Friday, March 08, 2024

Cryin' and bitchin' from her upscale kitchen, Katie Britt was not a hit

 Katie Britt, psycho mom and rising star in the reich-wing whineosphere, delivered a melodramatic and menacing rebuttal to President Biden's powerful SOTU... and it earned her more jeers than cheers.

Hide the knives, kids, psycho mom is in the kitchen!

As you must surely be aware by now if you follow American politix at all, Alabama republican senator Katie Britt's histrionic, painfully hyper-enunciated, and alternately quavering/menacing State Of The Union rebuttal (aka
the "Kitchen Ransom Video") has been ruthlessly mocked all over the media. It even caused shudders and cringes among a significant portion of the MAGAverse, according to, among numerous other sources, Ron Filipkowski, writing on Meidas Touch.com:

Britt's speech...weirdly alternated between bubbly cheerfulness, then concern, then fake anger, then fake outrage, sometimes all within the span of five seconds, leading many to compare her performance to someone auditioning for a high school play for the first time. Naturally, people on the Left were going to criticize her speech. But most surprising was right-wing reaction, where they simply couldn't hide their disappointment.

But to Katie Britt, the critics probably don't matter, since The Mango Monarch of MAGA, His Royal Majesty Donald John Trump, loved the speech.

It has been common practice for years to employ a "rising star" in the opposition party to deliver the counter-SOTU. But this year's choice raised eyebrows for more than one reason.

The rationale for Katie in the kitchen (and Katie at all, for that matter)
Many critics of Katie Britt's SOTU rebuttal focused on the setting of the dramatic diatribe -- her own kitchen -- noting that it was yet another example of not-so-subtle republican/Christofascist messaging that a woman's place is in the kitchen. Critics also noted that Britt is the quintessential young (or relatively young)
Stepford Wife or Handmaid's Tale pick to convey the overarching message that Being A Mom and A Wife are by far the most important roles any woman can ever take on, and that Katie's mom-hood status makes her uniquely qualified to expound on how terrifyingly out-of-touch Joe "Bless his heart" Biden allegedly is, and how dangerous he is because his policies are ENDANGERING OUR CHILDREN.

All of those critical speculations are valid. But to me it seems clear that, apart from Kitchen Katie having earned
the Mango Mussolini's all-important stamp of approval, the primary (though seriously misguided) intentions for choosing her in particular -- and for choosing her kitchen as the setting for her high-school drama tryout -- include the following:

1. "Kitchen table issues." This one should be pretty obvious. Katie declared right out of the chute that her speech was going to focus on the proverbial "kitchen table issues" -- those matters that are supposedly of utmost concern to ordinary struggling American families, and that they supposedly discuss around their humble kitchen tables during their humble family dinners. Accordingly, some genius(es) decided that the perfect way to convey Britt's supposed empathy with these struggling Americans would be for her to perch at what presumably was a table (it wasn't entirely clear to me) in her clearly upscale (not humble) kitchen. As Jake Johnson, in a March 8, 2024 piece on Common Dreams, put it:

Speaking in hushed tones and intermittently flashing a menacing smile, Britt—the former CEO of an Alabama corporate lobbying organization and the wife of a lobbyist—said from the comfort of her posh kitchen inside her 6,000-square-foot mansion that she understands and sympathizes with "what real families are facing.

Johnson also wrote:

Britt, who has been floated as a possible 2024 running mate for former President Donald Trump, characterized the GOP as the "party of hardworking parents and families"—neglecting to mention the trillions of dollars in tax breaks the party has funneled to the rich and large corporations in recent years while opposing programs such as the expanded child tax credit, which briefly slashed U.S. child poverty in half.

So... major misfire on the whole "kitchen table"/struggling families thing.

2. An appeal to the educated suburban woman/mom demos who currently oppose Trump. Some of Trump's allies caught on to this point right away and defended Britt's disastrous speech.

It would be so much easier for MAGA if we could just go back to the daze when women couldn't vote, but here we are. Although some analysts said that educated (white) suburban women helped deliver the White House to Trump in 2016, those demographics changed their minds during the course of his presidency, and
by 2020 had largely turned against him. During the 2020 campaign Trump unsuccessfully begged them for their support, claiming to have "saved their suburbs," but overall they weren't buying it, and ultimately went for Biden.

For the 2024 campaign, Biden's lead over Trump among these demos has narrowed considerably,
particularly among white suburban women, but clearly the Trump campaign is still laboring to win their support. And that seems to be a challenge. Consider the state of play in the swing state of Wisconsin, for instance. This is from a December 21, 2023 opinion piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Suburban women still hold some conservative views, especially when it comes to finances. They are more likely to agree with Republicans on tax and economic policy. But on all other issues the study explored, Democrats do a better job of matching the values of suburban women, especially on abortion, an issue which is currently consuming the political landscape in Wisconsin and which these women say will be a key deciding factor in 2024 and the state’s 2026 gubernatorial election.

But a major opening exists for kitchen table issues. Suburban women hear very little on Republican-proposed solutions to issues that are particularly relevant to their daily lives, like health care, mental health, and affordable child care, which leads them to trust Democrats more even if they have issues with the liberal approach. 
 

Yup, there's that mention of "kitchen table issues" again. Given all of these challenges to a total takeover of the hearts, minds, and souls of suburban mommies by Voldemoron, what better Trumpistan ambassador to Normal Momville could there be than a white suburban mommy?

Trouble is,
it appears that the mommies aren't buying Kitchen Katie's message.

The idea is that Republicans are desperately trying to sell Republicans as pro-women or pro-mom, [Washington Post columnist Monica] Hesse wrote.

"The trouble," Hesse continued, "is that they are trying to sell it that way once a year, via a televised State of the Union rebuttal, rather than by selling it via policies and legislation. So much of the rest of the night revealed a contrast between what Britt’s party had done for women, and how women and mothers were actually living their lives."

Biden, by contrast, has actually worked to improve the lives of women and their families. So, repubs, good luck with peddling Kitchen Katie as "America's mom."

3. The image of youth/vitality/a new generation of leadership. Ahead of the president's SOTU and Kitchen Katie's rebuttal, Katie was relentlessly promoted (and didn't hesitate to brag about it during her speech) as the youngest woman ever to win a republican Senate seat. This seems to be a subtle but clear message about Joe Biden's advanced age allegedly being a disqualifying factor for the presidency. Never mind the advanced age -- not to mention the clearly abysmal physical condition and mental health -- of the only alternative to Biden in this election: Katie's Cheeto Jeezus Trump.

