A Trumpian Christmas

So much Christmas cheer from the Trump camp.

Private Prison CEO Wants to Build Concentration Camps

Auschwitz slave labor.

In an interview with CNBC, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) CEO Damon Hininger anticipated enthusiastically that his company was ready to imprison "a unique population." He didn't specify if he meant Hispanic-Americans or Muslim-Americans but I suspected he is willing to lock up both.

Hininger also anticipated using his captives as slave labor for Trump's infrastructure plans (the Wall). I'm sure he would respond that they are paid (23 cents an hour) and are volunteers (refusing to work results in punishment).

Hininger didn't mention gas chambers but, you know, baby steps.

Trump Tariffs

Trump is advocating a 10% tariff on imported goods like phones, computers, cars, and the components of many of the things built in the United States.

The Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, designed to boost US industries, imposed a 13.5% tariff on imports. They slowed international trade to a crawl. Retaliatory tariffs by other countries caused US exports to fall by 83%. Unemployment jumped from 8% to 25%. And the Crash of 1929 grew into the Great Depression.

Nuke Happy

From the 1983 movie "The Day After" that convinced President Ronald Reagan to promote nuclear disarmament.

Trump wants nukes. More nukes, better nukes. And he wants to use those nukes to threaten the world into coming "to its senses." Add in Trump's refusal to listen to intelligence briefings and his tendency to tweet minor events into International Incidents and we have the makings of a truly explosive shit storm.

I used to think I would die in my bed, except for those times in my trekking youth when I thought I'd die by falling off a mountain. Now I hope I die quickly in a flash of flesh melting heat and not slowly of radiation poisoning.

Have a Merry Christmas. It may be our last.