Seriously. Can you imagine, you’ve had this process running quietly for years, and it’s getting you round some awkward tax or import restriction somewhere, you’re making a tidy extra profit, and you don’t even feel too bad about fidfling the paperwork a bit, after all, who’s going to notice, a bunch of flightless birds? Then along comes the orange idiot and his cadre of fascists and accidentally expose you because they don’t understand how to rationally calculate tarrifs and just get an intern to copy and paste from the nearest LLM.

It’s laughing at this sort of thing that’s jeeping me sane right now.

It’s got to be something like that, there was something like $1.3m of machinery exports from an island populated by penguins. Someone was doing something naughty, and whilst the way these tarrifs are calculated is idiotic, it’s fun that it’s exposed sonething like this.

That probably explains why he wants to buy one despite being a citizen already. I’d guess he thinks it’ll mean he wont be taxed on overseas income either. Figuring out whether he’s currently paying any, and if so how much is left as an exercise for the interested reader.

it’s hard to imagined it’s not planned.

It was all planned. They wrote it all down, called it “Project 2025”, then said they definitely wouldn’t do it whilst giving a big wink and crossing their fingers. Aparently that was enough to convince enough people.

Canaries were taken into coal mines to warn the miners of poisionous gasses by dropping dead. When the canary metaphorically picks the lock on its metaphorical cage and literally makes a break for the border, I think you can consider that a sign of a similar magnitude.

It’s not just the size, or the sound, but the fact you could comfortably concuss an elephant with it, or stop a bullet and go right back to typing. Those things were built like tanks.

It’ll turn nasty long before then, when they’re told (again) that it’s all the fault of those ‘immigunts’ who are taking their jobs and eating their food.

Once that bloodbath starts, few of those involved will think to change target, and most of those who aren’t will be hunkering down, waiting for it to blow over.

So, he’s admitting he’s ignorant and not in control of this administration. I wonder if his worshipers will ever notice that their idol isn’t the one pulling the strings?

Thank you for putting the effort in. The party apparatus isn’t going to want to change, but I’m not sure that it’s managed opposition as such, so much as those who are ‘in’ being happy with their lot and doing what they feel they need to to stop that being taken away.

There’s two ways to use that to change the situation, either demonstrate that their comfortable position will be taken away if they don’t change their politics, or take it away by finding a candidate you can rally enough support behind. Neither is easy, and both require getting people involved en-mass at the lowest levels of politics, which is going to be hard work with the party pulling against you. It’s not impossible though, AOC and Sanders are both candidates of a different stripe and have, so far, held their places. Imagine how different things would be if they were replicated even a few times?

This is way. Democrat voters want change, but they’re not speaking to the system in a language it understands. The party changes not from the top down, but from the bottom up. That only happens when people with different views stand for, and win, lower level positions. Every voice changed lower down on the totem pole changes the presure on the people making decisions further up. Ultimately enough movement lower down means the top eschalons are pushed out and replaced too.

Whether it’s possible to find enough candidates to start filling the party, I don’t know, but just focusing on the primaries (or lack thereof) for the top job is missing the wood for the trees.

Well, a number of them in Montana flipped to block an anti-trans bill: https://thepulp.org/montana-republicans-flip-to-defeat-anti-trans-bills/ (just a semi-random link to the story, there are many other sources). Some of them can be persuaded to change their minds. Perhaps not many, or by much, but it is possible.

Nothing? At least, so long as he’s bankrolling his pet they will look the other way.

I suspect that is some sort of sunk cost falacy combined with a narative that says only he can get the bad things to stop; once it get’s to the point that your cities are being destroyed, you probably wont, and certainly wont have the opportunity to, change leader. It’s critical that as many minds as possible are changed before getting to that stage.

This seems like the most straightforward scenario. Nothing prevents trump running, or being elected, as Vice President, on the understanding that the duely elected President will step down on day 1. When they wrote the constitution, they didn’t bank on a populist fascist, so the language assumes everyone plays fair.

Whether trump is in any state to do anything by then is a different question. If they find someone more useful they may simply shuffle him out of the game by declaring him mentally incompetant.

The absolute best case scenario is that they’re just saying this because they know it outrages non-magas, and they love doing that. I’ve not seen much to support that as the probable outcome though.

I hoped so. I was going to say something about “Won’t somebody please think of the property prices!” but schools seemed more important.

I… I really don’t think we want Yellowstone pulling itself up by it’s caldera, we’d end up with even fewer schools.

Any of the ‘leopards eating faces’ type comms are a natual home for this.

All with trump’s unmistakable fetid, fecal note under it.

Sorry, I thought it then needed to spread the nausiating olfactory mental image.

No, no, the importer pays the tax. You might want to send them a little extra if you want to help them out with that.

I had to go and check that, it’s so on the nose. Yup, X is character code 88.