In the time since I first wrote the above, I've read numerous other comments that are congruent with my initial impressions; in fact Katie herself has since said that the kitchen setting was intended to hammer home that whole "kitchen table" message. But I'm leaving the list above intact even though after so many millions of words have been slung about the matter, it may seem that I am way behind the curve and am simply restating the painfully obvious.

Rising star, or just another red giant?
If the choice of Katie Britt as the "rising star" -- the one most qualified to rebut the SOTU -- was motivated in any way by an attempt to sweeten the horror that the Party Of Trump (aka the American Fascist Party) has become... or to make the republican party appear to be in tune with the needs of ordinary Americans as opposed to the super-rich... or even to foster that "big tent" image for which they've been striving for years (Katie isn't a person of color but she is a woman)... then, sorry, guys, it was a wash on all counts. And as discussed in Item number 2 above, the appeal to that all-important suburban women/mommies crowd was also a flop.

(By the way, in answer to the favored Trump-campaign question this election cycle, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" -- similar to the question that Katie asked as well at the end of her speech --
here's some perspective that contradicts the grim picture being peddled by MAGA.)

There's one point I want to make regarding republicans' largely tone-deaf approach to wooing the commoners: I absolutely do not wish to imply that being affluent or rich, even super-rich, is incompatible with compassion for those much less fortunate, or with a desire for equality and inclusiveness, or with a genuine wish to do good in the world. As I've said on this blog before, in my life I have known several "haves" who actually tried to make things better for the "have-nots" and the marginalized -- one example being right here in the Great State of Texas, the late
Marvin Zindler.

But actions do still speak louder than words, even in these days of inordinately loud words, and while Katie and her republican colleagues, hot and heavy on the campaign trail, may talk a good game of genuine concern for the have-nots, their voting records speak much more loudly and clearly than their empty rhetoric.

Red whine goes so well with cheesiness
I will concede that at the moment it appears that Katie is a true rising star in
the reich-wing whineopshere, though in this particular speech she labored to make it appear that she was whining on behalf of all Americans (at least the good, patriotic, godly ones) instead of whining about how she has been oppressed and repressed. Don't be fooled by that apparent altruism: remember that she is in lock-step now with the long-time Whiner In Chief, Trump himself, and is poised to become one of his proxies and possibly even his VP pick. And more than likely, at some point during the long campaign months ahead, she will not hesitate to break out a bottle of acidic red whine and raise a toast to her own brave suffering at the hands of the "fake news" and the "liberal media" and the Democrats and the commies and socialists and whatnot.

And speaking of whining, that insufferable quavery voice that dominated Britt's speech has been another topic of widespread speculation and mockery. Some have said it's totally
tradwife, deliberately childlike and intended to convey a message of proper womanly submissiveness. That is not beyond the realm of possibility, of course, and it's likely that the delivery did appeal to tradwives and their manly-man husbands, but I have a different take on Katie's motives.

My impression wasn't that she was attempting to communicate submissiveness or weakness at all; rather, the whiny voice was simply part of her over-the-top histrionic attempt to tug on the heartstrings: authentic faux-emotion (fauxmotion?) at its cheesiest. To me her delivery called to mind those endless late-night mini-infomercials (animal rescue, child rescue, etc.) featuring a tremulous, constantly on-the-verge-of-tears female voiceover. I swear, I half-expected to hear Sarah McLachlan's 90s hit
"Angel" in the background while Katie Britt quavered on (even though the song itself is probably far too heathen for Katie and her ilk).

It's not just the bad acting and Christofascist messaging; it's also the gaslighting and the hypocrisy
Apart from the delivery and location, there were other serious problems with Katie Britt's kitchen-table theatrics. To begin with, it was framed around a deep fear for the safety and well-being and indeed the future of "our children." This of course is a typical republican rhetorical tactic; they love to use children as political pawns. As many commentators have pointed out, however, if repubs were truly concerned for our children, they wouldn't be voting against legislation to help children and their families, or for legislation that sacrifices the welfare of kids and families to the endless demands of the ultra-wealthy. I mentioned that point myself
toward the end of this July 2023 post about a schlocky hit summer movie, a highly fictionalized tale of child sex trafficking called Sound Of Freedom:

,,,a few folks on Twitter have pointed out the glaring hypocrisy of reich-wingers' sudden deep concern, inspired solely by Sound Of Freedom, about innocent little children -- brown children, at that!-- who are being so ruthlessly trafficked, a concern that seems incongruent with the general indifference of republicans/reich-wingers to the plight of children in general, particularly brown ones. Consider, for example:

I won't deny that Democrats use children and family issues as talking points too. But overall, they're the party that is actually trying to do something to help kids and parents.

Equally as glaring as the hypocrisy about her grave concern for children is Katie Britt's gaslighting and hypocrisy about the whole border/immigration issue. Her kitchen audition was a flagrant demonstration of
Border Derangement Syndrome, the hysterical narrative that immigrants are "invading" the US from the Southern border and that they pose a serious existential threat to America.

It should come as no big shocker that several of Britt's statements about President Biden's border policies were exaggerations, misrepresentations, or distortions. In fact her most dramatic tale by far was downright deceitful, as discovered by journalist Jonathan M. Katz when he did a little bit of digging. (And here it may seem that I am burying the lede, given the huge amount of attention that this story has received since I first published this post, but I'll be damned if I'm going to rearrange this entire long screed just to seem more relevant.)

Katie tearfully told a tale about talking with a young woman who, beginning at the age of 12, had been "sex trafficked by the cartels." She'd been repeatedly raped over a period of years, sometimes many times a day. Katie said the woman told her that she had been put on "a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on-end." She immediately followed that by saying, "We wouldn't be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it's past time we started acting like it. President Biden's border crisis is a disgrace. It's despicable. And it's almost entirely preventable."

Context is everything, though. And what Psycho Mom neglected to mention was that even though the woman’s story is true, it all took place in Mexico, not the US, and it actually happened 20 years ago, when Biden wasn’t even VP, much less president. (And no, it wasn’t Obama’s fault either. George W Bush was in the White House at that time, not that it was his fault either.)

Accordingly, the entire narrative as presented by Katie was disingenuous at best, though it was most likely swallowed whole by the same crowd who embraced the aforementioned movie Sound Of Freedom as virtually a documentary.

