Clear blue skies and sunshine galore this near-noon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley—after heavy, blistering rain this past week, today is a full sigh of relief.
Reportedly, we’ve a dry weekend, but more wet shit expected on Monday. No big deal, ’tis the season.

However, no matter how horrible we expected the T-Rump to be after the election, the actual play-out has been way-way worse. Now in our 54th day of the Orange Turd’s clusterfuck, the reality was a surprise to even the better informed, and the more intelligent, who should have known better.

I guess it was unexpected that anyone near human could be as mindlessly cruel and destructive — except the inhumane:

I was pretty pessimistic going into the Trump sequel and I’ve got to admit it’s much worse to an even I imagined.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2025-03-15T15:10:00.821Z

Kruse, an American historian and a professor of history at Princeton University, attempted to explain/understand T-Rump’s nightmare chaos in an interview published this morning at Public Notice:

I want to stress how far off the rails this is in terms of not just our norms and our expectations but our laws. There’s a lot that’s deeply unconstitutional here. I get that they’re trying to flood the zone and overwhelm the opposition, but the opposition shouldn’t let itself be overwhelmed. It shouldn’t accept this as the new normal, which is what the administration wants us to do.

I expected Trump to get in and more or less do what he did last time, which was to try and work with congressional majorities to get his agenda passed. I assumed his tariff drive would flounder in Congress and he would just kind of sit back and take credit for what was already kind of a rising economy under President Biden. I didn’t expect them to take a wrecking ball to the executive branch.

I was one of those people who assumed DOGE, when it was initially announced, would basically be yet another presidential commission. They would talk a great game but not actually do anything. I didn’t think they would take this bold of a leap into deeply unconstitutional waters, but they have. Trump and Musk correctly assessed that elected Republicans would simply submit and give up prerogatives that Congress has had forever and jealously guarded. The people in charge of the House and Senate seem like they’re perfectly willing to bend the knee and do whatever Trump wants them to do.

And the awful influence of the super rich:

Right away I think of Eisenhower’s cabinet, which was famously described by Richard Strout in The New Republic as “eight millionaires and a plumber.” The plumber was the secretary of labor, who was the head of the plumbers and pipefitters’ union. He lasted about eight months.

The rest of them were some of the richest people in the world — the head of General Motors, a couple other millionaires in real estate, publishing, a leader of the Mormon church. There were a lot of really powerful, influential people there, and the worry was that this was a shift away from the New Deal approach of looking out for ordinary people. They were going to favor the very rich.

The thing is, Eisenhower actually pushed back against some of the policy preferences of these rich folks. The top tax rate stayed really high. He didn’t do away with Social Security, which is something the more fringe folks wanted to do. It was a very wealthy cabinet, but it didn’t really get the policies you would expect a rich cabinet to get.

But what we see from Musk and the rest of Trump’s crew is that they are making financial gains off this. Musk just wrestled an FAA program away from Verizon and gave it to his own company. They’re doing all they can to profit from this. The tax cut alone is a good example. Those people in the cabinet are the ones who are going to benefit from more tax cuts for the wealthy.

And the shifty-shitty non-presidential behavior of the T-Rump:

He ran so hard to stay out of prison. I don’t think we can underestimate the fact that all of the looming prosecutions against him were really a prime motivating factor, and once he got into office and had presidential immunity again, thanks to the Supreme Court, the fire kind of went out.

He likes the ceremonial role. He likes to be on screen. He likes to be seen signing executive orders and looking like he’s in charge, but in terms of policy, I don’t think he cares deeply about issues. He’s happy to let the true believers — whether it’s Elon Musk or Russell Vought — take the lead and get whatever they want done.

Rupar’s Public Notice subscription is way-well worth it — most informative on the ever-sickening T-Rump rampage.

Despite the ongoing horror, T-Rump/Muskrat’s mad adventures are not too popular:

And the consequence is also shitty:

Those results are part of a broader trend. The New York Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Expectations, released Monday, showed “notably” worsening outlooks for unemployment, consumers’ ability to make minimum debt payments, and credit access expectations, while the outlook for stocks a year from now fell to its lowest level since December 2023.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), which tends to lean more conservative, reported this week that its uncertainty index climbed to its second-highest recorded reading last month.

“Uncertainty is high and rising on Main Street, and for many reasons,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg in a statement. “Those small business owners expecting better business conditions in the next six months dropped and the percent viewing the current period as a good time to expand fell, but remains well above where it was in the fall. Inflation remains a major problem, ranked second behind the top problem, labor quality.”

Shit always stinks, and for a long time.

Mysterious at first glance, yet unexpected:

Bad on first thought, far worse in reality, or not, yet here we are once again …

(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, Isome students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here.)