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Trump Org’s income in the first half of 2024 was $51 million.

In the first half of 2025 it rose to $864 million.

A massive percentage came from foreigners.

It should be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics.

But few even care.
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1983234367162835298

America is no longer a serious country.

Nobody much seems to give a fuck their democracy has been taken from them by charlatans and chancers and a bunch of weird, absolute obsessive reactionary slave owner wanting nutjobs who have spent their lives in basements in underpants.

Still, there's always shits and hoots on Facebook of cute cats or liberals covered in shit to keep the mind from doing anything stupid like wonder why the american revolution happened.

It's because opponents of Trump have outrage fatigue. Everything he does, or that is done on his behalf, is worthy of outrage, but it's pretty tiring to be angry all the time.

And for Republicans they've been convinced that their biggest enemy is the Democrats, and so as long as Trump is, "annoying all the right people," then it's secondary that he's openly corrupt, selling himself to foreign states, and generally acting as a traitor who is trashing the Constitution. He's owning the libs, so none of that matters.

What's the point of "owning" the Libs if you end up destroying everything you and your party believed in?

eg. yesterday's row about Ronald Reagan.

The enemy are the libs who are going to turn your children transgender and flood the country with illegal immigrants (who are also voting in record numbers across the country).

All that matters is the fight against the libs, and if we need to burn down the rule of law and the separation of powers to do it, then so be it.

Not being funny, but until recently there was a contingency of "Libs" who didn't ask too many questions before referring dysmorphic kids to Tavistock and the country sort of is being flooded with illegal immigrants.

The trouble is there's a grain of truth in it, as there is in the centrist Dads who brush it all off - and thus help fuel it.

Yes.

There are some very stupid things proposed by people.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, some equally stupid things were enacted, like a 98% tax on unearned income.

Really incredibly dumb things.

But fortunately, no matter how terrible for the British economy Wilson and Callaghan were, they also believed in democracy and the rule of law, and they were kicked out, and we got Mrs Thatcher.

Stupid things come. Stupid things go.

So long as democracy and the rule of law prevails, then things will correct.

Once you let that go, because there's some particular things you find irksome, then you are fucked.

Still trying to understand how the governing party can be on 17% with one of the best pollsters 15 months after winning a 170 seat majority.

Havde you got a sheet of foolscap.......but if you want the essentials

Labour supporters want their party to have a heart. If they showed they had one many of their problems would disappear. Specifically Mahmood seems like Farage in a frock and Starmer and Kemi are pretty indistinguishable.If he wants to ape someone he should be aping Zack.

"Having a heart" as you call it, presumably involves either wasting even more of other people's money, and there's none left, or importing yet more of the third world and dumping them in our inner cities, which would destroy what's left of our social cohesion. So both would be counter-productive politically even in the short term.

The truth is that the left-liberal path that both main parties have followed since 1997 has run out of road, We've dodged hard choices for a generation, and may be able to do so for the rest of this decade, but there's no room to make things actively worse without accelerating the reckoning.

A week after I got out of hospital, I feel ready to share my story of NHS trauma

I last reported from the hospital, not long after I'd been moved into a ward and was starting to feel better from the morphine and the antibiotics. I hadn't slept for thirty seven hours, thirty three of which had been at the hospital. This was due to not being given a bed for the first twenty and a half hours, then being moved several times over the next six hours

They'd put me in a four bed ward early in the afternoon and I tried to doze off. I may have dozed off very briefly once or twice but was instantly reawakened by the ten to fifteen guests visiting the other patients. If the patients weren't deaf, the visitors were having a shouting match

It got to dinner time and I managed to get about half of whatever horror they gave me down, and then got about ten minutes sleep before I was woken again for my drugs. I felt so awful when they woke me (heart pounding and hyper-ventilating a bit in my tiny remaining lung capacity), that I decided to keep myself awake until my final drug round at 10pm. I read PB for a couple of hours

I went for a wee just before ten, when I came out of the bathroom there were nine or ten doctors and nurse crowded around the bed next to me, and quite a bit of commotion. I waited for the pills; they eventually came at 10:45. By then my neighbour seemed to have recovered sufficiently to be screeching abuse at the staff. I think I got to asleep about eleven, nearly forty hours since my arrival at the hospital, and forty four hours awake

The next thing I knew, a bright light was being shone in my face, my things were being piled on top of me, and four foreign nurses were bellowing over me, shaking the bed because they couldn't disengage the wheel lock. When I first woke, I didn't remember where I was or why; I think my body would have reacted the same way if I were being kidnapped. It was essentially a massive adrenaline overdose - after, it turned out, a whole two hours sleep

tbc

They moved me as an extra bed into a different four bed ward, three foot from the bed of some Jabba the Hut looking figure, facing me and having explosive coughing fits every ten or so minutes, and another of the beds had a patient setting off beeping alarms almost as frequently. I dragged myself out of bed and down the corridor, looking for a member of staff who might help me out - I wanted some kind of sleeping pill. I gave up after the first six of them; they were all arrogant, rude, surly and utterly unhelpful. One response I got was "You're in a fucking hospital, what do you expect? Get back in your bed"

I tried to march indignantly off the ward, but shuffled, wheezed and coughed my way. I went outside and got some fresh air, took the deepest breaths I could, and tried to calm down. After half an hour I couldn't calm down, my heart was still pounding furiously, but I got control of my breathing and headed back to ward. The door was locked, so I had to ring the bell. The guy that came to the door angrily interrogated me "Wha' room you in", I asked how the fuck am I supposed to know, he said "You no come in, I ge' someone." He came back ten minutes later with a nurse, who refused to believe I'd been dumped on their ward. She disappeared and came back after ten more minutes with someone who bothered to fucking listen

She seemed nice, so I told why I wasn't going to be able to sleep and why I needed to. I asked if she could please find a doctor who'd prescribe me a strong sleeping pill. She promised to, and I squatted in the corridor opposite the ward. A few people came along in the hour and a half wait, ordering me to get back in my bed. I was past breaking point by then, and told each one to fuck off. I was so wired, I just squatted and stared at the wall. I think I only blinked about twenty times, and had to force myself to

The nurse eventually arrived, I took the pill and did my very best to sleep. I think I got about another two hours before they woke me up again. Once I'd again worked out where I was and why, and why I felt so fucking awful while also furious and delirious from the sleep deprivation, I decided I needed to see the Consultant to demand discharge. I told him all I wanted was the drugs I'd need, and to get the hell out of there. The arrogant prick laughed in my face

Took the useless fuckers four and a half hours to get the drugs to me, then I had to wait another hour to get picked up

Envy of the world, pt 94.

Yep.

We seem to have a collective delusion that our health service is some kind of shining exemplar to an otherwise benighted world.

It is not world beating overall although some very bright points etc.

I have had my own minor tale of nhs woe just in last 36 hours trying to sort out - yet again - 5th month in a row - my wife's medication and prescription which was yet again hopelessly and laugh out loud wrong.

I fucking hate Vivaldi.