Castle Magus

"Hi. Uh oh! In this episode – which we wrote and shot before the current tariff/market troubles – we look at how the U.S. and other nations measure economic success, and how that often doesn't square with our individual experiences of The Economy."

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(Yes, I foresee that many future episodes will likely need a "Sorry, but we recorded this video before Trump went and made things even worse" disclaimer in front of it. Even without taking the most recent, even worse bullshit into consideration, though, the above video is still fucking dire.)

So people thought the economy was terrible during Biden's presidency, when it actually wasn't that bad? Gee, I wonder, could that be because Donald Trump and Donald Trump's asinine lickspittles spewed lies about it for four solid years (and, you know, actively torpedoed it during the previous four solid years [thanks in part to COVID and to Trump's abysmally nadiral response to COVID], as a kind of practice run for what they're doing now)? Yes, that is why.

And yeah, none of that really matters that much, because bragging that inflation is going down is, indeed, kind of like bragging that the amount of piss in the soup you serve is going down. Even if you weren't the one who pissed in all the soup to begin with. People are still going to blame you for serving piss-filled soup. And then, you know, maybe reelect the original soup-pisser, so that he can now not only piss in the soup but straight up take a diarrhetic shit in it, too. For some reason.

Or maybe we can switch up the metaphor from piss soup to instead be about a train speeding in the wrong direction, which Biden managed to slow down but not actually stop. A Trump Train, if you will. That works, too. And now, that guy has been put back in the driver's seat, again. Go goddamned figure.

I'll just say it, again (same as Cody says it here). If the economy was "good" under Trump (until he wrecked it), it was thanks to Obama. And if the economy was "bad" under Biden (until he kind of almost sort of fixed it but not really), it was "thanks" to Trump. And if the economy is "good" under Trump II... nah, I can't even finish that, because he hasn't even completed his "first 100 days" yet, and he's already fucking launched a trilithium missile at the economy. I wonder if Trump thinks the Nexus is going to absorb him as a result. Who knows? Trump is a delusional motherwannabe-daughterfucker, after all. In any case, he'll be leaving behind a shattered economy, regardless.

Democrats, generally, are better for the economy than the GQP is. Yet... we keep electing GQP dumbshits to positions of power. Why is that? *shrug* I'unno. I guess because, as Cody says, what the Democrats do is good, but not good enough. And, thus, fickle voters kick them out to give the other side a try, again, even though the other side has been consistently, demonstrably worse, every time. The only thing that has been truly consistent throughout the past 3 or 4 decades or more, though, is that the obscenely rich have gotten obscenely richer and the downtrodden poor have gotten more downtrodden and more poor. Prices continue to creep up and wages continue to remain mostly stagnant. And yeah, there are way more subscription services (and all that other stuff that Cody mentioned) than there used to be. *eye roll, but not really*

People (wrongly) see Trump as the solution to "the bigger picture," even though he clearly has made, clearly is making, and clearly will continue to make everything so very much worse. Because he's a liar and a grifter and a conman and a criminal who only cares about one person, and that person is Donald Trump. And he's also a complete and total fucking dumbass who has absolutely zero clue what the hell he's doing, being coattails-ridden and heavily influenced by vile, disgusting, evil shitsmears on the underwear of humanity who absolutely do know what they're doing, and what they're doing is vile, disgusting, and evil. There's that, too. (And that's not even bringing Putin into the picture, though that, too, is definitely a factor in play here. Very little would tickle Putin's pecker than to see the US economy bottom out as a direct result of the actions taken by his obvious puppet.)

Anyway, yeah, an economy based on all growth, all the time, is completely unsustainable in the long run. But... well, as long as it makes billionaires even richer in the short run... what can the rest of us do about it? *shrug* (Hmm, I wonder when Some More News will do a two-hour episode about Peter Thiel. Assuming they haven't already and I just missed it.)

"Hi. Today we're looking at America's 40th president – Teflon Ron, 'ol Dutchy, the Gipper himself – Ronald Reagan, and how nearly everything bad in the U.S. today can be traced back to something he did and/or said."

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Okay, ignoring all the "pretending to get increasingly 'annoyed' by the 'joke' (i.e. the BttF clip) that we're choosing to run into the ground this time" thing and the really bizarre, ongoing "corn" thing (without which the video would probably be at least 10 minutes shorter), this was a pretty good video. And, hey, at least Warmbo wasn't in this one.

So yeah, Ronald Reagan was a shitty president and just a pretty shitty dude all around, too. Not quite to the nadir of Donald Trump, of course, but still pretty low down there. This isn't really news to anyone who has paid attention at all to the past 40 years. Basically, Reagan and his presidency and the effect it had on everything that came after are who and what made "President Trump" possible. I guess the real take away from this is that we should maybe never again elect a man with *onald in his first name for the job of President. Starting right now.

(Oh, and there's apparently going to be a "part 2" to this. Hmm.)