Donald Trump

[stevebrooks]

Well, it appears the beautiful plane that Trump was "gifted," the fabulous 747-8 with gold plated this and luxurious that, is actually a literal junker. You know one of those cars that sits in your front yard that you try to sell but no-one wants it so you eventually give it away to some poor or homeless person who desperately needs transport and will take anything on offer as long as it free? Yes, that's exactly what this Saudi jet is, a junker!

The Boeing 747-8 being offered to U.S. President Donald Trump by Qatar once served the Qatari royal family and has been sitting unsold for years.

The jet, a lavishly configured version of Boeing's largest passenger aircraft, has been lingering without a buyer since being put up for sale in 2020, according to aircraft listings and aviation analysts.

Yep, they simply can't sell it, and since it has to be in working condition to actually be sold they are spending endless amounts of money just to keep it in working condition, it's like you paying car insurance and registration on that junker out the front that no-one will buy! It just keeps getting better!

Ben Schlappig, writing in the aviation blog One Mile at a Time in 2020, said the aircraft offered to Trump had flown 1,069 hours since its delivery in 2012, averaging about two hours per week.

John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, told Forbes that giving the 747-8 to the U.S. would allow the Qataris to avoid maintenance costs that were only getting higher—with the 747 fleet shrinking worldwide and fewer mechanics available who know how to work on them.

So an expensive and costly "gift" to accept indeed, this is what Trump said:

"Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done. This big savings will be spent, instead, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country."

He obviously hasn't thought this through, I doubt of he even can think it through, but a lot of people have. Upgrades to make it suitable to be AF1 would require stripping the interior down the frame, got to check for bugs as well, hardening the plane for radiation, replacing the engines, equipping countermeasures and setting it up for in air refueling, installing all the required secure communication equipment and etc, a process that is estimated by experts in the field would take 2 years and cost $750m, so the jet would be all ready for use in 2027, curiously the exact same time frame for the two current AF1 jets being built by Boeing!

So the only possible reason to accept this "gift," because no-one in their right mind is going to actually spend the time and money to do a refit on this piece of junk, is for Trump to use after he is no longer President. What to do then? Hmm, some smart bod in the DOD should go in, get the the entire interior of the 747 ripped out and dump it all in a big pile of junk next to it then get some aircraft engineer to come in and declare the air-frame unflightworthy and then give it to Trump and tell him to move his piece of shit plane out of airport! The question is, is anyone smart enough to do that?

https://www.newsweek.com/qatar-gift-tru ... ne-2072564

[stevebrooks]

The US weather service, NOAA, will no longer be able to warn US citizens of impending events such as Hurricanes, Tornadoes and extreme heat and cold events like blizzards.....oops! And guess who just cancelled FEMA, so no warning, no help, US citizens, you are fucked!

The nation’s forecasting agency is in tatters as what could be a destructive hurricane season nears. Several current and former agency meteorologists told CNN they are concerned forecasts and life-saving warnings are not going to be issued in time.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/weat ... offs-trump

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... nding-bill

Trump also lost again at the Supreme court, so a bad day for orange fascism. However, as you read about why republicans blocked this ridiculous bill from passing, it's pretty obvious it'll get through eventually. The problem is that in order to pay for these giant tax cuts, de-funding social programs like medicare and medicaid do not go far enough. It would just be fiscally irresponsible to give everyone (mainly the top 20%) tax cuts and also maintain public health, can't be done! No sir, you have to completely get rid of public health to get this through. Negotiations continue.

In fairness, it seems some republicans are nervous about their electoral chances should the bill pass. This group are wanting tax breaks at the state level so that each state can increase its public health options as compensation for the collapse of federal support.

It's all very well to undo executive orders, it just requires another executive order, undoing legislation that has passed through congress is a different matter. So far, Trump has governed by executive order so this bit of legislation is a very big deal, this will be hard for future governments to roll back. It will probably get passed next week. A gigantic shift of wealth toward the top end, but at some point, the poorest 100 million people won't have anything left to give up. What then, i wonder?

[stylofone]

He obviously hasn't thought this through, I doubt of he even can think it through

I'm still taken aback at how stupid he is, even after all this time. His supporters see him as a figurehead, for example the Christian right think he's great even though he is so obviously not a Christian himself in most senses. A weird one I saw was a comment by a Musk/Tesla lover who claimed Trump was going to pivot and support EVs and renewable energy. Trump can be anything you want him to be if you are a true believer.