When I initially amended this post to add this twist in the saga, I speculated, facetiously, that it was possible that Katie intended to say that the abduction and years of captivity and repeated rapes took place two decades ago in Mexico, but that her eyes were so filled with fake Tammy-Faye tears at that particular point in her diatribe that she couldn’t read the TelePrompter or the cue cards or whatever. In a more serious vein I wrote that it was even possible that she would claim that she was talking about a totally different sex trafficking/rape vic than the one named in Jonathan Katz's expose (a woman named Karla Jacinto Romero). But there have been developments since my initial speculations.

At the time I first wrote this, it appeared that up to that point Britt had not addressed the matter directly at all, choosing instead to let a spokesperson do the dirty work of dodging the question. And at first, that spokesperson, Sean Ross, refused to directly answer the question about the identity of the rape victim, and insisted that the story was not deceptive, basically because bad stuff is happening at the border and it's Biden's fault. (Here's a direct link to a Xitter post with screenshots of communications between journalist Kyle Whitmire and Katie's spokesdodger Sean Ross.)

Later, however, after Katz's Tik Tok about the issue went viral and other media jumped on it,
the Washington Post apparently cornered Ross, and ultimately he admitted that the victim in Katie's story was in fact Karla Jacinto Romero. But he continued to insist, as he had done in initial responses to queries, that the story was not deceptive because bad stuff really is happening at the border, and it's Biden's fault.

After much more coverage about the matter, our stalwart kitchen queen finally spoke up in her own defense. From ABC News, March 10, 2024:

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Britt...said she didn't bring up Romero to intentionally blame Biden for what happened to her -- but rather to point to it as an example of the trafficking that is still going on.

"I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12, so I didn't say a teenager, I didn't say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman -- when she was trafficked when she was 12. And so listening to her story, she is a victim's right advocate who is telling this is what drug cartels are doing, this is how they're profiting off of women," Britt said. "And it is disgusting. And so I am hopeful that it brings some light to -- to it, and we can actually do something about human trafficking and that that's what the media actually decides to cover."

Oh, Katie. You know damn well that this was an attempted slam at Biden. You just got caught. And as for that garbled bit about the vic's age, that hasn't been the matter of controversy. The controversy is your deceptive use of the story itself.

Karla Romero has spoken up as well, and apparently she resents being used as a political pawn, either by United States or Mexican pols. From CNN, March 11, 2024:

[Jacinto] told CNN she was trafficked before Biden’s presidency and said legislators lack empathy when using the issue of human trafficking for political purposes.

“I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair,” Karla Jacinto told CNN on Sunday...

...Jacinto told CNN that Mexican politicians took advantage of her by using her story for political purposes and that it’s happened again in the United States.

From the perspective of Katie’s political standing, however, it’s probably all moot, since as noted above, her personal savior, Lard Cheeto Jeezus, was quite pleased with her audition.

Apart from Katie's shaky and altogether Trumpian relationship with the truth, there's her hypocrisy regarding the border. She was actually one of the republicans who helped negotiate a bipartisan border security deal -- and then, like most of her rethuglican colleagues,
she voted against the bipartisan bill resulting from the negotiations because the Orange Overlord commanded it.

And while we're at it, let's not ignore Katie Britt's hypocrisy regarding women's health issues. From Ariel Messman-Rucker
on Pride.com, March 8, 2024:

[Britt] also spent part of her excruciatingly long speech recounting the story of a woman who she claimed was raped at the border because of Biden's "senseless border policies" but failed to see the blatant hypocrisy in her statements considering she is vehemently pro-life and would deny a woman in that position the right to get an abortion.

Exactly. (Do read Ariel Messman-Rucker's entire piece, because it lists some of the most hilarious responses to Britt's performance.)

Finally and most egregiously, Katie Britt's speech was, obviously, a clear endorsement of Donald Trump, even though she never mentioned his name. Apparently
the impending death of American democracy, and the rise of fascism within US borders, are of absolutely zero concern to her.

Is "republicunt" too strong a word to use here?

This post has been revised and expanded since initial publication on March 8, 2024.
~ CC

Saturday, March 02, 2024

My wild loves

 

When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.
~ Stephen Vincent Benét

* * * * *

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear

But I can't sing, I can't help listening
~ Jackson Browne,
For a Dancer

Long ago I had a pet wolf, which, as I’ve often said, is an oxymoron if there ever was one. There really is no excuse for this, and I would never dream of doing it again. I learned the hard way, as others have, that even if a wolf is not in the wild, the wild will always be in the wolf.

I didn't adopt the wolf, whom I named Maya, by myself; my partner in this ultimately unfortunate experiment was an artist and photographer and musician named Rick Hartman, who always possessed a bit of wildness himself. I do not mean wildness in the decadent party-animal sense in which it is most often applied to humans. What I mean is that Rick had a lifelong passion for nature and wildlife, and always seemed happier outdoors than in, and probably would have been content to live his entire life in a cave or at most a yurt in the middle of a vast wilderness.

Though I love nature and animals too, my own material requirements have always been a little more fussy. This was an underlying conflict throughout my relationship with Rick, and once, when we were discussing our basic incompatibility, he said, "The thing is, I'm a wolf, and you're a dog." It was not an insult and he didn't mean it as one; it was just a comment on our different natures. (Besides, dogs are some of my favorite people, so if you want to insult me, calling me a dog is definitely not going to do the trick.)

I have been thinking about Rick today, March 2, because it is the tenth anniversary of the day that he left the planet, as his brother expressed it when he told me the news, after a brave and grueling battle with cancer. Rick and I never married, but we were together for seven years, and remained friends for the rest of his life. To say that I was deeply saddened by his loss would be a lame understatement.

I have had this post whirling around in my head for more than the ten years that Rick has been gone; I actually began it a couple of years before he passed away. Originally it was simply going to be a rumination on wildness -- in nature at large as well as in humans -- framed around my experiences of living with a full-blooded timber wolf (and a man who identified with that wolf).

But there were always other posts to write, and the months and years went by, and here we are.

And I find that even now, ten years to the day that Rick left, I'm having trouble collecting all of my thoughts into a cohesive whole. So for now, this post is just a "stub," my intention being to add to it over the next few days. I just wanted to post something to observe this sad anniversary.

