The Lash

Inflation pain helped secure Trump win but his policies mean higher prices.

The pain of inflation and Americans being lied to about it was 80% of the reason Trump won, if not more. Trump actually won’t do jack shit to help with this (quite the opposite), but the Dems largely caused this through their arrogance and inaction.

Trump’s initiatives will lead to higher prices and very likely a crashed economy, but the average voter is not very smart and not very analytical so they are just lashing out like an incel. And will do about as much good.

Not That

Now that I can competently read books in the original French, some of the translations into English are…uhhh, rather creative. Like, that’s really not what the book said.

But I guess that’s true of all translations, though I can only read well enough in French and Spanish to really get the feel and make any determination. Working on German and Italian still. Subtitles are that way, too. I guess it’s the peril of translation.

Black Phillip

The second coming of Trump is going to be the biggest disaster America has experienced since the Civil War. In many ways, it’ll be even worse for our allies in Asia and Eastern Europe than it will for us here in the US. I doubt Germany, even, can defend itself against Russia.

This will be a very dark time indeed.

Economic Hinges

A large share of the responsibility for the Democrats losing the election is on the Dems themselves since they and their myrmidons spent more than three years gaslighting people about inflation. It was almost a religious quest for them. This certainly pissed me off and I barely give a fuck what anything costs. For someone where a price increase actually has consequences, this must’ve been actively infuriating.

“Don’t believe your lying eyes and your declining bank balance” is not a winning proposition. Now they and all of us are going to pay for that 3+ years of pettifogging and obliviousness.

And the sad thing is, it was all an unforced error. Clowns like Paul Krugman and all the others spent so many unnecessary hours writing a vast number of articles about how the rising cost of goods and services is all in your head and that no, those shelves aren’t empty — why, they are quite full in my Park Slope supermarket, how could they be empty anywhere?!?!? They could have just not done that. But no, they had to get those jabs in at the basket of deplorables who could no longer fill their baskets.

In large part, the Democrats did this to themselves. And they deserve much vitriol for that.

Ant Grief

Today is a day of despair for America. We are plunged into an anticipatory grief.

For once, I agree with Moira. Her take is basically how it will play out.

But 2024 is not 2016. It is worse. In his first term, Trumpโ€™s incompetence was often an impediment to the worst of his agenda; no longer. Institutions, both in the government and in civil society, worked to slow or resist his program; now, many of them seem all too willing to participate, with universities and NGOs eager to launder Trumpism into respectability and the billionaire-controlled media eager to cut deals, suppress unfavorable coverage and minimize his misdeeds. And if in his first term Trumpโ€™s impulses were sometimes mitigated by moderates and institutionalists in his administration, by now those people have all been purged. He is surrounded by incels, bigots, conspiracists and sadists, and they are much better prepared to use the organs of the state to pursue their hateful aims.

It is going to be a very, very bad four years. I expect a war with China and economic destruction, perhaps even collapse. And that might not even be the worst things that occur.

Trumpโ€™s Followers Are Living in a Dark Fantasy.

World’s first wooden satellite, developed in Japan, heads to space.

RTO mandate was attempt at thwarting Grindr workers unionizing: US labor board.

For the first time ever, AMD outsells Intel in the datacenter space.

Vegaโ€™s Puzzling Disk.

Why Companies Are Ditching the Cloud: The Rise of Cloud Repatriation.

China Hack Enabled Vast Spying on U.S. Officials, Likely Ensnaring Thousands of Contacts.

Coup Ground

Received 2 ballots? Here’s what to do.

I’ve seen some people claiming today that because they received two ballots by accident, that it is proof that the voting system is fraudulent.

Funny that, since in every state of the union, duplicate ballots are not counted.

These useful idiots are just laying the coup groundwork. Is a duplicate ballot never counted? Of course not. Mistakes happen. But it’s probably one out of 5 or 10 thousand that don’t get caught.

Too many clowns, not enough clown chipper-shredders.