Unfortunately, Trump is not acting like a figurehead, he is acting like an absolute monarch and not like the figureheads in the UK or the bicycle monarchies of Europe. He gets to make real decisions based on his own stupidity, avarice and vanity.

at some point, the poorest 100 million people won't have anything left to give up. What then, i wonder?

I expect a lot of things to come crashing down as a result if his rule by the stupidest. It takes time to filter through and destroy systems set up over decades, but there can also be Jenga style crashes, we had a glimpse of one after his tariff madness spooked the markets, but he backed off. So maybe he won't trigger a new GFC, but bad things are coming and I think it will be this year.

Cory Doctorow recently looked at it from the point of view of tech-bro ripoffs and exploitation, but he also broadened it out, saying Trump has got nothing to offer the vast majority of his voters except more pain.

Here's the thing: Trumpism relies on the fusion of two groups of people: a tiny number of oligarchs, and millions of everyday people who are constantly victimized by those oligarchs. To get this latter group of Christmas-voting turkeys to stay in the coalition, Trump needs to deliver something that keeps them happy. Mostly, Trump delivers negative things to keep them happy – the spectacle of public cruelty to immigrants, women, trans people, academics, etc. There is a certain libidinal satisfaction that comes from watching your enemies suffer – but you can't eat schadenfreude. You can't make rent or put braces on your kids' teeth or pay your medical bills with the sadistic happiness you feel when you hear the sobs of people you've been taught to despise.

For Trump to keep the turkeys voting for Christmas, he needs to do something for them. He can't just do things to scapegoats. But America's eminently guillotineable oligarchs have found so many ways to turn working peoples' torment into riches, and they are so greedy and unwilling to give up any of those grifts, that Trump can't manage to deliver anything positive to his base. Last week, his FTC killed the "click to cancel" rule that required companies that tricked you into buying subscriptions to make it easy for you to cancel them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/15/asshole-to-appetite/

[stevebrooks]

I expect a lot of things to come crashing down as a result if his rule by the stupidest. It takes time to filter through and destroy systems set up over decades, but there can also be Jenga style crashes, we had a glimpse of one after his tariff madness spooked the markets, but he backed off. So maybe he won't trigger a new GFC, but bad things are coming and I think it will be this year.

Aha, haha, hahahahaha.

Trump just announced all new tariffs to be applied to all the countries, 150 of them, that are currently keen to make deals, apparently, according to him, but new tariffs he has indeed just announced, these are going to be sent to these counties by, umm, letters, you know, those things on paper, so currently no-one in the world knows who is going to be hit with new tariffs, what those tariffs are going to be and when they are going to start applying, just that they are coming! Some idiot in his administration has somehow convinced him that he needs to apply more pressure to these recalcitrant countries to get them to play ball and make deals, but it will be fair, very fair indeed!

Really there are no deals, just more tariffs. No deal with the UK, just a framework, certainly no deal with China, Trump just surrendered, but of course these new tariffs might just take the percentage back up again! India has denied strenuously the Trump claim that they will be dropping all tariffs to zero as part of a deal, it's bizarre!

Of course there's no guarantee that the UK won't also be hit with these new tariffs just to teach them a lesson for being suckholes! Are these new tariffs going to replace the current reciprocal tariffs, or are they new tariffs on top of the current tariffs? No-one knows, and they won't know until they get their letters, on paper, delivered by a little boy in a little suit presumably, I mean that's how telegrams worked when he was a little kid, he probably remembers his dad getting telegrams from kids dressed in little suits, ah the good old days!

These tariffs will of course take place before ships have even left China with any goods, so companies who placed urgent orders in the days after the tariff was dropped to 30% now have no idea what tariff they will be paying on goods they have already ordered and will presumably have to pay for when they get to America, lol, so much for certainty for the next 90 days, a very short pause indeed!

Interestingly, the actual tariff rate on goods from China isn't 30%, that's the Trump tariff. There were already pre-existing tariffs on many goods being shipped from China, and most people don't realise the 30% tariff that Trump applied wasn't instead of these tariffs, it was on top of these tariff, so on average tariffs on goods from China are actually sitting 50% or just under.

