Asteroid Astrology: Trump

roberts smackdown cover

SCOTUS Smackdown:  Roberts Rebukes Trump

On 18 March 2025, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts made a rare statement on the politics of the day, when he waded into a controversy over the deportation of hundreds of undocumented Venezuelan immigrants who had been characterized by the Trump administration as violent, dangerous gang members.  The men were apprehended and removed from the country without due process, with no proof of guilt beyond the government’s say-so, then flown to a prison in El Salvador, which was paid to house them indefinitely. 

Continue reading

T30 cover

Trump’s First Thirty Days:  Schlock & Awe

Donald J. Trump’s particular genius for creating chaos and mayhem was on full display in the first month after his second inauguration on 20 January 2025.  A flurry of executive orders mandating everything from the end of birthright citizenship (a constitutionally enshrined right which requires an amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states to alter) to the quixotic renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” (and would you like Freedom Fries with that?) was just the beginning.  Most of the heavy lifting of dismantling the federal government was consigned to Elon Musk and his fabricated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who has proceeded to reflexively fire or eliminate thousands of workers with civil service protections and close entire agencies without congressional authority.  Freezes on funding, hiring, and dispensing approved funds have rounded out DOGE’s resume.

Continue reading

trump 2 cover

Trump 2.0: Crazy Like a Fox

Donald J. Trump’s second administration, taking power at noon on 20 January 2025 (by constitutional fiat, whenever the oath itself is taken), is likely to be a replay of the first term, only more so.  In 2017 when he first assumed office, Trump was a newbie novice to the Washington scene; he appointed persons with experience and relative competence to help him run the government, individuals who had a respect for its institutions and norms, who served as guardrails on Trump’s wilder, wackier impulses.

Continue reading

el24 cover

US Election 2024 Postmortem

And postmortem is a good word for it, with many Americans and others across the globe feeling like they’ve died and gone to hell.  For whatever reason, on November 5th, more than half the US voting electorate chose to once again turn over the keys of the White House to Donald Trump, a convicted felon awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal counts, with three more criminal cases pending, an individual adjudicated guilty of fraud, liable for sexual abuse and defamation, a serial sexual predator who has declared bankruptcy multiple times, who spews hate, racism, invective and misogyny with every breath.  And this time, Trump achieved a feat he hadn’t before – he won, not just by the antiquated machinery of the Electoral College, but with an outright majority of votes, having lost that measure by three million votes in 2016 and seven million votes in 2020.  Shame on us.

Continue reading

trump trash cover

Election 2024: Down to the Wire, and It’s All Trash-Talking Garbage

Do you smell what I smell?  That whiff of decay?  That odor of rot?  Is that America?  Or just Puerto Rico?  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not a garbage smell at all – maybe it’s the cloyingly sweet smell of Democratic victory.

Donald Trump is making his closing argument to his countrymen in the final days of the campaign, promoting why he should be president again, and the best he can come up with is a plea for better waste management?  That’s the level we’ve sunk to, with the former squatter at the White House defining the nation he wants to lead as “a garbage can for the rest of the world” at his rally in Austin, Texas on October 25th.  Two days later, at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden that evoked memories of a Nazi rally held there in 1939, Trump’s opening act, a “comedian” named Tony Hinchcliffe, joked about a “floating island of garbage,” called “Puerto Rico,” in a performance that was vetted by the campaign beforehand, and hasn’t been disavowed by Trump since.

Continue reading

2024 el2 cover

On the Campaign Trail

AAA’s crack team of political reporters (me) has been digitally traveling coast to coast to check out conditions on the ground (and in the sky) as the 2024 US presidential election draws nearer.  There have been quite a few twists and turns, and several moments that highlight the state of the race.  This article will attempt to fill the gaps in our knowledge with an asteroid-eye view of where things stand, as the Above reflects the Below.

Continue reading