Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty - Pt 2

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

Thanks to Trump/the GOP Lenders Don’t Trust the USA Anymore

The Felon ran a number of his businesses into the ground and multiple bankruptcies ensued.  Now, the Felon and those who have shredded the myth of GOP fiscal responsibility are driving the USA in a similar direction as the federal debt explodes - 30% has been incurred in just the years the Felon has held the White House. Other factors besides the exploding debt are the Felon's attacks on the Federal Reserve, Republican threats to allow America to default on its debt, and the overall corruption of the Felon's regime.  The result is  that America's borrowing costs are soaring and America finds itself paying more to sell it governmental bonds than even nations like Greece and Estonia.  Rather than making "America great again," the Felon has made America weaker as it has suffered a de facto defeat by Iran, munitions supplies have been depleted, allies have been spurred and alienated, and much of the world views the Feloon as a dangerous buffoon.  A piece in The Atlantic by a former Republican and true conservative in the traditional sense looks at the damage being done:

This has been a week of pain for anyone who borrows money.  All over the world, lenders are demanding higher interest rates. The global bond market is extracting higher yields from every borrower, starting with the biggest borrowers of all: national governments. But not every government is paying equally.

Trustworthy borrowers with solid finances and honest leadership pay less. Distrusted borrowers with disordered finances and corrupt leaders pay more. In times past, the United States would have headed that first list. Under President Trump, the United States has tumbled onto the second one.

In trading yesterday, the yield on a U.S. 10-year Treasury bond hovered near 5.2 percent. Germany pays less than the United States. France pays less than the United States. Canada pays less than the United States. Even Greece pays less than the United States. Estonia—a country under constant threat of a Russian invasion and the annihilation of its sovereignty—pays much less than the United States: only 3.6 percent.

Most reporting on the bond market emphasizes the Iran war, global inflation, and the surge in government debt during the global pandemic. These are the conditions faced by every major borrower. But they don’t explain why American debt is more expensive than the debt of Greece or Estonia.

In April 2011, then-Representative Paul Ryan delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute to warn of an imminent debt crisis in the United States. The country’s debt stood at $14.3 trillion . . . In 2017, when Ryan was speaker of the House, Congress enacted and Trump signed a big 10-year tax cut without comparable spending offsets. The national debt climbed to $23.2 trillion by early 2020, then spiked further as the U.S. government—like governments everywhere—spent massively during the pandemic and its aftermath.

By the time Trump returned to office in 2025, the national debt had reached $34 trillion. Trump and the Republican-led House and Senate he helped usher in could have restored fiscal discipline. Instead, they made the 2017 tax cut permanent, again without comparable spending offsets. . . . . Trump’s new “love me, love me” taxpayer-funded campaign ad touts what he calls the “largest tax cuts in history,” but ignores both the gaping deficits and his abortive tariffs.)

The U.S. national debt surpassed $40 trillion in August 2026. On the current trajectory, it will exceed $50 trillion by 2030, the year after Trump is constitutionally required to leave office. The United States now pays more to service its debt than it spends on national defense. By the end of the Trump presidency, interest costs will exceed Medicare funding too.

Other countries also have big debts. Why, then, do Americans pay higher interest rates than most other large democracies? This is partly a data problem. America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is about double that of Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries, and it continues to rise fast while the debt burdens of other seriously indebted countries, such as Italy and Greece, are steady or declining.

But much of the problem can be blamed on Trump and the GOP, the so-called party of fiscal discipline. The European Union has a truly independent central bank. Countries that use the euro, including Greece and Estonia, cannot simply inflate their way out of debt. In the United States under Trump, however, the White House has steadily attacked and subverted the Federal Reserve’s independence.

In an unprecedented act that could threaten the global economy and destroy trust in the dollar, Trump has speculated about refusing to pay some or all of the country’s public debt. In a CNN town hall in 2023, Trump urged congressional Republicans to “do a default” to force “massive” spending cuts on the Biden administration. In 2024, Trump’s chief economist, Stephen Miran, wrote up and circulated a plan to reduce the country’s borrowing costs by forcing U.S. creditors to swap existing debt for longer-term bonds at lower interest rates.

The Trump presidency will end. Yet a readiness to default has become a signature theme of Republican politics. U.S. debt is subject to a strange artifact called the debt ceiling, which imposes a maximum limit on federal borrowing. In the past, the majority party would raise the ceiling as required, while the minority party intoned scolding speeches about fiscal irresponsibility. After 2010, however, Republicans in Congress began to use the debt ceiling as a political weapon.

