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."

---

(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.)

A post on Whatever dot Scalzi dot Com.

I'm not sure I buy the "carefully choreographed" bit, because if it was a "carefully choreographed" "flailing about," then they certainly fooled me. It didn't seem "choreographed" at all, "carefully" or otherwise. If it comes out later that it was, indeed, orchestrated from the start, then sure, fine, I'll be glad to have been wrong.

Aside from that bit, though, I pretty much fully agree with the rest of it.

Donald Trump continues to be a rancid spew of explosive diarrhea, no change at all there, JD Vance continues to be "a craven opportunist who spends most of his time being warm and cozy in billionaire Peter Thiel's pocket," and Joe Manchin can continue to "go fuck himself" until the end of time.

It remains to be seen if Kamala Harris can properly handle all that (particularly the rancid spew of explosive diarrhea), but I certainly don't think she could do a worse job than Joe Biden ostensibly did. (I'm still of the opinion that Joe Biden could have been in a literal coma during that entire debate, and he still would have put in a better "performance" than did Donald Trump with his 90 minutes in make-believe cuckoo land. But with that said, Biden could have done a better job, to be sure.)

(EDIT)

Also this, from 5 years ago, which Mr. Scalzi linked to in the above linked post.

In addition to what Mr. Scalzi said about Harris in that post (which he copy/pasted into the above linked post), here is what he said about Biden himself:

"I mean, honestly, meh? He's too old and he's too old in his thinking and every time he opens his mouth some unforced error comes out of it. But this is 2019 and compared to the current occupant he's a goddamn statesman. He'll remind less engaged voters of the halcyon days of the Obama administration, when we had a president who wasn't an active trash fire 24/7, and I think there's some validity in the idea that Biden could get the votes of at least some of the dudes who voted for Trump in the last election because they were either overtly or latently sexist as shit and tried to hide it by being concerned about Clinton's email rather than admitting their problem was that she was a woman and had been demonized by the GOP for over two decades running. There might be some on the left who will stay home if Biden wins the nomination, but, really, fuck them if they decide four more years of Trump's incompetent, hateful authoritarianism is better than a Democratic candidate who isn't perfectly aligned with their personal agenda. Fuck them right in the fucking ear."

(/EDIT)

---

Bonus post. Two posts in one.

Also, Trump and his lickspittles are, once again, projecting, super hard.

"only attained the position of President by lies"? That describes Trump to a tee. (And, of course, it doesn't describe Joe Biden at all, not even a little bit.)

"All those around him ... knew that he wasn't capable of being President, and he wasn't"? Trump and his sycophants to a tee. (Even Trump's own VP pick, JD Vance, knows that's true, regardless of the fact that Vance has since decided to just pretend he never said any of that and learn to enjoy the taste of Trump's rotten dingleberries.)

"less competent than Joe"? Trump to a tee. (And also most likely not true of Kamala Harris.)

"worst President in my lifetime"? Absolutely Trump to a tee. (Certainly doesn't describe Biden at all. Biden sucked ass, sure, but he wasn't and isn't even close to the worst.)

"lied for nearly four years"? Trump to a goddamn tee. (Well, okay, maybe it would fit Trump better if you removed the "nearly" and changed "four years" to "his entire putrid life," but even so, it still fits Trump as stated.)

"saddling the nation with a president who can't do the job"? Trumpanzees to a fucking tee. (Trump proved that from 2016-2020, capped with his final """""official act""""" in 2021.)

As for "Kamala Harris owns the entire leftwing policy record of Joe Biden"? Fucking good. "she is even more liberal"? Again, great, more of that, please.

All the rest of it is just typical Trumpish GQP bullshit. Nothing new.

Well... at least she finally stopped lying/pretending about being a Democrat, if absolutely nothing else. I'd bet her decision to do this was strongly encouraged by her GQP colleagues behind the scenes, though, especially given the timing of it. If they managed to convince Joe Manchin to do the same thing, it'd fuck up a whole lot (well, not for them, but for everyone else). I mean, just having those two as "Democrats" was already fucking up a whole lot. Her/them leaving the party just makes/would make it official, is all.

Wow... Joe Manchin actually showing the slightest modicum of common sense, for once in his political career? How surprising. Something something broken clocks something something twice a day.

"Hi. In today's episode, we ask questions about Joe Biden's first year as president. Questions like, 'What's his name?' and 'How's it going, Joe?'"

---

Be warned: Warmbo is in this video. Anyway, outside of the mere existence of Warmbo in this video, there was very little else with which I disagreed.

Or, rather, there was a whole hell of a lot in this video with which I disagreed, but it was not the fact that it was Cody who was presenting the things said by others with which I disagreed, nor was it Cody's vicious mockery of said disagreeable things. Like, I didn't agree with a single word that Dumbfuck Trump or Bitch McConnell or any of the other GQP dumbfucks (or GQP dumbfuck-wannabes like Manchin or Sinema) said, and there were some things that Biden himself said with which I didn't agree, but I'm glad Cody presented all those things, if only for the purposes of middle finger waving.