The "wolf man" picture at the head of this post is a photocomposition by Rick -- created the laborious old-fashioned way, years before Photoshop or AI -- consisting of a self-portrait and a portrait of Maya. It's one of my very favorite works of his. (Years before he passed, Rick had given me permission to share this image publicly as long as I attributed it.)

Another one of my favorites, of which I have a mounted print but not a scan at the moment, is a photocomp that Rick called "Traveler," in which he once again used himself as a model. The piece shows a man of indeterminate age, dressed in rugged clothes and an old hat, and holding on to a walking stick (or is it a wizard's staff?). He is paused at the end of a lovely grid pathway that's actually a perspective shot of one of Houston's glass skyscrapers, with a brilliant blue sky reflected in the glass.

What makes it so intriguing is that the figure of the man is in shadow, so the viewer cannot really tell if it is a frontal or a back view. It's somewhat like one of those
optical-illusion pictures that can be interpreted in one of two ways: is it two faces, or a vase? And to me, the ambiguity has always been the point of "Traveler": it is impossible to determine whether this is a departure or an arrival: is the traveler is just setting out on a long journey, or just returning home from one?

Or both?

* * * * *

As for Maya, the wolf who shared a home with Rick and me (and who never learned anything remotely resembling manners, and who always tried to grab our food off of the table when we were eating, and who ate one of our couches, and who tried to eat the next-door neighbor's French poodle)... well, Rick got custody of her when we split up. I loved her, but there was no way I could take care of her. Unfortunately she became more of a problem for Rick over the years, and she even attacked him once. Ultimately he found a home for her at a wolf haven in the Texas Hill Country.

But Rick never lost his love for the wildness that Maya represented, and he never lost his love for creating art that was often inspired not just by wildness and nature but also by worlds beyond the easily visible. In the artist's statement for one of his art shows years ago, he wrote: “The greatest art one can master is the art of mastering oneself. The highest form of creative expression must come from the depths of the soul in order to touch and awaken that sense in others. I wish to illustrate the freedom of spirit and the eternality of life that I might in some way bring the invisible into the visible.”

Rick always seemed to have one eye on that invisible world, though he clearly relished the visible world as well. His art, like his life, was a joyous celebration of both.

A few days after he passed away, I wrote this in the guest book on his Legacy page:

My heart hurts for the entire Hartman family – a big, beautiful family that I felt I was a part of for seven years. New generations have grown up since I left the scene, and it is gratifying to see how he has enriched their lives, as he did mine. After our split Rick and I remained friends throughout the years. While we were together, he opened my eyes to so many things, and actually helped to set me on my writing career. I will always remember him as an amazingly talented, funny-yet-serious artist and man who always seemed to have his eye on something that the rest of us could never quite see. (In fact that was what caught my own eye when I first met him at a long-ago party: his faraway expression. He was probably busy planning a new art piece or composition, even while we were conversing.)

My thoughts are with all who feel his loss.

In retrospect, Rick was not the love of my life, but a station on the way to that love, Ron. Even so, I miss him. And come to think of it, I miss Maya too, as much of a pain in the ass as she was, and as tragic a figure as a captive wolf is.

Most of all I am deeply grateful for all of the people -- human and otherwise -- who have been and are in my life.

Friday, February 23, 2024

Billionaire "real estate moguls" like Donald Trump and Grant Cardone have made the US housing crisis worse

There's a rich man sleeping on a golden bed
There's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread
~ The Police ("
King of Pain")

There is a housing affordability crisis in the United States, and even though it has been exacerbated in some ways by the surge in migrants, the true villains in this story, if you're inclined to think in terms of heroes and villains, aren't desperate brown people (or blue-city mayors or the Biden administration); rather, the bad guys are members of the billionaire class -- people such as "real estate moguls" Donald Trump and Grant Cardone.

Huge faceless corporate landlords such as Blackstone are also playing a big part, of course,
although there is disagreement about how much (or even if) they're really to blame for the crisis. In any case it would be a mistake to discount the culpability of blustering egomaniacs such as Donald Trump and wealthy Florida Scientologist Grant Cardone, both of whom have a gift for attracting a large and passionately loyal following.

It's worthy of note that
the Stand With Trump sucker fund that Grant and his wife Elena set up to cover Donald Trump's New York civil fraud fine has now passed the $1 million milestone, a mere seven days after it was launched. And the money just keeps pouring in, with no sign of stopping any time soon.

It is quite clear, not only from Elena's overly dramatic missive on the
GoFundMe page but also from scads of other information widely available online, that Grant Cardone feels a special bond with Trump. In his eyes, the two are both highly successful real estate tycoons who are only trying to do good things, but are constantly being oppressed by the government and the legal system and critics and whatnot. Somebody call the waaaaahmbulance!

I think it's far more accurate to say that what Trump and Cardone actually have in common, besides ostentatious wealth, outsized egos, and a gift for the grift, is that they are completely indifferent to the widespread misery that the US housing crisis has created, and it could be argued that they are major contributors to that crisis.

The landlord from hell
Consider Trump, for example. As The New Republic's Kenny Stancil wrote in a piece appearing on Yahoo! News on February 21, 2024,
the very real potential for a return to Trump's housing policies would be a disaster.

In 2017, ProPublica described the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, under Ben Carson as “the perfect distillation of the right’s antipathy to governing.” It was an apt characterization given that Carson repeatedly advocated for harmful budget cuts, sought to triple rents and foist onerous work requirements on the country’s poorest tenants, and impeded fair housing enforcement. Everything he did ran counter to HUD’s mission.

It’s taken years for President Joe Biden's administration to clean up the mess left by Carson, and the 2024 election threatens to undo all of that hard work. But a return to Trumpism threatens more than a mere reversion: The truth is that his wayward administration did not accomplish all the destruction it intended. It’s frightening to contemplate how much more Carson—or someone who shares his
reactionary worldview—might pull off if would-be dictator Donald Trump wins a second term...

It's a good article, and hammers home yet another reason that a second Trump term would be a disater for America.

Trump also has a long history of being indifferent to the plights of tenants -- or, to put it more bluntly and honestly, of being a landlord from hell -- as this March 2016 piece on CNN.com describes.

There's an episode in Donald Trump's past that shows just how far this billionaire businessman will go to get his way.

It began in 1981. Trump bought a 14-story building on prime real estate facing New York City's Central Park.

His plan was to tear down the building and replace it with luxury condos. But first he needed a small band of rent-stabilized tenants out of there.

