't workin. For some strange reason I don't understand, all this shit alienates and annoys people. Not to mention being a traitor to Ukraine and NATO and planning to go after his own voters' Medicaid. Oh, and raising prices through tariffs. I mean, Trump had like a 96 % approval all through his first term. So I don't know where this suddenly came from. Anyway, I'm hoping @Barknaway can step up his game. Maybe more TikTok videos? But since no one watches them, that won't help. Maybe we could give him treats for at least trying?

Warning signs for Trump in new polling Two new polls show the president’s approval rating is slipping. Just one more sign of how the mainstream media lies, and we should only believe the lies and hate of the MAGA hive on Tik Tok. When I voted for Trump, I do it for two reasons. Both of which America obviously needs. More money for Elon Musk. And more power for Elon Musk.

Republicans in Hispanic-heavy districts push Johnson not to slash Medicaid or SNAP I mean, what could more more important than tax cuts for Elon Musk, billions of federal dollars for Elon Musk, and gutting federal consumer protections and safety standards? I dunno. Maybe being abusive to your queer daughter?

Musk underwater in public opinion, 2 polls show Fire the cruel asshole. Then investigate all the billions he's taken from taxpayers for waste, fraud and abuse.

Well at least he's not Gay. Kudos to the Christian Republicans who are whining about what a family guy Elon Musk is. NOT! The family-values right takes on Musk’s family

LOL. Are you kidding? This is a massive looting on behalf of special interest billionaire donors and Wall Street and corporate interests. Looting doesn't quite capture the intent. Because it is not just about the tax cuts. Wall Street and megabanks will be delighted that the consumer protections that helped working class Trump voters at agencies like the CFPB are being gutted. I'm a bit surprised, actually, that in polls people view the CFPB (huh? what's that?) more favorably than Musk. It proves a lot of people are paying attention. It's funny that Republican Senators are whining about how the cuts to USAID will hurt their farmers, who sell USAID the food that stops people from dying. Does anyone think Musk gives a flying fuck? He is an egomaniac who wants to save the human race by taking us to Mars. Putting food on the table? He sucks at that. The Democrats absolutely need to reconnect with farmers and labor. I went to college in Minnesota, and saw my college professor figure out how to end an era of Republican dominance and win a US Senate seat by fighting like hell for farmers and labor and the working class. That is what the Democratic Party (the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota) used to be. Walz has done a good job at that. Both as a House member, who represented the district I went to school in, and as a Guv. He learned how to be a populist at Camp Wellstone. The Democratic Party needs to go back to its winning roots. Big business is not going to ride to the rescue. They will enjoy, and profit from, the looting.

I've probably said half a dozen times in posts here that the American media is completely ignoring the fact that while Trump barely won in the US, and is now looting it for his special interest donors like Musk, the exact opposite happened in Mexico. Instead of getting swept out, the incumbent party won in a landslide. Well, now we have a really good article. And it figures it would be in The Nation. Morena and Claudia Sheinbaum Have Kept Up Mexico's Move to the Left Incumbent parties around the world keep losing to upstart challengers. Yet Mexico’s López Obrador defied the trend, handing off his presidency to Sheinbaum. What’s their secret? In a nutshell, I think that is their secret. And after we have a really good American looting so that Elon Musk and Trump's special interest right wing donors can be richer still, it could work in the US. That article reinforces things I thought I knew. AMLO focused like a laser on working class kitchen table economics. As the article states, the first thing you do is: NOT TALK. You get money in people's hands. Like senior pensions. That is what AMLO did. Trump is going to do the same thing. He'll blow up the deficit again by rewarding his billionaire special interest donors. I think one of Biden's biggest mistakes was letting those child tax credits that cut child poverty in half for one year die. He should have fought like hell, and talked about it every day. In a period of global high inflation, those tax credits helped tens of millions of working class families every month. AMLO did similar things in Mexico, and look what happened. I read one poll at the time that when the child tax credits ended, voters who had been getting them moved 7 points to the Republican Party. It was one poll. But what all this reinforces is that people want help with basic stuff like buying food. AMLO delivered consistently. Did I mention Republicans plan to cut SNAP and food assistance so they have more money for Musk tax cuts? Smart Republican House members are already warning it will cost them their seat in 2026. Does anyone believe Trump and Musk give a shit, other than trying to figure out how to distract people with bullshit so they don't notice the looting? Sadly, our own Pavlov's dog, @BarknAway, will post 20 TikToks to get his Trump treat. What a good doggy! The first half of the article talks extensively about AMLO's daily press conferences. It may be an interesting lesson in political communication. My bias has always been that results matter, not talk. Get money in people's hands. Put food on their table. You can talk all you want, and if inflation is raging you are still gonna lose. This election to me mostly confirmed that. Young voters who don't own homes and minority working class voters who rent could not help but notice their rent was soaring while they heard about "Bidenomics". This article makes a good case that AMLO's daily communicating to his voters made a difference and built support and loyalty. I buy that. Biden has always sucked at communicating. I think Harris mostly did a good job digging Democrats out of a deep hole in a short time. She almost made it to the top. But she has never been a conviction politician, like Paul Wellstone or Bernie Sanders. Or Donald Trump. Democrats gained one House seat and lost the Presidency by a little more than 1 % nationally. I don't buy the bullshit about how the Democrat Party is dead. Trump won't be able to lie to people when he takes food off their table and loots the government for Musk and his rich donors. What we need more than anything is a messenger who can do what AMLO did. Talk to, and fight for, the working class.

