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On a positive note, yesterday's election results showed that democracy is not completely dead in the US and that the electoral system works despite huge sums of money being spent and plenty of vicious politicking. That's encouraging. Even so, a lot of the vote was a widespread vote against Trump rather than a vote for the Democrats, even by the democrats themselves. But at least now there's an opportunity to stop the ship from sinking totally. It's going to be a hard road to get things back on track and sort out the many problems, so I hope the new Congress and Senate can show a bit of leadership. They've got three months to get themselves organised, set a sensible and balanced agenda and then implement it. Hopefully the cooler heads can keep things on track and the hotheads under control. There's plenty of potential for it all to come unstuck, but at least they're off to a good start.

He said that four democrats had already called him after the election - two senators and three congressmen, and there were two more calls waiting. My guess is the actual number of calls was zero.

Tariffs are generally are intended to make imported goods more expensive to favour local manufacturers who are competing with those same goods. It's the country imposing the tariffs that pays them. Seems like a dumb idea to me except maybe in special circumstances.

No tax on tips and overtime expire in December2028 but tax breaks for the rich don't expire. That's not good. Finding waste and fraud in government is a perennial aim of all parties but DOGE was a complete financial and moral failure. What he wanted tariffs to do was punish countries he thought were taking advantage of the USA because he didn't understand how trade worked. By nature, he's pathologically opposed to cooperation for mutual gain.

You're right. He's been a roaring success based on those measures. I was thinking more about what might have been seen as good in terms of his official job, the one he never understood and still doesn't.

The only good thing I think Trump has done is stop uncontrolled migration across the border. Everything else has been a disaster for the country and the world.

Even though the new crowd won't be sworn in for a while, it looks like a pretty decisive result so a lot of the current Republicans in the House and Senate will start to mentally abandon the leaking Trump ship and may be a bit more willing to stick their heads above the parapet. Mike Johnson's future as Trump's doormat might also be a bit more shaky.

Rubio will have to do a lot of work to make people forget his dismal performance to date and nobody likes Vance because he's a shape-shifting zealot.

Trump and the GOP are not having a good day so far, but I wonder what they're plotting.

I've asked it to do engineering calculations. It's pretty good but it's like having a graduate engineer working for you. You've got to check what it's telling you but it's still impressive.

It's smarter than me. I couldn't even understand your simple instruction.

I think that’s very likely but Trump also sees Putin as the gold standard for the type of political leader he wants to be and wants to do business with, and is frustrated by being pushed to impose sanctions instead, and has someone in Zelensky who stubbornly won’t give him what he wants and was responsible for him being impeached.

Hope you make a bit of money on this palatial residence one day.

The Russians are obviously well aware of how they've played Trump for the fool that he is. The other point is that the 300,000 tonnes very likely hasn't cost them anything. It's highly unlikely to be additional production, but more likely just the fuel they were intending to produce anyway and would have shipped to the market using their shadow fleet. Now it will just go out in a different tanker with a receipt from the US government to make it look legitimate. Not only that, it's not even going to the US. It's going to the world market, which means the small quantity involved will make even less difference to fuel prices anywhere. Trump will pay them $4 billion and effectively get nothing in return except maybe a thank you note from Putin for his birthday present. The Russians must be very happy with this deal.

This is the Russian perspective on Trump's diesel deal:

They will just pay Trump to sell them pardons.

Works for me too, although I don't have an account. I sometimes click on the links that Red posts but generally try to avoid FB as much as possible.

A report I saw said that Musk came up with the idea and suggested it to Trump who thought it was a great idea, so someone pressed the off switch. Apparently the system still hasn’t been fully restored.

Karoline Leavitt was no dummy. She was confident and articulate and a very good press secretary for the Trump administration if you only judge her performance on those terms. It’s a pity she was batting for the wrong side and mostly spreading fact free propaganda, but she did it well.

The latest Fox News poll shows that corruption is an even bigger concern for voters than the economy at 88% disapproval. That's pretty extraordinary, especially for Fox. Trump has replaced the Washington political swamp with the New York real estate swamp.

It will be hard for him to contest the House vote in any decisive way if the Democrats win overwhelmingly. The Senate will be another story as it's likely to be close.

I think the Republicans realise they will lose the House, but Trump will do everything he can to hold onto the Senate. If the Democrats win the Senate as well, they will be in a much stronger position to make his life miserable. My concern is that the Democrats are so focused on campaigning against Trump that they haven't figured out what they're actually for and what they would do to turn the ship around, so nothing much will get done for the next two years.

There's lots of those interviews on uTube. They're probably edited to focus on the dumbest Trump supporters, but it's extraordinary how many uninformed, naive and really strange people there are standing in those queues.

Definitely a good memory. I remember him on Pick-a-Box correcting Bob Dyer when Bob said his answer was wrong.

The first 300,000 tons is enough to last about half a day if it even arrives in the US before the election. Trump will brag about the deal but it will have very little effect on diesel prices, even if Putin delivers on his promises.