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https://thehill.com/business/5940002-prices-rise-inflation-spikes/
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://newrepublic.com/post/212284/senator-john-hickenlooper-trump-pay-reflecting-pool
Bravo to this idea. Alas, he shall never be made to pay for anything… not in this life, anyway. And if the evangelicals and fundamentalists are correct and he is Jesus’ right-hand man on earth, then I suppose Jesus shall forever shield him from consequence. At this point, I am inclined to believe that Jesus does hate us so very much as to inflict this insufferable douchebag upon America for years yet to come. (Yes, I know he is decrepit, but fate appears determined to keep him living for another twenty years or longer — probably serving as president the whole time, for he is not leaving office alive.) The American people decided, several times over now, that Donald Trump is above the law, and for the time being this is so. Taxpayers shall pay for the clean-up of the Reflecting Pool — not merely a damaged landmark, but a national symbol — and shall thank their hero for the privilege and honour of cleaning up his mess.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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"I've been telling people, 'I don't care how bad the Republicans have betrayed you or have not done what [they] said they would do,' … It's not about them. It's about protecting President Trump at the end of the day. And it's about protecting the Supreme Court."
Not much nuance or room for interpretation there. It is plainly stated: loyalty to Trump and keeping hold of the high court are tantamount to any and all other considerations. It explains why the GOP is so difficult to hold electorally accountable. Voters who would otherwise punish a party for perceived and real failures instead view the alternative as the literal spawn of Satan. Rightly or wrongly, the Democratic Party is the most hated institution of any kind throughout middle America, particularly in the South, where Democrats once enjoyed overwhelming dominance. For these white, working-class types, opposition to Democrats is not merely political; it is cultural, religious, and deeply personal.
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Fair or not, the election reinforced existing perceptions of Democratic weakness and disorganisation. And I do not see tangible moves being made to at least attempt to alter these perceptions. So long as the white working-class remains the most powerful voting bloc, the Democrats have to win at least some portion of them. And it is as though they do not even try, or the attempts they do make are clumsy and not well thought out (see nominating Tim Walz as the running mate in ‘24, or what hath become of Sen. John Fetterman).
Yet Republican strength cannot be explained solely by Democratic mistakes. Right-wing media ecosystems, partisan identity, religious affiliation, geographical sorting, nationalistic and anti-globalist sentiment, and decades of heated cultural conflict over a range of issues from abortion to zoning have all contributed to an environment in which voters increasingly define themselves by what they oppose even more so than by what they support. In this atmosphere, criticism of Republican leaders simply fails to translate into electoral consequences for the GOP. How else can we explain Trump being restored to power by the voters in 2024 after the myriad failures, embarrassments, and abuses of power previously, to say nothing of being a convicted felon?
Rightly or wrongly, the Democratic brand is toxic: if they hope to regain durable political power, they may need not merely new candidates, but a broader reconfiguration of how they present themselves to the electorate. Perhaps they retire the ‘Democratic Party’ brand name altogether, in the manner of how major corporations will rebrand when they have become toxic in the public eye (think Philip Morris becoming Altria, perhaps; or Lord Elon changing Twitter to ‘X’, though everyone still calls it ‘Twitter’, but I digress). Revivals rarely begin in Washington, though; they begin in town halls, state legislatures, school committees, and local communities. And in these places is where the Democrats have lost the most ground in recent decades.
On the current trajectory, Republicans will enjoy significant institutional advantages for years to come. Gerrymandering; favourable electoral geography; peer pressure upon individuals from family, society, and church; and the structure of American government all provide benefits that make Democratic victories more difficult than raw national vote totals suggest. It is not enough for Republicans to perform poorly in office if voters remain entirely unwilling to embrace the alternative. Especially, if only one alternative is ever allowed or considered. I suppose, going back to the 1790s, Americans have always demanded their politics be us against them, a team sport, and have never been keen on nuance. George Washington warned us about this in his farewell address, even as ‘the spirit of party’ was already overtaking the nation’s populace.
Whether a temporary realignment or the beginning of something more permanent remains an open question, though I am heavily leaning toward the latter. American history is filled with moments when observers believed one party had achieved lasting dominance, only for political circumstances to change... but that was then. Concerns about democratic erosion are never without foundation in the best of times, but today we are at red alert. To put it mildly. What ‘y’all’ voted for.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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| AFP/Getty |
FTA: Here, then, is our American challenge: Let’s not be afraid to cringe. Ronald Reagan predicted, correctly, that the Soviet Union would end up on the ash heap of history; now it’s our turn to risk winding up on the ash heap of idiocy.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.rawstory.com/fence-around-reflecting-pool/
What an analogy for who and what we have become.
It is also a great tragedy. This is great architecture that helped make our capital one of the most unique cities on earth, and this jackass had to go and ruin it because he cannot help but stick his greasy fingers into every pot, impose his design on everything, and fiddle with everything he sees. Like a toddler.
