By David Glenn Cox
Liquor sales are reported to be down by 50%. I would have guessed them to be up by 50% all things considered. Concert tours are being canceled and scaled back because of low or no ticket sales. They call it blue dot fever; I call it Trumpitus. The sudden desire to avoid $100 ticket sales. It isn’t that the fans don’t want to see today’s modern “artists.” But Gen-Z lacks both enthusiasm and funding. To take a date with dinner and you’re cracking on $300 for two hours of entertainment. Plus the overpriced tee shirt!
Las Vegas is starting to eliminate resort fees. I wonder why? Once the domain of cheap hotel rooms and cheap meals, has become notorious for outrageous fees and overpriced drinks. Las Vegas became too expensive for families. There’s a casino on every block these days anyway with free parking. It’s all just a sign of the times, really. Home foreclosures in Atlanta are nearing 2008 levels. 140,000 homes in or near foreclosure. In Floriduh and Texas, home prices are beginning to retreat. Consumer credit is at an all-time high, and ditto car repossessions. Is it any wonder then that Mr. Trump keeps waving checks under desperate American’s noses?
Boy, $5,000 would sure set me right! Get caught up on the mortgage and the late car payments. But it’s too late for Mr. Trump to play that game. You can’t expect the arsonist to help you build a new house. The Iowa Legislature tore into the great big, giant fifteen billion dollar steel mill only to find everyone is fully committed and filled with enthusiasm, but short of finances. They want the state to kick in 1.5 billion first, and then the rest of the funding will come from investors eager to get in on the ground floor. “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!”
Farmers say the red diesel idea is a mixed bag. It drives up the price of red diesel while limiting the agricultural supply. But like a Christmas sale in January, it’s too late. Farmers buy fuel in bulk and in advance of the harvest, and the harvest has already begun. Rather than a good thing, it sort of stings. A farmer just bought a thousand gallons at six bucks a gallon and now it’s down to $5.50. Thanks ever so much, Mr. Trump, for thinking of me.
Pete Hogsbreath was waiting at the dock to greet the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. It’s called getting out in front of a bad news story. If Pete could make enough noise, maybe people wouldn’t talk so much about the 320-day deployment. I’ll bet you even money that captain is relieved or fired or retired. He allowed bad press to reach the public’s ears, and that’s unforgivable in Pete’s Navy. The tough guy with tattoos, tremors, and testosterone replacement.
I return to the Fuhrer rally in Nebraska. The orange felon brought out his girlfriend Natalie Trump, I mean, Harp. A married man with a wife charging him by the hour, and he brings out his fluffer, his side piece to meet and greet the fine Christians of Nebraska. Oh, how they cheered, hooted, and whistled. He’s having an adulterous affair right out in public! Yeah! He’s doubled the price of our fertilizer and fuel. Yeah! He’s destroyed our overseas markets! Yeah! And this is only the first drizzle wait until the storm hits.
I was reading about a 470 million dollar office building in Houston purchased on an interest-only loan. There’s your first red flag. The original interest rate was 3.25% but interest only loans have variable interest rates. The new interest rate is 6.99% literally doubling overnight. Anyone interested in buying an office building in Houston? Great location! Close to Starbucks! It’s untenable and non-survivable. And another symptom of Trumpitus.
Little Marco Rubio was allowed to speak in Greece. They gave him a box to stand on. Greece gave us democracy and we gave them Don Junior’s cast-off ex-girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle as an ambassador in return. She’s done a really good job by doing nothing at all. Little Marco strutted across the stage, doing his best Napoleon impersonation. The United States is going for national power, and we don’t give a shit if the world doesn’t like it. “Marshal Ney, assemble the troops!” Oh, the speech went over really well, and little Marco was quickly ushered off the stage by security. I guess “fuck you!” just doesn’t translate well into Greek, but they got the message alright.
The dinosaur Trumpasuarus appeared in Texas for the third time in as many weeks. Boy, is that scared or what? But no matter how many times Trump visits the one-star state, Texas Governor Greg “Bubba” Abbott is always missing. He’s MIA, that’s missing in Austin. No, sir, he’s a no-show. He’s not going to let Trump fuck up his approval rating! I gotta change the oil on the limousine. I gotta cut the grass at the Governor’s mansion. It’s almost like Bubba doesn’t want to be seen with Trumpasuarus. Three Trump visits and three Abbott no-shows. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.”
It’s a one-man parade; with everything going wrong all at once. The Dow Jones average falls 500 points as the Pentagon prepares for more strikes on Iran. Oh, I bet that’s going to be popular. Maybe in Nebraska, maybe. They’ll cheer for anything in Nebraska, even terrorist strikes on American cities. God bless the Midwest, huh? White House insiders fear a bloodbath. The RNC is rushing five million dollars down to South Carolina, South Carolina! Who would have ever guessed that running Lindsey Graham’s inexperienced sister was a bad move? She’s a Trump pick. Never mind what the Republican Party in South Carolina thought about it. And so, she became a symbol for Trump in South Carolina. And now they need five million dollars, stat.
It’s like being Medusa’s hairdresser. Every time they try to untangle a knot, they get snake bit. But whatever happens, the pain will assure us of no recurrence. Ronald Ray gun never could have been elected until enough of the survivors of the last Republican Great Depression had passed on. Until enough of the voters hadn’t ever heard of a snake oil salesmen before.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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