Mostly Monday Reads: Exponential Insanity

“No one said it would be easy.” John Buss, @Repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Once again, we’ve been treated to the overtly unconstitutional view that Orange Caligula can run for a third term. Somehow, Steve Bannon managed to get airtime again, and the legacy media has gone wild with speculation. We’re also listening to more insane chatter about how mentally “healthy” #FARTUS is now that he’s had a supposed MRI at Walter Reed. All of these sideshows are undoubtedly trying to get the focus off the Epstein files, bombing hapless fishermen off coasts in South America, and the incredible price inflation in food, gasoline, and everything.

Can you believe this is our reality now? Here’s the headline from the New York Times from the story by Katie Rogers. “Trump Says a Recent M.R.I. Scan Was ‘Perfect,’ and He’d ‘Love’ a Third Term. President Trump made the comments on the second day of his trip to Asia. The Constitution limits presidents to two terms, but Mr. Trump has suggested he might try to circumvent it.”

President Trump said that he underwent magnetic resonance imaging earlier this month, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that the results had been “perfect” but declining to say why his doctors had ordered the scan.

Mr. Trump also reiterated that he was interested in serving a third term, saying that he “would love to do it” because of his popularity with his supporters. Mr. Trump, who spoke to journalists for about 30 minutes on a flight to Tokyo from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during his almost weeklong trip to Asia, seemed intent on presenting himself as fit to lead, if not run for the presidency again.

The Constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents, but Mr. Trump and his supporters have increasingly floated the possibility of finding a way to circumvent the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” regardless of whether the terms are consecutive.

In discussing his health, Mr. Trump offered a small new detail about the tests that the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the president had received during a recent visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump said, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician. The summary did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and had few details on what testing the president had undergone. When asked why he had undergone an M.R.I., the president said, “you could ask the doctors.” Magnetic resonance imaging, a noninvasive technology that creates detailed images of the inside of the body, is often used for disease detection and monitoring, or to detect bone or joint abnormalities.

At 79, Mr. Trump is the oldest person to be elected president, and he would be well into his 80s by the end of his second term. Mr. Trump’s critics have speculated about his health in recent months after he repeatedly appeared on camera with bruises on the back of his hand and swollen ankles.

Even the ladies on the view have a better handle on this nonsense than most of the news media. This is from MediaITE. “Trump’s 3rd Term Flirtation Triggers Five-Alarm Panic on The View: ‘Damn if He Isn’t a Dictator!’”  I wouldn’t be so damned worried about this if it weren’t for the corrupt Supreme Court.

The co-hosts of The View sounded a full five-alarm warning on Monday over President Donald Trump’s musings about running for an unconstitutional third term.

Whoopi Goldberg began Monday’s show by declaring, “Well, you-know-who told us he was going to be a dictator on day one and, damn, if he isn’t a dictator!”

Goldberg referred to former Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s claim that Trump is “going to get a third term.”

On Air Force One on his way to Japan Monday, Trump gave a nebulous answer to a reporter’s question about whether he would pursue a third term.

“Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me,” Trump said.

Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “There’s certain people in Trump’s orbit who, when they tell you what they’re going to do, I listen. And I would put Steve Bannon on the top of the list. He has been one of the most senior advisers to Trump the first time he ran, predicted the events around January 6th, the efforts to overturn the election. And I feel crazy because I feel like a conspiracy theorist talking about this!”

Sunny Hostin said that Trump’s ballroom project indicates that he doesn’t plan to leave the White House.

“He is hooking up the White House because he doesn’t plan on leaving it. I don’t think he plans on leaving,” Hostin said.

“I told y’all that years ago, that he had — he was not going anywhere,” Goldberg added. “He said it. He said, ‘I want to be president for life.’ I heard him say it, I watched his lips move, and I thought, he means this!”

Ana Navarro claimed, “This is a guy who has got authoritarian envy. He goes around to these countries and he loves — he wants the parades, he wants the arches, he wants the ballrooms, he wants to be an emperor, he wants to be an authoritarian. Paying no attention to the Constitution, that’s the way Ortega does it, the way Chavez did it, the way Maduro does it, Putin does it.”

Perhaps we need a national GoFundMe for relieving Trump of his duties due to mental deficiencies. I always look to Ruth Ben-Ghiat for some rational and data-based explanations of our situation. Her blog, Lucid, is a very good place to start. “TINA (There Is No Alternative) and the Leader as “A Vehicle of Divine Providence, and my video on covering corruption and violence with an aura of holiness.” If there ever is a fascist movement, you can rely on the hyper-religious to be behind it.

In January 2016, when I forecast that Donald Trump would develop a formidable personality cult along the lines of Vladimir Putin’s and Silvio Berlusconi’s if he won the GOP presidential nomination, people called me an idiot and a clown. But Trump has developed a leader cult that conforms to my description from nine years ago:

I really don’t want to be making you have nightmares tonight, but there needs to be some bud-nipping about his virality, sanity, and a third term right now. I’m getting tired of propaganda driving decisions for this country. Here’s some more news that should make you shiver. This is from AXIOS and written by Emily Peck. “The economy is in uncharted territory.” Literally.

Data went dark this month. The government shutdown is halting the collection and release of statistics tracking the job market, public health and crop production, as well as other economic indicators.

Why it matters: The numbers are critical for understanding what’s happening in the U.S., particularly at a moment of rapid change in both government policies and in the job market.

How it works: Businesses use gold-standard government data, like the jobs report, to set wages and make hiring, pricing and investment decisions.

