Author: Jon Ponder

POLLS: Pres. Musk Is Very Unpopular

Americans don't like his drastic, haphazard chainsaw cuts to their government

Jon Ponder

Based on newly released survey results, MAGA party leader Donald Trump, who lives and breathes polling, has reason to regret selling his presidency to billionaire South African immigrant Elon Musk. A series of polls marking the first full month of the Musk presidency reveals widespread public disfavor with the drug-addled unelected president:

  • A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Feb. 20, 2025, found Pres. Musk with a -16 approval: 55 percent unfavorable, 39 percent favorable.
  • The Pew Poll released Feb. 19 found Musk’s approval at -12: 54 percent unfavorable, 42 favorable.
  • The Economist/YouGov poll released Feb. 19 showed Musk in better shape with just a -6 approval: 49 percent unfavorable, 46 percent favorable.
  • In the latest Quinnipiac University poll, Musk’s role in government had a -12 approval rating: 54 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove.

The Economist/YouGov poll found that Musk’s drastic, haphazard chainsaw approach to downsizing the U.S. government by firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers has -17 approval: 51 percent disapprove, 34 percent approve.

Tennessee MAGA Rep. Proposes Amendment to Give Trump – But Not Pres. Obama – a Third Term

Jon Ponder
Tennesse Rep. Andy Ogle – R-MAGA

Salon.com: Rep. Andy Ogles, R.-Tenn., is the latest House Republican to make a splashy grab for President Donald Trump’s attention, introducing a proposal to amend the Constitution and allow the 78-year-old to try for a third term.

In a statement, Ogles claimed Trump “must be given the time necessary” to enact his legislation and praised the president as the “only figure in modern history” who could properly lead the country.

“This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs,” Ogles said.

Ogle specifically excludes Obama and any other presidents who successfully served two consecutive terms. However, in the extremely unlikely event that this amendment gets the required two-third votes in the House and Senat, this provision is so illogical that it would almost certainly be struck down, setting the stage for a 2028 match up between Trump, 82, and Barack Obama, 67.

Forget Pres. Musk – the Real President is Stephen Miller

Jon Ponder
Stephen Miller

“Turns out the President Musk thing was off base because Stephen Miller is really running the country,” Ron Filipkowski wrote recently on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “These are Miller’s ideas and Miller’s executive orders. Trump is just signing them and talking gibberish about what’s in them.”

No one who followed Trump’s claims during the election can be surprised by the firehose of ultra-right executive orders spewed by the new administration in its first few days. They were cribbed out of the Heritage Foundation’s anti-democracy “Project 2025” manifesto, which has been rebranded as “America First,” borrowing a name from a 1930s U.S. fascist movement associated with celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh.

The only surprise is that the morbidly obese, 78-year-old Trump. the laziest president since Reagan, has had the energy to do it all. The suggestion by Filipkowski, an attorney associated with the Meidas Touch Network, that Miller is doing the heavy lifting makes sense.

Inaugural Resistance: Who Is Skipping Trump’s Swearing in

Jon Ponder
inauguration-crowds
President Barack Obama’s audience on the National Mall in Washington. At right, photo of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Photos courtesy of the National Park Service

The Resistance to the coming fascist state under Donald Trump unofficially kicks off at his inauguration on Monday with the notable absence of key Democratic figures who would normally appear on stage with an incoming president.

Hell Freezes over

Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, is going to be bitterly cold in Washington, D.C. WTOP reports that there is a chance of snow on Sunday and predicts gusty winds on Monday, with a high temperature of just 20 degrees.

Ex-Presidents Out at Lunch

Of course, Pres. Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be on the podium, as will former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, along with his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush and his wife Laura. However, Michele Obama has opted not to attend.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not attend the inauguration, and it is not because she recently broke her hip.

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Graph Shows When the U.S. Healthcare System Went off the Rails

Nixon's Healthcare Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 played an early role in enabling corporations to profit off sick and dying Americans

Jon Ponder
Chart source: Our World in Data

This graph shows the point at which the efficacy of healthcare in the United States diverged from the systems of its peer and competitor countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Japan. It shows that at the point when healthcare spending skyrocketed in the United States, the results of the enormous spending began to falter as measured by life expectancy.

