After announcing his own chain of Trump-approved gas stations selling petrol at $3.47 a gallon, the 47 in honor of his presidency, petrol prices have skyrocketed again with these gas stations holding the bag. Interesting how long they keep these super low prices?
I suppose his backers thought prices were coming down anyway, so they wouldn't have to eat too much with these special offers. But, and it is a might big But, Trump started the war all over again, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz once again, and oil prices have jumped to $85 a barrel.
Trump claims everything is under control but with more service men and women dead, as Iran hit American bases all over the Gulf States, you have to figure nothing is under control. This is a war spiraling out of control with few signs Trump will be able to rein it in, largely because his ego is too big to ever admit defeat.
He gave us a good taste of that this past week as he re-litigated the 2020 elections yet again, claiming there was wide-spread fraud with China and/or Venezuela rigging the election. Mind you, such rigging would have occurred under his watch as he was President in 2020, yet somehow he missed it at the time and is now having his Justice dept. examine the cheating anew. This was why he raided the Fulton County election hub, claiming he lost approximately 11,000 votes right here and would have won Georgia. Shockingly, the Federal courts upheld this highly questionable seizure, claiming there was no "callous disregard" of country rights. The Judge, J.P. Boullee, was a Trump appointee from 2019.
For this reason, Trump plans to tighten security this time around, making sure Democratic Socialists don't usurp Congress this Fall. He railed against the "Dumocrats," as he calls them, labeling them all "Communists," as he ventured onto a long tangent on how communism has been a pernicious evil for over a thousand years.
The Democratic Socialists have been catching a lot of flack, not just from Republicans, but from angry Centrist Democrats who believe their party is being ripped apart, after spectacular gains in primary elections across the country. John Fetterman is particularly put out by this, commiserating with his buddies Bill Maher, Dan Crenshaw on Donna Brazille on how this is bad for America. Mostly they are ticked that these progressives are anti-Israel, as they see it, for calling out the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the ongoing wars in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Bill Maher even went so far as to say he was open to voting for JD Vance in 2028, assuming he wins the nomination, because of these cowardly actions. Hmmm?
Maybe by sowing all this chaos, the hope is to discourage anyone from voting in 2026. No one got this apoplectic when Trump-anointed candidates won Republican primaries, except maybe the old-guard Republicans they ousted like John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy. Some pundits are even calling these left-wing Democrats "Blue MAGA."
When neither party makes much effort to deal with day-to-day economic concerns, you can expect insurgent campaigns. Some are good, some not so good and some downright deplorable, but this is the world we live in. If Trump had made more of an effort to deal with domestic issues, we wouldn't be seeing this uprising, or "intifada" as Bill Maher is calling it.
Instead, Trump has made matters appreciably worse since taking office last January. There hasn't been a moment's rest with all the tariffs he imposed and is imposing yet again despite his hand-picked Supreme Court ordering him to refund the American companies who had to pay them. So much for that great budget surplus he promised. Now we learn that his war in Iran has broke the budget with House Republicans willing to give him another 95 billion to keep this war going despite no appreciable benefits.
If you recall, Trump inherited a stabilizing economy. All he had to do was ride with it, but no, he thought he could score some big time points by reducing taxes and levying tariffs at the same time. This was going to restore the massive trade imbalance his administration perceived was holding us back from true economic prosperity. Eighteen months later, we are just deeper in debt.
Of course, the rich got richer, flaunting their wealth like never before. Musk took SpaceX public imagining a big pay day that would push his personal wealth over the one trillion mark. He did so briefly but since the blockbuster IPO his stock has plummeted and he is back to being in the three-comma club. Not only that but losses have wiped out over a trillion dollars in company value.
You'd think the guy would be working overtime to right this sinking ship but instead he is firing broadsides at cast and crew of The Odyssey, which he thinks has desecrated Homer's epic poem, not that he ever read it. Mostly, it is about protecting white culture, which he thinks Black Helen is killing Western civilization as much as Mackenzie Bezos is by donating billions to historically black colleges and other minority institutions. Shut up already!
Here in lies the common denominator to all these threads, conservatives can't stand seeing plurality in our society. They want it to remain homogeneic. Anything else is "woke." Yet, Christopher Nolan scored big at the box office with his epic retelling of Homer, clearing his budget costs in a single weekend, and making it clear that most people accept this plurality. This is why these conservatives are so fearful of the midterm elections coming up this fall as they will see more persons of color in Congress, including a feisty new representative from Colorado, Melat Kiros, who stunned longtime incumbent Diana DeGette in the primaries and is all but guaranteed victory in November.
We've already seen how popular Mayor Mamdani has become with his brand of Democratic Socialism in New York. He is not only producing palpable results within his first year in office but his energetic personality, his willingness to reach out to everyone and his unwillingness to bend to conservative interests is making him a Democratic icon.
Americans want change and it appears change is what we will get unless Trump finds a way to intercede with the help of the Federal courts to overturn the elections this Fall. If that is the case, then you can expect an intifada, Bill, as the anger will be so incendiary that we may very well see a storming of the Capitol by "Blue MAGA."
Let the elections play out, let both Conservative Republicans and Centrist Democrats learn that very few people want the status quo. It is time to put government back in the hands of the people, not the oligarchs who are pulling the strings behind these empty suits in Washington. No one wanted these tariffs or wars or Israel shaping our foreign policy.
Why we got Trump in 2024 will forever remain a mystery, but I was forced to accept it. Now, he should be forced to accept the consequences of his actions.
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