Stand by for global recession, I don't say this with joy, but I don't see how we are going to avoid it with Trump in charge of the US. Oh yes and expect more US industries to flee the country following Amazon and the car makers, they are going, you can't do business in country where you don't know what your input costs are going to be from one day to the next!

[stevebrooks]

Terror attack in the US!

American Reproductive Centers is described as Coachella Valley’s first and only full-service fertility centre and IVF lab, according to its website and has been operating since 2006.

A number of law enforcement bodies have descended on the scene including investigators from the FBI, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would also help assess what happened.

Palm Springs police confirmed the death but the identity of the victim is not yet known, while they are considering all possibilities including whether it was an act of terrorism.

Now exactly which group of terrorists could possibly be anti-fertility clinics and anti-IVF?

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-ame ... acc9cb54fa

[stevebrooks]

Well look at that, an 89 point swing to democrats in a deep red NY district that Trump won by 55 points. No not won 55 points to 45, but by 55 points.

[stevebrooks]

25% tariff on all Apple products that are manufactured outside the US. Now this is fun right, Trump is demanding that Apple manufacture iPhones in the US or be subject to tariffs, so what are the problems associated with manufacturing iPhones in the US, Tim Cook:

Even if we were to start today, it would take an entire generation to really scale this up.

They need to not only build the factories, but have to create the skills necessary to build the factories to build the iPhones, so 25 years to get manufacturing up to the same level as they have in China. Keep in mind Foxconn, the manufacturer of iPhones in China has 1 million employees.

Estimated cost of iPhones as they ramp up production and training over 25 years, being only able to manufacture a few million per year at the start instead of the over 60 million they actually sell in the US per year at the moment, again Tim Cook:

In iPhone terms that would bring us to prices in the $30,000 to $100,000 range.

While it won't cost that much to manufacture them, competition for the few iPhones available per year would drive up the price to astounding levels. Basically if Trump took steps to force Apple to manufacture the phones in the US the company would probably just shut down rather than even try to comply. Basically Apple will just continue to make iPhones in China, or India and just pass on the tariff to the end user. Fortunately they sell 60 million outside the US as well so they can still sell those cheaper to clients in other countries.

50% tariff on all European Union countries...because it's been to hard to make a deal, those pesky Europeans just won't roll over and give us everything we want, who would have thought a deal actually meant the US had to make concessions as well, that just not fair. Markets tumbling as they open today!

Also, despite claims of a deal with the UK, also attacking them over energy prices and the possibility of him putting tariffs back on the UK, there are no deals basically, you can't make a deal with Trump because in essence nothing Trump says is binding on him or the US.

They are fucked, the US that is, the sooner the world moves away from the US and the US monetary system the better.

[stevebrooks]

A recent story brought a new strategy to light by countries being attacked by Trump via tariffs and etc, it's called the "TACO" strategy. Laughingly it stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out," basically it comes down to, if you sit there long enough and do nothing Trump will eventually back down, and having seen what's happening it appears to be a good strategy!

[stylofone]

25% tariff on all Apple products that are manufactured outside the US. Now this is fun right, Trump is demanding that Apple manufacture iPhones in the US or be subject to tariffs, so what are the problems associated with manufacturing iPhones in the US, Tim Cook:

Remember when doddery Trump couldn't remember his name, so he just called him "Tim Apple"? I agree it's fun, because of the high likelihood that Trump's antics will have the same effect on American politics as they have in Canada and Australia. Dutton and co were strutting around like roosters a few months ago, I look forward to seeing the Republican party reduced to feather duster status like our battered and bloody conservatives here.

Reading more about Tim Apple, I note that he was appointed as Chief Operating Officer in 1998, and HE was the one responsible for the major wave of shutting US factories and shifting production to Taiwan. By the time the iphone came along, it was Taiwan/India/China all the way.

I've just finished reading "Overshoot" by William Catton, and one of his chapters is about how difficult it is for humans to press rewind. He gives the example of an epic restoration program to recreate a colonial neighbourhood in Wlliamsburg in the 1930s. It cost vastly more to rebuild the old structures in modern times than it was to put them there a century or more earlier.

It looks like the same principle applies to the industrial activities of Apple. In fact the entire basis of "make America great again", and Trump's dreams of reviving American manufacturing are pretty much impossible to achieve. And in the case of the iphone, it was never made in America anyway, it's completely a conception of globalisation, developed years after America fell behind Asia and lost the ability to make such a high-tech mass market device.