Yup. DEI discriminates against Straight people, of course. I was just reading an article last night about how Indian Americans swung to Trump in 2024, much like all these other minorities pissed about inflation. They wanted lower prices. They got "normalize Indian hate".

Trump snaps back at Zelensky, blaming Ukraine for the war An absolute stunning betrayal of America, Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and the world. The template for all of this was January 6th. Once America decides the rule of law and and the values we have preached don't matter anymore, we are deeply fucked. And we deserve it. I don't even think our Lord and Savior can fix this one. He's the one who fucked it up.

Now there's a thought. One place I am on board regarding the general shallowness of the MSM is that they have completely ignored what happened in Mexico. And it probably does confirm their liberal bias (duh!) that "well, every leader around the world got fired due to inflation" has become an all purpose excuse. So now that I have listened to a whole bunch of MAGA mudslingers spew mostly lies and hate on TikTok, it would be interesting to listen to short clips about what AMLO-ettes in Mexico have to say about why they kept their incumbent leadership. And elected their first woman President. My guess is it would be a lot of stuff about how AMLO's government delivered for the working class. Not how they wanted government torn down. Or how Elon Musk is awesome. It is interesting that in all these TikTok videos it was basically how we want to attack and tear down and tell Ukrainians or Gays or Democrats or whoever to go fuck themselves. Not much about what Trump actually did in his first four years to make their lives better.

There seems to be a lot of cruelty and bullshit around here lately. As a kindness, I thought I'd post some alternative content that won't make you more stupid, or more cruel. I thought Pavlov's dogs and obsessive or reflexive conditioning would be an appropriate topic. Of course, anyone who has paid attention to the 25 % or so of Americans who have been conditioned as MAGA blowhards knows how this works very well already. I'm leaving the advanced class in authoritarian followers up to @lookin. It's above my pay grade. But with these entry level videos at least you don't have to listen to lies and Gay hate. Except for one, they are all more than a few minutes long, and seemingly factual. So at least our barking dog won't ruin your viewing pleasure. Knowledge bores him. He's not been conditioned for that. Be careful, guys. This Big Bang riff is less than three minutes long. I think our dumb dog has been conditioned for at least three minutes of viewing. So you'll know if you hear barking. It could get noisy. But at least you won't be bored.

He bores me. Maybe his Mom was more interesting. She probably had an attention span longer than two minutes. I stopped reading. Oops. Listening. "They" apparently does not read. And he must be pretty slow. He ain't writing, so he probably thinks he is being censored. Dumb shit. Ignorance and lies are boring enough. And I definitely don't find cruel jerks to be entertaining. "They" is pretty good at finding people who are cruel as shit while they tell lies. But after 200 videos or whatever, even that gets boring. Yawn. 🥱 There is good news. He's self-identified in a roughly 25 % minority who will believe any shit Trump says. Like the J6ers had no weapons and were unfairly convicted for the Jubilant Patriotic Cop Beating. So this is how Trump convinced people to vote Democratic in 1.0. Same shit, different year. Ignorance just breeds ignorance, I guess.