• Investors watch the numbers so closely that they can drive big stock reactions. Policymakers use the data to set minimum wage standards and increase food assistance or other important benefits.

Where it stands: Since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, government agencies have stopped collecting or releasing information about:

The labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t release a September employment report and hasn’t collected any data in October.

• We don’t know the unemployment rate or how many jobs businesses are creating. Few companies appear to be hiring, and job anxiety is skyrocketing.

Public health. Weekly numbers that track how many Americans are coming down with the flu, RSV or COVID-19 haven’t been updated.

• Local governments, doctors and Americans are in the dark about illnesses that lead to hospitalizations and the deaths of tens of thousands every year just as respiratory virus season typically kicks up.

Agriculture. The USDA’s weekly export sales report and daily sales announcements, and its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates aren’t coming out. Farmers and commodity traders are left with little information at the peak of the harvest season and at a time when tariffs are driving much angst, Reuters reports.

Demographic information. The 2024 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample was supposed to be released on Oct. 16.

• It’s one of the few publicly available datasets that allows for measurement of economic, demographic and housing trends across small geographic areas and small population subgroups.

Between the lines: This isn’t an all-inclusive list.

• And though these should be temporary stops, there is other data that the Trump administration has walked away from permanently: on food insecurity and weather disasters.

Reality check: Some information was too important to skip. On Friday, the BLS released its Consumer Price Index, covering inflation in September — a measure tied to Social Security’s Cost of Living Adjustment, which the government said would be 2.8% next year.

• But no data on October has been collected.

This is no way to run a modern economy. We’re now on the IMF warning list. This is via MSN but originally published at Euronews. “US borrowing expected to rival Europe’s most indebted states, says IMF.” This story is reported by Una Hajdari.

Global public debt is rising faster than at any point in modern history, and this time, it is not just the historically large spenders driving it.

The International Monetary Fund’s latest Fiscal Monitor warns that the public finances of major powers, led by the United States, have become a systemic global risk.

“Although the number of countries with debt above 100% will be steadily declining in the next five years, their share in world GDP is projected to rise,” the report stated.

This means that the collective or “global public debt is projected to rise above 100% of world GDP by 2029,” it said. In such a scenario, public debt would be at its highest level since 1948.

According to IMF calculations, this trajectory “reflects a higher and steeper path than projected before the pandemic”, signalling that governments have failed to stabilise their debt despite the recovery of global growth.

The US marks the steepest rise

The United States will see the steepest increase among major advanced economies when it comes to debt-to-GDP ratio, according to the IMF.

From 2023 to 2030, general government gross debt will climb from 119.8% of GDP in 2023 to 143.4% in 2030.

The institution noted that the United States will, for the first time this century, surpass Italy and Greece on this front — long viewed as the developed world’s most indebted states.

I’m not the least bit a deficit hawk, but this is really not good.  You may read the analysis at the link.

This is from Mehdi’s Monday morning round-up, which can be found at the above Bluesky link.

Who was the president of the United States in 2020? Donald Trump, right? Obviously. We all know that.

Except perhaps… Donald Trump himself. For years now, Trump and his supporters have bizarrely behaved as if the first Trump presidency ended in 2019. They like to brag about the amazing state of the economy in 2019, while ignoring the soaring unemployment they left behind at the end of 2020. They complain about the COVID lockdowns in 2020, as if the president behind the lockdowns wasn’t… Donald John Trump.

On Friday, Trump went one step further. In fact, the president took a full step right into Crazytown with this post on his Truth Social website:

 

Got that? The president of the United States thinks ex-Special Counsel Jack Smith and former Biden DOJ alums Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco “cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election.” Back in 2020, to be clear, Merrick Garland was an appeals court judge, Lisa Monaco was a lawyer in private practice, and Jack Smith was the chief prosecutor at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

How, then, did they “rig” the 2020 election when they weren’t in government? Or did they, upon joining the Biden administration in 2021 and 2022, take a time machine and travel back in time to November 2020?

I mean, how is this not completely and utterly deranged from Trump? How are we not in 25th Amendment territory? Nothing Joe Biden ever said, even in that car-crash 2024 televised presidential debate, comes close to this unhinged nonsense from the sitting president.

And, on Saturday, the mad king in the White House took a further step into Crazytown. He increased tariffs on Canada by 10% over current levels because – I kid you not – the Canadians hurt his feelings with a television ad. Yes, really!

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” he declaimed on – where else? – Truth Social, adding: “The sole purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States.”

How is this not a parody? How is this even legal? Does this sound like a sufficient national security argument for Trump bypassing congressional authority on tariffs? American families will now have to pay even more in taxes – as that is what tariffs are! – because their president got really mad over a foreign television ad. An ad which, as the New York Times pointed out, “faithfully reproduces Reagan’s words” from 1987, in which the Gipper denounced tariffs.

On Sunday, the King of Crazytown continued his demented and dangerous all-caps ranting online, insisting pregnant women not take Tylenol unless “ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY” and telling parents to avoid the MMR shot.

None of this is remotely normal. There is a clear mental health crisis going on in the Oval Office right now. He is detached from reality. Every politician and pundit, every journalist in the White House press corps, knows this. It should be the biggest story in our media.

But, shamefully, it isn’t.

I so miss Mehdi and Joy! I’m glad they can be found writing important things like this while the old school media folds to the Trump Regime like paper airplanes from Qatar.

Anyway, that’s enough depressing us for one day.

Is he dead yet?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?