To succeed, Trump played rough, according to lawsuits filed by the tenants. Renters said he cut heat and hot water, and he imposed tough building rules. Trump even proposed sheltering homeless people in the building...

...The next move in his real life game of Monopoly came in July 1981, when he bought a hotel and its neighbor, a rent-stabilized building at 100 Central Park South.

Two months later, he applied for a demolition permit to blow it up. Trump fired the building manager and replaced him with Citadel Management. In his book,
The Art of the Deal, Trump himself said he chose a company that "specialized in relocating tenants."

Just a few months later, on New Year's Eve, several tenants received identical "lease violation" warning letters. The previous building owner had given renters permission to knock down walls and renovate their apartment units. But Trump was reversing that exception, and renters had only 12 days to rebuild the walls -- or face eviction.

This October 2018 opinion piece in The New York Times. written by tenant lawyer and law professor John Whitlow, describes Trump as "just another crooked New York City landlord."

...Donald Trump is a homegrown creature, a species well known and justifiably loathed by most New Yorkers — the unscrupulous landlord. The rest of the country may be in a constant state of shock when confronted with the tornado of news that whirls around the Trump administration. But tenant advocates know what he is doing. More than a stooge for Vladimir Putin or the embodiment of a disgruntled — and mythical — white working class, Mr. Trump is at his core a landlord, turning a handsome profit while the rest of us live in increasingly precarious conditions.

As a tenant lawyer, I regularly interact with landlords in the city’s housing courts. They make a killing by taking advantage of a rigged system. They extract as much wealth as possible from hard-working people trying to hang on to the places they call home, with little regard for the common good or the social fabric of our city. They take advantage of tax subsidies to renovate old buildings and construct new ones, and they engage in a range of practices, lawful and unlawful, to raise rents above the threshold beyond which tenants lose the protections of rent stabilization. And they regularly
discriminate against tenants on the basis of race, language, national origin and immigration status.

The rich man sleeps in his golden bed and tweets on his golden toilet and peddles his garish gold grift-shoes, while the skeletons fight for crusts and crumbs.

Grant Cardone's contributions to the misery index
Grant Cardone's multibillion-dollar empire is also based on being a less-than-stellar landlord, as well as on teaching others how they can do the same by pouring money into his multifamily residential property investment funds. The more I read about Grant and his real estate ventures, the more convinced I am that he and his ilk are very much a part of the problem of soaring rents and other factors that are lowering the overall standard of living for too many Americans, and are contributing to
a record increase in the number of homeless/unhoused people in "the richest country in the world."

An August 29, 2023 article on the New Republic site, headlined, "The Real Estate Hustle-Culture Con That's Exploiting Investors and Wrecking the Housing Market," lays it out starkly, focusing on Grant Cardone's significant contribution to the problem of housing insecurity.

An ostentatious Louisiana-born salesman with a penchant for down-home relationship advice, Cardone is a practicing Scientologist who casts himself as a plucky opponent to mainstream financial institutions. He rose to fame as a cold-calling guru, building a large online following with videos and courses that promised to reveal the secrets of salesmanship. He subsequently became a fixture on reality TV shows such as Turnaround King and Undercover Billionaire. He now operates a conference circuit that straddles the line between dumbed-down business school and a clumsy revival meeting (Donald Trump was a recent guest speaker). In Cardone’s videos on YouTube and Instagram, he champions a swaggering, somewhat cruel form of hustle culture aimed at a generation struggling to make sense of its economic misfortune.

Over the past few years, Cardone has directed much of his energy toward real estate investment, making use of his raspy charisma and endlessly rising house prices to preach the gospel of passive income. His focus has been on buying up multifamily apartment rental properties to generate sustained rental income and eventual appreciation on the property value. 

Crucially, Cardone has been able to make money not just by imparting financial advice but by exploiting his fan base to build a $4 billion residential real estate portfolio. “We are becoming a renter nation,” Cardone explains in a
video from 2020. He’s not wrong. But Cardone’s business model relies on increasing rents and squeezing tenants to maintain his debt-laden portfolio...

...The funds that Cardone promotes online are a type of syndicated investment. He asks his followers to invest, pools the capital, uses these proceeds to secure large loans, and then buys up undervalued rental properties on the premise that he can quickly increase the rents. He produces steady returns with the rents (the passive income), and by increasing the amount the building can earn, he’s also able to increase the value of the property itself. Along the way, Cardone takes management fees, acquisition fees, and up to 20 percent of the profits. Cardone has also been
accused of quietly buying the properties in advance and then selling them back to the fund at an inflated price.

Of note, the class-action lawsuit against Cardone that was cited in the New Republic article was dismissed in October 2023, for the second time in two years. (It had previously been dismissed, then reinstated by an appeals court.) The plaintiff had disclaimed fraud on Cardone's part, and ultimately couldn't prove that Cardone deliberately deceived his investors. Cardone went on YouTube to crow about the dismissal, slamming media outlets that had had the gall to report negative news about him and his ventures. He said that of 14,000 investors in his scheme, the plaintiff was the only one to complain.

Meanwhile,
Cardone has been busy spreading his own (blatantly self-serving) take on the real reason for the housing crisis in America. In his alternate reality, it's not at all because of inflated house prices fueled in large part by greedy corporate investors (renters who for various reasons are not in the market to buy a house apparently don't enter into his equation). Instead, he says, the problem exists mainly because the majority of the homes on the market are places that buyers simply are not interested in. From a February 21, 2024 piece on the gobankingrates.com site:

“You don’t want to buy most of the homes in America because they’re old,” he said. “It’s your grandmother’s home. It needs new carpet, new kitchen, new air conditioning, heaters.”

Cardone said that many buyers would prefer to buy a smaller home with amenities than an older home that needs to be completely renovated.

“You’re going to be more likely to move into a smaller condo or an apartment and get all the new amenities and a swimming pool and a gym and electronics and smart TVs, and all the cool stuff that people want today,” he said. “Not only do we have a shortage of inventory, we have a shortage of desirable inventory by 10 times.”

Cardone says we mustn't confuse a housing supply crisis with an actual housing crisis.

Cardone explained that while we are in the midst of a housing supply crisis, a possible housing crisis — an overall failure of the housing market — is decades away.

“I don’t think we’re headed for a housing crisis,” he said. “Seventy percent of the loans in America are either paid or they’re below 4%. You have 40% of Americans that have a loan under 3% for the next 28 years. So we don’t have a crisis until the year 2051.”