In 2011, the Republican House majority refused to raise the ceiling until the country was within days of a debt default, prompting the rating agency Standard & Poor’s to strip the U.S. of its long-term triple-A credit rating. Republicans again pushed the country to within hours or days of hitting the debt ceiling in 2013 and 2015—and then again, at Trump’s urging, in 2023. Another agency, Fitch, dropped its triple-A rating of U.S. debt that year, citing “erosion of governance” as a principal cause. After Trump’s threats to fire Powell raised questions about the central bank’s independence last year, the last major rating agency, Moody’s, downgraded the U.S., citing expanding fiscal deficits and rising interest costs.

The corruption of the Trump administration, enabled by Republicans in the House and Senate, also bears blame for the country’s rising borrowing costs.

A 2006 study found that the more corrupt a country was rated by the nonprofit Transparency International, the more it paid for its debt. Within the United States, more corrupt states pay higher interest rates than more honest states. In August 2024, a Trump-campaign social-media account posted an anti-immigration warning: “Import the third world … Become the third world.” Yet Trump’s multibillion-dollar self-enrichment schemes, perversion of presidential pardons, attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve, and costly vanity projects throughout Washington all make the United States look more like Pakistan, Nigeria, or the Philippines than a consolidated democracy.

Americans are now paying for these crooked extravagances on their mortgages, car loans, student debt, and credit-card interest statements. When it comes to borrowing rates, the United States now sits between Estonia and countries in deep financial trouble. This is not all because of Trump, but it wouldn’t have happened without him and those who enabled him.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Saturday Male Beauty

 

The Republicans Are Bolting From The Felon

Numerous reports suggest that the Felon lives in an information bubble surrounded by sycophants only too happy to tell him what he wants to hear and to support his narcissism induced fantasies.  While many suspect he has an awareness to his horrible poll numbers - he calls them "fake" - he continues to push topics increasingly toxic with voters, including his war of choice with Iran, and does nothing to lower consumer prices even as survey after survey shows that affordability is the number one issue with voters. Indeed, Republicans are finding that whipping their voters into a frenzy over the transgender is a tough sell when constituents are paying over $100 to fill their cars' gas tanks.  With more and more prognosticators moving both House and Senate races away from Republicans, some Republicans are finally - and hopefully too late to save themselves - moving away from the Felon and in some instances scrubbing his name from their campaign websites.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the GOP flight:

A few tentative displays of independence among Republicans have expanded in recent days into a stampede, as candidates furiously distance themselves from [the Felon] President Trump ahead of the midterm elections. “This is shaping up to be a nightmare political environment for every Republican, everywhere—period, full stop,” one Texas-based political consultant told us, speaking anonymously to provide a frank assessment. Noting that gas prices across the country are on average $4.50 a gallon, the consultant described the atmosphere as “a fucking disaster for anyone in a competitive race.”

The contrast with the midterm elections of Trump’s first term is particularly stark. An October 2018 rally in Richmond, Kentucky, was a political show of force by a president whose hold on the Republican Party was as firm as bedrock. . . . . Kentucky Republicans have been fawning over Trump for the past decade. But now, as the war with Iran drags on and Trump’s approval ratings crater, even they are starting to keep the president at a distance. Barr, who is running for an open Senate seat, and Alvarado, who is running to replace him in the House, have each recently scrubbed mentions of Trump’s name from prominent portions of their campaign websites. Paul has been more vocal, repeatedly clashing with the White House over the Iran war and the ballooning national debt.

The notably lukewarm embrace of Trump from Republican candidates in Kentucky, a state that he won by more than 30 points in 2024, is just one indicator of the president’s loosening grip on a party he has dominated for the past decade.

Republican candidates seeking a reason to distance themselves from an unpopular president have a buffet of options to choose from. The war in Iran, which began almost seven months ago, has sent diesel prices to record highs. The United States is in an escalating trade war with Canada. The national debt, the elimination of which was once an obsession of conservatives, has ballooned to more than $40 trillion—and that’s before the $5,000 government checks Trump has promised to dole out if Republicans win. Inflation and interest rates, which Trump pledged to bring down, remain elevated. Gas and food are more expensive than they were a year ago, and mortgage rates passed 7 percent yesterday.