The White House, the Kennedy Center, and so on: this is a man obsessed with erecting monuments to himself, and that very much includes mutilating our existing national monuments to suit his gutter-trash tastes.
But, hey, good to know all that algae is safe. Mother**kers.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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Guaranteed, the former United States — at least so long as it remains a single political entity, and it shall not in the long-term — will probably be the last nation on earth to allow its citizens autonomy over their own lives.
The American people and their institutions (not least the theocrats) will never allow it. We are destined eternally to be slaves to the state and to one another, all while proclaiming how ‘free’ and happy we are for it.
America, as it is composed now, is a nation with a lot of growing up. Rather hard to grow when one is committed to cruelty and inhumanity. The nation is a reflection of its president: evil, rotting, decaying, and, like a wounded animal, more dangerous than ever before. We would rather our children, elderly, and sick suffer than show mercy, and tell ourselves it is Jesus’ will.
And, maybe it is His will. I know He hath never loved me, not from the day of my nativity, no matter how much I tried to reach out to Him through all these bloody miserable, thankless years.
No matter, to force anyone to live against their will is sick, demented, and a gross violation of basic human rights, and Jesus Himself will not tell me otherwise.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/donald-baby-name-popularity
FTA: In 2025, the baby name “Donald” hit its lowest point of popularity in U.S. history, according to data maintained by the Social Security Administration and reviewed by NOTUS.
The federal agency received fewer than 400 Social Security card applications for baby Donalds last year, making “Donald” the nation’s 690th most popular baby name amid Trump’s return to the White House for a second term.
“Donald” peaked in popularity in 1934, when more than 30,400 American babies received the name, and remained within the top 100 through 1990.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/prairieland-ice-protesters-texas-sentenced
Four sentences of fifty years, another of seventy, and one of a full one hundred years. These were not mere protesters, as several of them committed extreme acts of vandalism at a detention centre in Alvarado, Texas, and an officer was targeted with an AR-15.
These are not heroes, and vigilantism is not to be celebrated or encouraged. Thus, while I do not wish to condone the heavy-handed actions of the Trump regime and ICE in their treatment of human beings, I cannot shed any tears for these individuals, though I am not entirely convinced that the sentences fit the crimes.
The left-wing militant groups of the 1960s and 1970s were, so far as I can tell, far more organised and did employ violence, yet many of their members ultimately received relatively light punishments, if any at all, and some later found positions in academia. Bill Ayers, for instance, who perhaps should have spent a lifetime in prison, but the world did not spin off its axis because he was released. Patty Hearst, to use another example, would never see the light of day again if that sordid affair went down today.
The testimony in this case revealed that these were largely unorganised, or at best loosely organised, rabble-rousers. These lengthy sentences are thin cover for the regime and its cult followers in the general population to eventually label all dissent under the almost entirely mythical banner of ‘Antifa’, and therefore criminal.
What people need to realise, but are not getting at all, is that there is an absolute chilling effect created by the far right’s ceaseless bemoaning of ‘woke’ bogeymen. Why is it that these right-wing populist types are forever championing freedom of speech, yet spend so much of their time attempting to silence others? Very simply, they care about their freedoms, and not yours or mine.
At some point during the past decade, I do remember, a handful of left-wing radicals did begin calling themselves ‘Antifa’, and a few of those same types used ‘woke’ as a descriptor. A very small number of ideologues, largely concentrated in academia and similar circles, and yet the other side hath successfully used those labels to demonise mainstream liberals, Democrats, anyone to their left, and anyone who criticises their god-king Trump.
It is the ‘you are either with us or against us’ mentality of a movement centred upon a sick man who demands complete loyalty from the citizenry and all around him, and who will go to greater and greater lengths to secure that loyalty as his desperation grows. With millions of dangerous people — cult followers — all too eager to back him up, and most of the general public too tired and cowed to offer any resistance.
And when the #MAGA militias start slaughtering ordinary people left and right, we shall partially have these morons from the far left to blame for helping make it possible.
These are not heroes being sentenced today. They are not to be celebrated, and they are too foolish to realise that they are playing directly into the hands of those who would enslave humanity for their own enrichment (in which they are largely succeeding). Useful idiots for a corrupt government held hostage by international criminals.
Violent thugs are violent thugs, whatever it may be that drives them. The flip side of the same coin as the thugs who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Congratulations. Enjoy thy prison stays.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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| EPA |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-resigns-as-prime-minister
Sir Keir Starmer had more than his share of political problems on his plate, but make no mistake: the controversy over the appointment of the former Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the former United States was his undoing.