Oh, well, then, that's okay. Never mind the folks, both renters and owners, who are steadily being squeezed out of even marginally acceptable housing, and being pushed closer to homelessness, due to soaring costs. Never mind the growing numbers of people for whom that longtime cornerstone of the American dream, homeownership, is now an impossible dream. And never mind the glaringly obvious role that corporate landlordism is playing in the problem. Apparently none of that can be considered a "housing crisis" by Grant's definition. So, no worries.

To advance his own business interests, Cardone actively preaches against homeownership for most Americans (
even though he owns several premium properties himself, including his primary residence in Florida, which he bought for $25 million, and a vacation beach house in Malibu for which he paid $40 mil). He encourages other people to rent and to put the money that they would be throwing away on home maintenance into (his) real estate investments, which just happen to be multifamily residential properties. Of course this means that he and his "investors" benefit when rents keep rising on those rental units. Screw the folks who actually have to live in those units. From the New Republic article cited above:

Scooping up undervalued middle-class properties has its own impact. Cynthia Laurent, housing coordinator for Florida Rising, a social justice group based out of Orlando, says that the Sun Belt is already dealing with knock-on effects of investment in mid-tier real estate in peripheral urban enclaves and leafy suburbs. “It’s a chain effect. If folks can’t afford to buy homes, then they become renters. If more middle-class folks are now paying rents, the lower-class folks are being priced out of what is already a short-supplied and underdeveloped housing stock.”

Despite Cardone’s insistence that he stays away from depressed areas, Cardone Capital notes the Covid-19 eviction moratorium as an investment risk in its mandatory earnings report for the fund filed during the pandemic. Eviction has become part of how Cardone operates: Cardone Capital finalized the purchase of 10X Las Olas Walk in downtown Fort Lauderdale in December 2021 and got to work quickly, beginning eviction proceedings against seven tenants in the building the following month. Since then, there have been dozens of evictions filed against tenants in the building.

Cardone has tried to evict more than 50 tenants at 10X Riverwalk, another building in Fort Lauderdale, since he purchased it in 2021. Twenty evictions were filed at 10X Boca Raton, and nearly 100 have been lodged at 10X Delray Beach. This dovetails with extensive studies showing how investor-owned rental properties tend to have much
higher rates of eviction.

A recent investigation by
The Tampa Bay Post also charged that Cardone had been abusing a “workforce housing” scheme and overcharging tenants who are meant to receive affordable, subsidized housing in his building. Instead of passing on the subsidies to the tenants, 10X Wellington Club pocketed the public money provided by the county and claimed subsidies for vacant properties in the building as well.

All things considered, Cardone appears to be the landlord from hell, kinda like Donald Trump.

Residents who live at Cardone’s properties often struggle to get repairs done while suffering steep rent increases. But that seems to be of little concern to Cardone, who insists over and over again that his funds are raising up the video-watching masses by letting them in on the hidden world of real estate profits. “The real estate we are buying has traditionally been available only to the large institutions (such as Blackstone, Vanguard, Fidelity, Fairfield) and out of reach to everyday investors,” Cardone said as part of a promotion effort for one of his latest real estate funds. “I am making extraordinary investments available to the everyday person.”

As indicated in the quote above, a major part of Cardone's shtick has been positioning his real estate fund as an Everyperson's investment opportunity -- a chance to compete with the big guys like Blackstone and Vanguard. But in practice, there's little difference between him and those faceless and soulless giants.

Blackstone, Vanguard, Fidelity, and Fairfield are the lumbering giants of asset management and among the largest private owners of real estate in the U.S. Their size enables them to make incredible returns, swinging property prices, benefiting from economies of scale, tax advantages, lending rates, and complex financial engineering. Cardone benefits from many of these advantages as well. And while many commentators have pointed to the issues that emerge when ownership is concentrated among a few large institutional investors, Cardone’s smaller pooled funds contribute to the same affordability issues that have come out of the decline of affordable housing as rents increase. Housing as an investment category is the issue. And just like the powerful corporate investors, Cardone is intent on raising rents as much as he can and evicting those who can’t pay. For all his posturing, Cardone has spoken openly about his hopes that Blackstone will eventually acquire his real estate portfolio.

Hear that, Grant and Elena? "Housing as an investment category is the issue." So please, you two, in the name of all that is decent and good (look those words up if you're not sure of the meaning), STFU about how oppressed you and Trump and other predatory real estate moguls are. Rational folks aren't buying it.

Housing insecurity in the US is a complex and nuanced issue, and I'm not pretending there are any easy answers. What does seem clear is that career hucksters like Donald Trump and Grant Cardone, who are mainly out for themselves and their bottom lines, aren't doing anything to solve the problem and in fact are making it worse.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Garish gold sneakers and eau d'ouche: more Trumpish trash for sale

 

All that glitters can be sold, especially to suckers with more money than sense (or taste), and Donald Trump knows this better than just about anyone else. He also knows that there's more than one way to get those suckers to pay for the troubles that he brought on himself.

The Trumpcult GoFundMe grift run by billionaire Scamworld/Scientologist couple Grant and Elena Cardone, which we visited at length
on the previous Whirled post, has so far managed to collect over half a million bucks from tens of thousands of suckers, supposedly to pay $355 million of Donald Trump's New York civil fraud fine. And the money just keeps coming in. At the time I'm writing this, the top donation is an anonymous gift of $10,000.

Half a mil plus is a lot of money, but it's still a long, long way from $355 mil, not to mention the nearly $100k in interest for that same civil fraud judgment, not to mention all of the other money Trump owes so far as a result of being determined by various courts to be a fraudster and a defamer and a rapist sex abuser. As things stand now, he owes a small fortune.

But don't cry for Donny. Trump knows better than just about anyone else that if you're a skillful enough con artist/cult leader, there's more than one way to get the suckers to pay for the troubles you brought upon yourself. Besides having your scammy, scummy pals crowdsource a shipload of money for you, you can also slap your famous name on some more trashy products and sell them, or at least the promise of them, for outrageous prices. And it will work great, at least for a while.

Put on your hi-top sneakers, wear your red cap on your head
For instance, there are the high-top shoes that are making the news: those $400 Trump-branded
"Never Surrender" garish gold sneakers that reportedly sold out within hours of their launch. Introduced at an event in Philly known as SneakerCon (emphasis on the "con," in this case), "Never Surrender" was presented as a "super limited edition" of only 1,000 pairs. We'll just see how "limited" they really are, though. I'm betting that if there's enough demand, there will be a second run "for a limited time only," of course, and then a third, and a fourth...