The [Felon's] president’s approval ratings on these and other issues are abysmal. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday found that his approval rating has dipped to 32 percent—the lowest that pollster has measured at any point in his political career. Only 17 percent of respondents said they approved of the president’s handling of the cost of living. Barring a major change in the Iran war or the price of diesel, his numbers aren’t likely to change substantially, the Texas-based Republican consultant said. Members of his party were hoping the dynamic would improve, but it hasn’t . . . .

The list of Republican candidates publicly noting their differences with Trump keeps growing. Many are in states where polls show tighter-than-expected races for the GOP. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas spoke out this month about Trump’s calls to ban the sale of jets from the Canadian company Bombardier, whose U.S. headquarters are in Wichita. The Senate candidates Mike Rogers in Michigan, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, and Jon Husted in Ohio have each called for a swift end to the war in Iran . . . .

Even in Trump’s adopted state of Florida, which he’s won three times, candidates are bailing. Representative Byron Donalds, who is running for governor, recently updated his campaign website to remove multiple references to Trump—including a photo with the president and a banner noting that he was “TRUMP-ENDORSED,” the Miami Herald reported Tuesday.

Even red-state Republicans who are not on the ballot are seeking daylight between themselves and the president. Senator John Curtis of Utah this week called for an investigation into Trump’s son Don Jr. over corruption allegations, including concerns about a luxurious, days-long party for his wedding that was funded by a Russian oligarch. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi on Wednesday took to the Senate floor to admonish the White House for giving “brutal” Chinese President Xi Jinping a “lavish welcome” to the U.S. this week.

“The midterms are going to be a fucking bloodbath, and we all know it and we all know why,” Representative Nancy Mace, a retiring South Carolina Republican, told us of the president she once enthusiastically supported.

Trump has demanded extreme loyalty. Stepping out of line was a rarity during the first year and a half of Trump’s second term, which began with a flurry of executive actions that left much of Washington shell-shocked. But Trump could demand fealty for only so long, Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told us. “The cascading opposition to the president on multiple fronts now is important not just because of what it might represent for the midterm election, but more so because it reestablishes a kind of fixed point of orientation in the political universe again, . . .

Even as the evidence has mounted that Trump is dragging down his party, the president has highlighted the very positions that have made him unpopular. After it was already clear that public concern over data centers was endangering the campaigns of vulnerable Republicans such as Husted, Trump insulted communities that rejected the projects as places that wanted to end up “backwards and poor.” He has dismissed bipartisan efforts to rein in the dangers of AI, saying he wants technology companies to have freedom to develop what he has begun referring to as “super intelligence.” He has continued to defend the war in Iran—suggesting this week at the United Nations that he might annihilate the entire country—and minimized the economic cost Americans are shouldering as a result.

Trump has also repeatedly told voters to pretend that he was on the ballot. Democrats have been happy to oblige, mentioning the president in 66,000 airings of general-election ads since August 1, according to the political-ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Dozens of Republicans broke with Trump after the January 6 insurrection, only for many to return to the fold after he won office a second time. But for those who have been eager to see the party move on from Trump, the events of the past few weeks mark a potentially more durable shift. Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told us he has been watching the MAGA movement for a decade, asking: “When is this fever swamp gonna finally break?” He thinks the moment is now. Candidates have begun making the calculation that Trump is more of a liability than an asset, and are de-emphasizing their relationship with him. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen that,” he said.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Friday Male Beauty

 

The Mistake Tearing Apart the MAGA Base

We may never know if the Felon launched his ill-conceived war of choice against Iran as a distraction from the Epstein files, due to false promises and assurances of Benjamin Netanyahu, or because he foolishly thought he could easily reprise his outward success in Venezuela.   Whatever the Felon's true motivation, the war against Iran is proving to have been a huge mistake from which the Felon has no viable exit strategy other than de facto surrender.  While the military situation is largely at a stalemate with Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, on the domestic political front the war is even a bigger disaster as gas and diesel prices soar and consumer goods across the board, including food prices, are taking a toll on the budgets of American families.  Most of the time the MAGA base appears to be detached from objective reality and the truth and the base is only too happy to believe the lies coming from the Felon's mouth and the propaganda streaming from Fox News. Yet, now with high gasoline prices, rising consumer costs and a war of choice against Iran going nowhere, the MAGA coalition, if you will, appears to be belatedly realizing that not only has the Felon broken his 2024 campaign promises, but their lives are materially worse off than on the eve of the 2024 election.  All because of the Felon's incompetence. A piece at the New York Times looks at the Felon's costly mistake:

It’s been six months since [the Felon] President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked Iran. There are now street protests over fuel costs around the world. But the price of oil is down below $100 again, as it has been for much of the war. In America, we are dealing with higher gas prices and some additional inflation, but given the loud warnings of economic catastrophe we heard in the spring, the economic impact looks relatively modest. As with the tariffs, the war has hurt the economy, but you could also be forgiven for whistling into the fall thinking the panic back in March was a story of the boy who cried wolf.

