Trump Is Worried He'll Get Pneumonia At His Inauguration From The Polar Vortex
And five other brief thoughts on US politics.
An upside to the frigid polar vortex coming
I had a Halfway Post post go viral on several social media platforms overnight:
“Donald Trump is reportedly worried the polar vortex this weekend will make his inauguration day in D.C. freezing cold and windy so he’ll get sick and die in his first month as president like William Henry Harrison did.”
Several people commented that the idea of Trump getting pneumonia and dying a month into his presidency made their evenings. It would be pretty wild, historically, though COVID almost killed Trump so maybe he’s got long COVID. It’s hard to tell because he was already lazy before getting COVID, but maybe Trump is primed to be presidential twins with Harrison for catching a cold at his inauguration.
The joke also made my evening cause I was on a roll last night, and I’ve got lots more jokes about the polar vortex and Trump’s inauguration coming.
Another funny thought is if the polar vortex offed Vice President JD Vance too, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was elevated to the presidency. It would be a spectacular fluke of history for a guy who already flukishly was elected Speaker mostly because most Americans had no idea who he was, and the alternatives were Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan.
Comedy is even more important in a second Trump term
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about satire and comedy’s role in a second Trump term. Anybody who reads my work knows I’m not the kind of person who will ever obey in advance, or stop punching up at the fascist tendencies in Trump’s Republican Party. And I won’t. I’m very interested in growing my Substack so I can someday support myself entirely with my comedy, and satirize Trump so completely he calls me out by name as an enemy of the people. So buckle up, subscribe, and ride with me for another wild four Trumpian years of fighting fascism with satire and parody!
Because our social media platforms are being scrambled up by oligarchs, if you like my comedy, diversify where you follow me to keep getting my comedy and commentary! I’m on Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, and Substack.
Ranked Choice Voting
Jim Jordan’s district is less gerrymandered now than it used to be, but it still has a crafty shape taking a chunk out of suburban Columbus, Ohio.
Districts drawn by Republicans such as his that swallow long stretches of rural counties after carving up suburbs and exurbs to isolate Democrats’ metropolitan political power into one super blue district, are like cancer districts malignantly injecting into our democracy virus-like, hyper-partisan zealots representatives like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Nancy Mace.
There’s a solution more states should be adopting in their state elections: ranked voting. It makes elections much more competitive while rewarding moderation and bipartisan likability because candidates can win by being voters’ second or third choices.
Alaska recently adopted ranked choice voting for the 2022 election, and Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Sarah Palin in a surprising upset that year (though she just lost her reelection this last November), proving the theory that ranked choice voting deflates the most polarizing candidates.
Naturally, Alaskan Republicans tried to end ranked choice voting by putting it on the ballot in November, but the state’s voters voted to keep it. Good on you, Alaskans!
Nancy Mace’s South Carolina district shaves off suburban Charleston and reaches for a lot of rural land inland, and that gerrymandering helps her get away with dramatically wearing slings and crying wolf over exaggerated assaults, protesting outside bathrooms to discriminate against a single fellow colleague, and churning through more staff than anyone in Congress who widely agree she’s attention-seeking and “delusional.”
Nancy Mace should not be in Congress, and ranked choice voting would compel the Republican voters in her district to vote for a more sane candidate to defeat a centrist Democrat who isn’t narcissistic and melting down in front of our eyes.
Clarence Thomas will likely retire this term
It’s sad that Trump is going to be in charge of Supreme Court replacements for the next four years. Almost certainly Clarence Thomas will be replaced by a conservative who is 30 years younger, though on the plus side I don’t think Trump will be able to find a justice WORSE than Thomas. He has famously asked, by far, the least number of questions during legal arguments, and is the laziest judge on the court at pretending he’s not voting on a purely partisan, oligarchic basis. Thomas checked out years ago, and wouldn’t you if you were constantly going on yacht voyages and private planes and getaway vacations paid for by a sugar daddy billionaire? Thomas’s replacement will almost certainly be less lazy, less partisan, and less carelessly corrupt.
Hungarian-style media control has come to the US
There’s a lot of bad news for American media: Elon Musk has radicalized and red pilled himself into the MAGA abyss; Zuckerberg and Bezos are complying in advance; legacy media like the Washington Post as well as local news all over are struggling or dying; mainstream CNN and the New York Times are struggling to stay relevant; billionaires will soon fight for TikTok and another platform will be subjected to Trump Era compliance.
Meanwhile, real news and and thoughtful punditry is losing out to clickbait and outrage-based algorithm hacking, and professional journalists are blowing away from legacy companies like dandelion seeds to launch independent and niche newsletters on wobbly platforms that can’t replace the corporate behemoths that used to care more about the ideals of journalism than quarterly shareholder value.
While the news landscape bleeds, liberals need a new social media platform that won’t or even can’t be hijacked by the oligarchy willing to suck up to a dictator if it gets them closer to becoming a trillionaire. Maybe I’m a lazy democratic socialist, but I can’t believe people become billionaires and still care at all about money. Pathetic.
Trump’s Canada policy is unsurprisingly incoherent
Are we tariffing Canada and starting a trade war against them? Are we adding Canada as a state? Are we invading Canada? Does he really want to add two Democratic Senators, or many more if Canada’s different provinces stay independent of each other? Does he really want to flip a California’s worth of House seats to Democrats to represent the 40 million Canadians ? Or does he just want the US and Canada to merge both economies in an EU-type situation?
It’s predictable that Trump has been mouthing off about Canada without thinking at all about the ramifications of his words, and it’s one of the most tiring aspects of his personality. He just says dumb shit daily to see how people react, and if it goes bad he claims it’s fake news or he just never brings it up ever again.
What an annoying, exhausting way to lead any country, let alone the country with the most indispensible global responsibilities. 🥃
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We can only hope. Since our “justice” system is powerless to hold him accountable for his crimes, maybe Mother Nature will.
A slow Covid death that he inflicted on so many Americans because of his stupidity would be appropriate way for him to die!