It occurs to me that
"Never Surrender" was a hit song in the 80s by Canadian rocker/poseur Corey Hart. Another big hit of his was "Sunglasses At Night." I'm thinking that if you're in the same room with anyone who is wearing those gilded Trumpshoes, you are probably going to have to wear sunglasses whether it's day or night. At any rate, "Never Surrender" is a bold statement, but then again, so was "Never Back Down" -- and look where that got former presidential candidate and guv'ner of Floriduh Ron DeSantis. But I digress.

One of my favorite wags,
Rex Huppke, had a lot to say about Trump's sneaker scheme. From USA Today, February 19, 2024:

The new Trump sneakers look like Trump's arrogance in shoe form

Remarkably, the sneakers look exactly like the kind of sneaker you'd expect from [someone] who created a fake university named after himself and then settle had to pay $25 million to lawsuits accusing him of fraud.

The sneakers are (possibly spray-painted?) gold, including the laces. They have a big “T” on them in various places. And they have a sort-of American flag thingy wrapped around the ankles.

They're the go-to athletic shoe for people fleeing responsibility.

Huppke has an alternative suggestion for president-branded footwear that just might take off.

I recommend a durable-but-comfortable line of already-broken-in Biden Slippers. The motto is simple: “You should trust what you put your feet in. Not gold … just old, tough and cozy.”

They could give them away for free, as Biden has the distinct advantage of not owing more than half-a-billion dollars in penalties for fraud and defamation.

Seems like a shoe-in.

I'll take two pairs of those.

There may or may not be another run, or perhaps several, of the gaudy gold footwear, but just in case there isn't, or if there is but you simply don't have the bucks for a pair of the golden Trumpshoes and still want to contribute to The Cause while letting everyone know what a loyal cult member you are when you wear Trump merch out in public, no worries.
The same web site that sells the gold high-tops also offers low-top red sneakers called the T-Red Wave, as well as white ones dubbed POTUS 45 -- for only $199 each. You can pre-order them now, but be aware that there is a STRICT LIMIT OF 3 PAIRS PER CUSTOMER.

They'll smell you coming a mile away
If even the $200 sneakers are too rich for your blood, but you still want to help your idol, there's another Trump-branded product, sold on the same web site as the sneakers, that's poised to make a big splash and will only set you back 99 bucks:
Trump Victory 47 perfume or cologne.

Advance reviews are already pouring in,
at least on Reddit.

16h ago

I find this to be pretty one dimensional as it opens strongly with Filet-O-Fish and drys down relatively quickly to hamberders.

The elixir adds covfefe but generally feels as vapid and self-aggrandizing as the original.

Probably pass on this one and go straight for Deep Corruption: EDN(epotism).

And...

7h ago

I splashed on some Trump Victory 47 cologne before going into the Indian Casino in Quapaw Oklahoma. Never in my life has a cologne attracted so many fine women. I went in alone and went to Super 8 with 5 honeys

From what I've been reading on the Interwebz, Trump is in a position to release an entire line of fragrances, and I think he should. There's so much inspiration, according to some folks who have been in the same room with him.

So there you have it: the latest in a long line of Trump-branded products and services. I'm sure there's more to come. I would say caveat emptor, but if you're among the sane, you already know that, and if you're a MAGA you won't listen. But at least there is a disclaimer on the footwear-and-fragrance web site: "Trump sneakers and fragrances are intended for individual enjoyment and as a collectible and not for investment purposes."

A deep well of fraud in The Cowboy State
Another disclaimer on the sneakers-and-stinkum web site states, "Trump Sneakers are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals." The web site also states, "45Footwear, LLC uses the Trump name, image and likeness under a license agreement." But it also says that the products are registered trademarks of CIC Ventures LLC,
which Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure.

And it will probably come as no surprise, since this involves Trump, but this venture points to yet another Scamworld-and-politix connection (notwithstanding yet another disclaimer/bald-faced lie on the shoe/pee-yoo site that there's nothin' political goin' on here). The 45Footwear LLC mentioned above is registered in one of the current fraud capitals of the world, a little town in my birth state of Wyoming. One of my favorite authors and commentators, Kurt Eichenwald, whom I follow on Xitter, is on the case. On February 18, 2024, Eichenwald posted this:

How....expected. The tiny town that is the registered location of the LLC paying Trump for the right to make his shoes - Sheridan Wyoming - is the central registration hometown of LLCs operated by crooks from around the world.

He cited an April 5, 2022 Washington Post piece about Wyoming's attraction for frauds from all over the globe. It's worth a read.

Bleeding the dupes dry
For years, Trump and his allies have had excellent luck sucking money from the loyal MAGA fan base, with thousands of small-dollar donations adding up to some massive big-dollar totals. But will these be enough to cover the humongous fines that Trump is now facing? Probably not, no matter how many shiny shoes and T-brand toilet water and other overpriced products the Trump team comes up with.

Conservative Rick Wilson is one person who thinks the T-merch gravy train, if not on the verge of derailment, won't be enough to bail Trump out. From
Raw Story, February 18, 2024:

Wilson, whose group of current and former Republicans opposing Trump recently put out an A.I. ad recreating Trump's disapproving father, appeared on MSNBC's Ayman on Sunday, where he was asked about Trump's money troubles.

Specifically, the host asked how many golden sneakers Trump would have to sell to make a "dent" in his debts...

..."There's a certain amount of money are gonna be able to raise from the MAGA voter pool in small-dollar donations," he added. "And they have bled that list of people dry."

He continued: "They have bled those people to the point where they're waiting for their social security or their disability check to come in every month before they can kick in another 25 bucks to save Donald Trump from the deep state, or whatever fantasy he's selling them."

Finally, Wilson said, "It is a powerful bond, but that's not going to give him the amount of cash he needs in this deal in time to avoid further consequences to his personal finances and his corporate finances."

Unfortunately, even if it isn't able to give him the amount of cash he needs, that powerful bond that Wilson describes may very well give Trump the votes he needs to retake the White House, and overturn democracy and the rule of law. (Which of course is why we have to outvote the MAGAs.)