In politics, though, it’s a different story. There, the war has registered quite conspicuously, right from the start, and now hangs like perhaps the most obvious albatross among many around Trump’s neck. Only one-third of the country approves of Trump’s handling of the war, according to recent polling. But even worse is the effect Americans believe it has had on what they say is their most important issue — and what has become Trump’s worst one. Eight in 10 Americans say the war has raised the cost of living.

[W]hat we see in the polls from the first weeks of September is very clear: a big blue surge on top of what looked already like a big blue wave. Polling averages now put Democrats further ahead this cycle than in the major wave election in 2018. To me, the evidence suggests that Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida are in play.

The election is still weeks away, Republicans have oceans of cash to spend, and the path to a Democratic Senate always looked from afar like a tightrope walk. But Trump is unpopular, and trending downward. There is no sign of the much-hyped realignment of young, Black and brown voters this cycle — in fact it’s now an open question whether that realignment was really a blip or a mirage. And Democrats don’t even look like a party with a brand problem anymore, steadily surging upward in generic polling and doing even better when candidates are named. Yet what is perhaps most striking to me about the lay of the political landscape heading into the midterm homestretch is the way that among all of Trump’s vulnerabilities — his naked corruption, his malice on immigration, his paltry legislative achievement and his siding so blithely with A.I. accelerationists against a large majority of the country — the Iran war stands out.

The conflict has been a military humiliation, the world’s most expensive and imperious fighting force held at bay by the disposable drones and cheap missiles of a much lesser power. Eighteen U.S. soldiers have been killed, officially, and recent reporting suggests the number may be higher. Regional bases have had to be evacuated to protect American lives, the country’s missile and interceptor stockpiles are now woefully diminished, and conditions on U.S. ships have become a global embarrassment.

The war seemed needless at the outset — at best. Now it looks potentially endless, too.

That’s just the military side of things. At home, in six months of war, Americans have already paid more than $100 billion more for fuel than they would have in the absence of conflict — a Trump-branded surcharge that when annualized is equivalent to nearly 1 percent of G.D.P. The C.B.O. estimates that more than one-third of the increase in American inflation this year is the result of the war, . . . the Iran war may prove just as politically damaging for dramatizing his broken promise to lower prices.

This is new, and not just for Trump. For decades, even if the U.S. wasn’t very good at fighting remote wars, it seemed to feel confident embarking on them without worrying too much about domestic political blowback . . . The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has marked a profound shift of that dynamic, a lesser power expected to duck and cover quickly finding ways to impose costs on the American home front, as well. Look at the president’s approval ratings, and the pattern is remarkably clear. Overall, there is a step down in the spring of this year, coinciding with the beginning of the war. More telling is his approval rating on inflation and the cost of living. Inflation itself jumped in March and has stayed elevated since. And Trump’s net approval on those issues dropped off a cliff . . .

In January, 72 percent of Republican voters said they thought the economy had gotten stronger over the previous year. In September, the number is more than 40 points lower, at just 29 percent.

Not that long ago, liberal commentators in the Biden era spent years racking their brains to explain what was often called the “vibe-cession” — the reality that public sentiment about the economy seemed so much bleaker than the conventional measures suggested. The vibes have collapsed on Trump, too, and quite a lot of that collapse looks tied up with Iran.

Things may be about to get worse still. For six months, the economic effects of the war were muted by a lucky conspiracy of factors: fuel rationing across Asia, growing renewable capacity around the world, political jawboning of markets and the draining of global oil stockpiles, especially by China, whose cut to imports at the start of the war was so significant in this story that it’s been called the demonstration of a new geopolitical weapon. Even so, the gas price signal — that cartoonish standby of American politics — broke through. The price of gas has risen by 50 percent since February. Diesel is now at $6.50 a gallon.

The world’s oil reserves, many of which are already at historic lows, are rapidly approaching their floors. Last week, J.P. Morgan published a research note warning that it had no way to map the chaos of the fall to come. The election is little more than a month away.