One of the world’s most powerful men — perhaps, in the void left by America in the age of Trump, the de facto leader of the free world — has been brought down by the Epstein fallout. Meanwhile, Trump continues to sit in office, despite everybody knowing that he and Epstein were best friends prior to their falling out, yet there remains virtual silence from the American people. Whether it is being a likely paedophile, or fashioning a coup attempt, or betraying our allies in the world, or implementing nation-killing economic policies, or starting unwinnable wars, Americans just do not care when it comes to this man; they will never forsake him. Our country hath been reduced to a glorified personality cult.
I know not whether Sir Keir deserved such a harsh fate, for from where I am sitting — in the aforementioned Trumpistan — he seemed quite a competent and capable leader; certainly a step up from his two immediate predecessors of the dying Conservative Party. Perhaps he really did not fully consider just how deeply tied Mandelson was to Jeffrey Epstein. I certainly cannot believe, had he full understanding of the Mandelson-Epstein relationship, that he would deliberately risk political capital by appointing someone with so many skeletons in the cupboard to such an important diplomatic post. In the UK, there are still consequences for poor decision making, and there are no Donald Trumps being held above the law and worshipped as a god by an embarrassingly large percentage of society.
Ask Britons about anything, of course, and they shall say the sky is falling most every time. From afar, I would suggest otherwise: the United Kingdom has some very serious and pressing issues, but at least its political leaders are still held accountable.
On some levels, I would say that this is a sign of a reasonably healthy, functioning democratic society. And I cannot help but be a little envious of my ancestral homeland for that. Life is not much fun on this side of the Atlantic these days, and getting worse by the day.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
A love child, perchance? Or some hussy he is fooling around with who calls him ‘Daddy’?
No matter, for bringing this old codger back to power was a really, really awful idea, #Murica.
Meanwhile, Mr Biden — whenever we’ve clapped eyes on him in public, cancer diagnosis and all — does not appear any less compos mentis than when he left office.
Who else is bloody sick and tired of one orange-hued individual in this nation being held to a completely different standard from everyone else? Oh, he is ‘special’. He can do whatever he likes, because the American people have allowed it.
I am so utterly ready for this ghastly timeline to end.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/06/20/maine-snap-food-stamps-obbba-00966762
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/israel-continues-lebanon-strikes-fresh-ceasefire-rcna350952
No lasting ‘peace’ is forthcoming. None — not with the likes of Trump, Netanyahu, and the Islamist regime of Iran as the principal parties to the conflict.
And even after the former two are gone (which is not going to be for a long while, at least in Trump's case, and Bibi hath proven himself Teflon over and over), the latter shall very likely remain in perpetuity. Certain portions of the Iranian people have risen up their rulers, and have been thoroughly decimated in the process. Israel and Iran will be locked in conflict for generations, while the former United States will be left with no choice but to go home with its tail between its legs. For, we simply cannot afford this war, on any level. Dare I say, we cannot afford Donald J. Trump anymore, either. The most inept buffoon on the bloody planet, and may literally be the death of us all.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-899945#google_vignette
Just a bit unhinged, perhaps? And, unlike Trump, this man is only in his thirties, so we do not have old age to account for such remarks. It is rather sad that words such as these are barely notable when the POTUS blurts out offensive statements as a matter of course.
The Great Zohran is also a Muslim, and if one does not believe such influences his views on Jewish people, then one is hopelessly naïve.
The coarsening of American culture is inevitable when leaders fail to act like leaders. Furthermore, I believe we can have concerns about how the Israeli government and military under Netanyahu are conducting operations in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere without resorting to rhetoric that is both inflammatory and antisemitic.
And Israel is hardly the only country on earth that hath lobbying organisations or diplomatic missions in the former United States. There is nothing inherently shady or improper about a nation representing its interests on the world stage.
Mamdani is the flip side of the same coin as Trump: rhetorical flamethrowers and populist agents of chaos posing as leaders who, in the end, achieve nothing beyond stirring division and leaving their realms poorer and weaker than before.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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This is one sick, tragic joke, and these Middle Easterners are going to be killing each other for the rest of time in spite of any efforts to stop it.
Here we have this US president and his entire cult following bellowing about putting ‘America First’, but this sure as hell is not it. Isolationists are going to get a major boost out of this, because what the hell is America doing in the Middle East at this point? Israel is going rogue, the Islamists shall never be tamed, and the Saudis and the oil barons will continue buying up everyone and everything.
At this moment, and speaking as one who is hardly an isolationist and believes we must engage with the world, I am thinking that it is bloody useless, and that the former United States ought to retreat from any and all efforts in the Middle East, begin moving away from fossil fuels in earnest, and get serious about fixing its own house.
None of that is happening at this moment, but ‘y’all’ keep pretending this hath always been about putting America ‘first’, when it hath always been about harming all the people and groups in society whom ‘y’all’ do not like. The #MAGA rank-and-file may not be happy about the intervention in Iran, but they shall continue to suffer any indignity so long as they continue to hate the immigrants, and gays/lesbians/trannies, anyone with a brain, so forth.