And notwithstanding Wilson's most likely accurate assessment that many of the donors in the MAGA voter pool are living on Social Security and disability, there do seem to be significant numbers of folks who have much, much more than 25 bucks to toss into the big black hole. Or the big orange hole, as the case may be. Again, reference
the GoFundMe page that Trump's Scientology buds are running. I just peeked at it, and the total is nearing $684,000 as I'm writing this [on February 20, 2024; this part of the post is an update].

If the cheap shoe fits...
For those who prefer to look on the bright side, which is becoming increasingly more challenging, there is the possibility of widespread customer disillusionment regarding the gold-shoes gimmick, which might possibly lead to some breaking away from the cult. That's probably overly optimistic, but in any case,
a February 19, 2024 article on TheSpun.com emphasizes the fact that anyone who has shelled out hundreds of dollars for Trump's special shoes is only buying the promise of said shoes, and won't be able to actually get them until at least sometime this summer. And that's providing everything goes as currently planned.

...anyone ordering Trump's sneakers might want to check the fine print.

The fine print estimates that Trump's sneakers won't ship until the summer, and the Trump team is not liable for any delays in shipping. So, it could be a while before you actually get your President 45 sneakers.

"Shipping and delivery dates are estimates only and cannot be guaranteed. We are not liable for any delays in shipments," the fine print noted.

This is eerily similar to Big Baller Brand. LaVar Ball infamously launched his own sneaker brand, rather than having his oldest son, Lonzo Ball, signing with a Nike/adidas/etc.

The shoes were popular on social media, but cost two to three times a typical basketball shoe, and also had some major shipping problems. It took months for fans who ordered Big Baller Brand shoes to actually get them...

The article adds that ultimately Big Baller stopped making shoes, but then noted that with only 1,000 pairs of the Trumpshoes being made, the manufacturing and shipping process should be easier.

I'm not so sure about that, particularly since, as I indicated above, we can't even trust that the Never Surrender clown-shoe run will indeed be limited to only 1,000 pairs. Never underestimate the power of the infamous
false-scarcity marketing strategy. And the piece on TheSpun doesn't mention the other merchandise listed on the sneakers website: the two varieties of low-tops and the Trump fragrance, all of which are also available only for pre-order. There will be no instant gratification for any of this stuff, in other words.

On a February 20, 2024 piece on the conservative Bulwark, Joe Perticone, who appears to actually know something about the sneaker market, offered his perspective on the gaudy griftwear.

...it’s important to understand that the online sneaker market is Grifter City. Pure garbage is upsold for insane amounts over the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). This excess value is determined by a number of different factors: scarcity, what’s currently (and fleetingly) considered “cool,” and unpredictable events—for example, the sighting of a celebrity wearing the yet-to-be-released kicks. Scarcity is the only factor that is in any way quantifiable, which is one of the reasons the online sneaker market is so volatile that it makes cryptocurrency look like the S&P 500.

In addition, shoes are often obtained by unscrupulous (if not illegal) means. Dedicated sellers will game
online drops with bots, teenagers will camp out in front of stores before they open, and, in an example I find particularly galling, non-skateboarders will swarm skate shops to buy up shoes many skaters would prefer to rip to shreds by actually wearing them.

Lastly, if you’re not already sitting down, please take a seat before reading this next sentence: Donald Trump occasionally lends his name to inferior products for the sake of a quick cash grab.

To my eye, the
Q Trainer 1s Trump sneakers appear to be cheap wholesale shoes with some shiny branding stitched on the sides. They don’t carry the material heft associated with premium sneakers, such as soles made by top-tier Italian producers like Margom or Vibram.

It’s also telling that they are years behind the current sneaker trends. Design time for anything in the world of original fashion can vary a lot: Many designers will work for three to six months on a collection, while others
move at their own pace, sometimes taking years.

The team behind Trump’s MAGA Stan Smiths appears to have borrowed their design of the shoe from the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. The $399 gold “Never Surrender High Top Sneakers” are reminiscent of the
Adidas high-tops designed by Jeremy Scott and popularized by rapper Lil Wayne during the late 2000s. Meanwhile, Trump’s other two sneakers—a $199 design that comes in red (“T-Red Wave”) or white (“POTUS 45”)—bring to mind the sock-style shoes that have been around for decades but took the sneaker market by storm in recent years thanks to innovative designs by Kanye West, the disgraced antisemitic rapper and producer whose long, fraught collaboration with Adidas changed the sneaker industry. 

Both of the Trump styles are very much
out at the moment.

But who knows -- maybe they'll be in again by the time they ship, assuming that they will actually ship (keep in mind that sketchy Wyoming-registered LLC).

By the way, you've probably heard by now that when discussing the golden clown shoes, a Fox "News" contributor, Raymond Arroyo, recently claimed that Black people will vote for Trump because they love sneakers. There's been a lot of blowback over that ludicrous statement. For instance, here's Mike Freeman for USA Today (February 23, 2024):

This wildly racist, and just plain odd stance, that Black people are so dumb, and so easily swayed, that large swaths of Black voters would back Trump simply because he rolled out the worst shoes ever invented, reminds me of when right-wing politicians and analysts said after Trump was booked in Georgia for one of his googolplex of criminal cases that Trump's mugshot would make him more popular with Black Americans. The reasoning for that is...because Black people identify with criminals more? I guess? Though I have to say The Wire is an excellent show.

In the last Presidential election,
AP VoteCast reported that eight percent of Black Americans voted for Trump. There are the usual stories appearing now about increasing numbers of Black men wanting to support Trump but if anyone believes that a bunch of Black people are going to back Trump because of shoes, you must really think incredibly low of us. Just like Trump does.

The reason right-wing people tell these stories about us, these lies, really, is because they see Black Americans in one dimension. In some cases, if not many, yes, it is just plain racism. But in others, it is just profound ignorance.

Ignorance and racism are the two main characteristics of the MAGA base, along with bad taste, of course. And until I see credible evidence to the contrary, I think that for as long as they can possibly manage it, the MAGAs will continue to throw their money away on Trumpy trash, and they'll continue to donate as much money as they can to save their Savior -- while at the same time they will continue to whine about how Biden has tanked the economy so badly that middle-class Americans can no longer cover the basic costs of living. As I said, we gotta outvote them.

This post has been updated and amended since its original publication on February 19, 2024. ~CC

If you're moved to do something better with your money than giving it to a fraudster,
consider giving a gift to this Whirled. You won't get gold shoes or cheap overpriced cologne, but you would be giving to a good cause. I'd really appreciate it.