Day 286 – Playing Chicken with Chickens

Monday, October 13, 2025

We have ICE in Portland, Oregon looking out from atop their building and seeing people in chicken costumes and other assorted creatures and declaring that these animated animal people are rioting and causing the impeding of their operations. Wait? What? People in chicken suits are the problem? Why is ICE there in the first place? Would the chicken suit people be at the ICE building if ICE wasn’t there? Of course not. So the problem in Portland is ICE.

Moving on to economic issues. OMG. Let’s start with Argentina. Our government is sending twenty billion to Argentina to prop up there currency. This seems to be the Latin American playbook. It’s been going on since, I don’t know – the 1930s? with Evita and her husband? Here’s the thing – it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work, and there is no way it will work. Somehow, a bunch of hedge fund guys thought this time it would be different and put money into Argentina. Now they realize they will be holding a large bag of excrement so they got Trump to give Argentina money so he can give it to them the hedge fund guys so they can get out with their skin singed but not burned off. 

Now we get Trump’s revelation that China is playing the tariff war game, and he is stunned that they would do that to him. Paul Krugman has stated that there is one difference between what China is doing and what Trump is doing. Now, Paul has been awarded a Nobel prize in economics so he knows a bit about what he speaks. His assessment is that the difference, the key difference is this – China knows what they are doing.

How will this turn out? Hum. Lemme see. We need China’s rare earth stuff. They would like to export to us, but they don’t need to. Lemme put this in the EVALUATOR. Conclusion: USA loses. 

Krugman points out that the Trump administration is and has been systematically destroying all the things that Make America Great. Wait. Wasn’t he going to make it great? Again? Let’s put that through the EVALUATOR ie “Make America Great Again” and the basic fact that “Everything Trump touches turns to shit” and let’s see what we get. Oh no, doesn’t look good.

Krugman did a quick run down on what were the things that has made America great?

A. Great Research and the ability to attract the best minds from around the world.

Trump and his minions (TAHM) have ferociously attacked the halls of learning and research. Worked tirelessly to make it near impossible for foreign students to come here. And have taken away funds in a haphazard and mean spirited way. They have told researchers what the conclusion is they want them to reach and if they don’t reach said conclusion they will see their funding go away.

B. Strong Alliances – TAHM has worked tirelessly to undermine and destroy our alliances. They have cuddled up to foreign powers that have been aggressively opposed to us and our way of life. 

C. Strong Economy – Trump inherited in his first term a strong economy from Obama. It took him three years to out it in shambles and left Biden not only with a tattered economy but a disaster withdrawal in Afghanistan. This time Biden left Trump with the strongest economy in the world and the U.S. in a great position with its allies. It took TAHM only three months to destroy the economy and our position with our allies. The talk of recession is now ever present. it’s really no longer a question as much as a question of how bad it will be.

Left unsaid was the whole immigration disaster and the use of the FBI and the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. 

The amazing thing is how quickly he was able to accomplish it. I remember when I was growing up the saying was, “It takes a carpenter to build a house, but any jackass can kick it down.” No one considered having a whole herd of jackasses, at one time, stomping and kicking.

Will our democracy survive? Will our nation as we know have known it?

I give the democracy question a less than 50% chance. Something will emerge, but I doubt it will be like it was.

As to our nation, yes. It will emerge, but it will be smaller and less able. It will not be the global leader it had been. It will be a shell of what it once was. It didn’t have to be this way. But in a country where basic facts are not just ignored but injected with lies and fabrications, where researchers are told what to conclude before they start, where people who have no experience and a total misunderstanding of the basics of the job they are supposed to be doing we are in for a fall. The question isn’t will it happen. It already is. The question is how far? We are 3/4 of the way through the first year with three more years to go. Trump has managed through his cutting efforts to make our government smaller, less effective, and spent more than in any previous year. The two trillion in debt has now been surpassed, which was last year’s mark.

What will happen? Where will we end up?

We’ve always been terrible predictors of the future. If I were to bet I’d say the future does not look good.

Time to put on a chicken suit.