— Arthur Newhook, 19 June 2026.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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Expect to see many more headlines such as this in the years to come, as this gaggle of malevolent idiots and traitors continues decimating the Armed Forces (and everything else in its path). What you people voted for.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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The pathetic state of airline travel in #Murica: crumbling airports, staff shortages, rising fares, and slashed services. {The Times 17 June}
A perspective from a British writer: it is genuinely startling — no hyperbole needed — to learn how far American airlines and airports have fallen behind the rest of the developed world during the quarter-century since 9/11. Travellers are plainly dissatisfied, yet also are gaslit to be resigned to the increasingly unpleasant experience of domestic air travel within the former United States. Delays, overcrowding, ageing infrastructure, diminished customer service, and an endless array of fees have become so commonplace that Americans simply accept them as unavoidable facts of life.
Most remarkable is the absence of any meaningful political or commercial pressure to improve matters. Consumers grumble, yet continue to fly; politicians occasionally promise reform, yet little changes. The beloved Trump regime even rolled back several consumer-protection measures enacted under President Biden that were modest and entirely reasonable safeguards for passengers (specifically having to do with capping fees, if memory serves), and suffered zero popular backlash for doing so. Declining standards carry few consequences for either airlines or policymakers, because the dominant plurality of #Muricans are angry and stupid white trash.
Perchance, the greatest tragedy of modern American politics: large segments of the electorate have repeatedly accepted tangible declines in their own quality of life and freedoms in exchange for the promise that all the immigrants and other assorted ‘woke’ parties will suffer even more. Harsh though that assessment may sound, it reflects a reality that observers — inside and outside the former United States — find increasingly difficult to ignore. Americans, in the main, are not good or decent people, and my experiences in life have entirely reflected as such. Hell, I cannot even say I’ve been a good person much of the way, but at least I have the decency to be ashamed of what we’ve become now.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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https://www.thebulwark.com/p/cbs-get-ready-for-the-bari-fication-weiss-of-cnn
The #MAGA movement commands roughly a third of the overall population scattered across wide swaths of the country. Its influence extends far beyond electoral politics: they own the churches; law enforcement and the military are infested with them; and most gun owners are in their camp. Rural America remains hopelessly in love with Donald Trump, even as his policies are resulting in economic genocide upon them. There is a reason why the stereotype of the ‘hick’ from the country hath endured for so long, and that is precisely because those who embody that stereotype are, quite literally, holding the world hostage in order that their ‘freedumb’ and their anti-intellectualism never be challenged.
Combined with a compliant media and influential figures such as Bari Weiss, this is more than sufficient to bring a nation to its knees. At least another third of Americans — the mostly apathetic ones in the middle — will fall to their knees and submit. That is always the way when ideological madmen forcefully take over a nation, as the common people value stability and their lives more than their political rights. History repeatedly demonstrates that uncomfortable truth.
And as for those of us in the remaining thirty-ish per cent — if we even are that large in number — we are being cast to the wind, left behind and forgotten for all time. We lost. Liberalism in the former US is toast, and America today is the sort of nation that would have been fighting alongside Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in World War II.
In other words, I cannot find the words to contemplate what exactly our lives are going to look like, if we live to see it, once the transition to all-out theocratic fascism in the former United States of America hath been completed, and we are almost at that juncture. Media consolidation is the final nail in the coffin.
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The signing ceremony for this ‘peace deal’ is scheduled for Friday in Switzerland. At this hour, I do not believe it is going to happen, as Netanyahu is adamant that the Israelis are not going to withdraw from Lebanon, to say nothing of the schism that hath developed between him and Trump (and, therefore, between America and Israel).
I shall not be surprised if this war is still ongoing a year from now. Or two.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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May Robert Kuzovkov (a/k/a Semyon Skrepetsky), a brave gentleman and talented artist, rest in peace.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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Newsflash: it is already dead in all but name. Much like the Soviet Union or the Roman Empire, it is simply too big, too unmanageable, too polyglot to stay together in perpetuity, and the cracks are showing all around us. Great powers often linger in a strange intermediate state, neither fully alive nor entirely deceased, sustained by habit, momentum, and the inability of their inhabitants to recognise that the world has changed around them. 250 years is a good run, and the nation hath endured chaos and division many times over, but that was then and this is now, and something fundamental hath changed in the collective character of the people. Not for the better, obviously.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
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Whilst it is hardly difficult to believe that there exist folks sufficiently enraged by having an MMA cage-fighting spectacle upon the White House lawn — or by Trump more generally — that they might contemplate acts of appalling violence, count me among the sceptics regarding the veracity of these allegedly foiled plots. Or anything else emerging from the mouth of Kash Patel, and this rotten regime on the whole.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