Obviously, there were many factors that led to this divergence. But one factor in particular stands out. In 1973, President Nixon pushed through Congress and then signed into law the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, which changed the operating parameters of HMOs and other pre-paid medical plans. Its advocate was Edgar Kaiser, a wealthy California donor and president of Kaiser Permanente.

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After Running against High Prices, Trump Warns Americans That He’ll Raise Prices Across the Board

The chaos is the point

Jon Ponder

In Shock Doctrine, her seminal work on the rise of authoritarnism in the contemporary world, Naomi Klein shows how fascists undermine democracies in order to replace them with authoritarian states by creating and exploiting economic chaos. In the disruptions that ensue, they seize power.

In advance of his inauguration next month, Trump is saying plainly that he is very intentionally bringing economic chaos on day one. As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do.”

Salon.com: Donald Trump, who won in part due to inflation that peaked two years ago, campaigned on a policy of making everything from vegetables to televisions more expensive, suggesting a plurality of voters either did not understand tariffs — and the rippling economic impact of raising taxes on imported goods — or simply did not believe the Republican candidate would follow through.

In a Monday evening post on Truth Social, the president-elect reaffirmed that yeah, he’s serious.

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Madison Square Garden to Host First Fascist Rally Since 1939

Trump will hold a MAGA rally in the arena on Oct. 27

Jon Ponder

On Oct. 9, 2024, Donald Trump announced that he had added a rally to his campaign schedule for Oct. 27. “We just rented Madison Square Garden,” Trump told the crowd at campaign rally stop in Scranton, Penn. “We’re gonna make a play for New York, it hasn’t been done in a long time. It hasn’t been done in many decades.”

It has been eight and a half decades in fact. From NPR:

On the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, the marquee of New York’s Madison Square Garden was lit up with the evening’s main event: a “Pro American Rally.” The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.

The rally was sponsored by the German American Bund, an organization with headquarters in Manhattan and thousands of members across the United States. In the 1930s, the Bund was one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism.

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New York Times Finally Reports on Trump’s Incoherence and Lack of Accuity

Jon Ponder

After months, even years, of sane-washing Donald Trump, the New York Times reported on Saturday that Donald Trump has been delivering “rambling” and “fantastical” speeches at campaign rallies this year. But with just a month to go before the 2024 general election when many Americans are voting early, it is may be too little and too late to make a difference.

New York Times: New York Times (Paywall): “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia.”

“He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”

Fun Fact: Mother of Misogynist Footballer Harrison Butker Is a Medical Physicist

Another baby step toward Gilead

Jon Ponder
Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker
Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker

The Handmaid’s Tale-style campaign to push American women out of the public sphere comes from every direction. It recently erupted during a commencement speech at a college in Kansas. The misogynist propagandist was Harrison Butker, a professional football player.

Here’s what Butker said in his commencement address to Benedictine College in Kansas:

The 28-year-old kicker came under fire recently for telling female graduates at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, that they “have had the most diabolical lies told to you.”

He continued: “How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?” he asked.

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

So Harrison Butker must owe his success to his stay-at-home mother, who was known for her quiet devotion to her family and a contented life having babies and preparing meals, right?

Wrong:
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Trump Would Not Be the First Presidential Candidate to Campaign from Prison

Jon Ponder
Socialist Party 1920 presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, Convict #9653

Donald Trump recently announced that he was eager to go to jail for violating the gag order in his criminal trial in Manhattan.

Trump has whined about the gag order on a daily basis since before the trial began. But on May 6, 2024, in his daily televised courthouse address to his cult, he added a note of false bravado to the whine. “And frankly, you know what,” he said, “our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”

Trump is notorious for hiding behind the Constitution when it can be construed to support his scams but shredding it when it gets in his way, as he did on January 6, 2020, in his uncountable ethical violations as president and in other areas.

The fact is he is a career criminal conman who has lived a life of luxury for nearly 80 years. There is zero chance he’d give up his solid gold toilets for an lid-less aluminum basin on Rikers Island.

If Trump were to go to prison, he would be the first U.S. ex-president to get locked up, but he wouldn’t be the first presidential candidate. That title goes to Eugene V. Debs, who campaigned for president from prison on the Socialist ticket in 1920 and received more than 1 million votes. He was serving a ten-year stretch in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for violating Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s World War I Sedition Act of 1918.
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