In 2022, Qatar Airways placed an order for 25 Boeing 737 MAX 10 airliners, whose list price would be about $3.4 billion USD.
www.reuters.com/business/aer...

Recently, the nation of Qatar gifted a "golden" 747 to the US DoD for Trump's eventual use.

Today, Qatar Airways confirmed that it would be abandoning its orders for the 25 Boeing 737 MAX 10s.

simpleflying.com/qatar-airway...

My first thought was that the Qatari folks had put one over on Trump,
getting him to accept their gift of a white elephant plane to forestall
any complaints about not buying the 25 Boeing 737 Max 10s.

But, reading deeper, Qatar Airways has also placed an
order worth

about $96 billion USD for 130 Boeing 787 Dreamliners
and 30 Boeing 777Xs.
simpleflying.com/qatar-airway...

So, looks good for Boeing and Qatar Airways, no loss for Trump,
except the Q-Force 747 won't be ready to use as a secure aircraft
for some time.

1/12

The current administration has only a few types
of their "flood the zone" actions and announcements:

Pure Fascism, Simple Evil, Base Fuel, Shiny Ball

2/12

Simple Evil and Pure Fascism attract less attention from major media.
The stories are harder to write, the topics may be harder to
explain, the audience for them is smaller, but they are the most important.

3/12

Subverting the constitution by attempting to take over the infrastructure
of the Judicial branch, and thus crippling the federal judiciary is
Pure Fascism. Kidnapping people and dropping them in a foreign prison
without due process, appeal, or recourse is Pure Fascism.

4/12

Firing or promoting top military staff or other non-political professional
staff based on loyalty to an individual or their agenda
rather than loyalty to our Constitution is Pure Fascism.

5/12

Destroying old-growth forest eco-systems, National Parks,
and offering to sell lots of federal land is Simple Evil,
because once they're gone, they're gone forever.

Adding names to the SSA death index without appeal or
recourse is Simple Evil - identity fraud on steroids.

6/12

Base Fuel is anything that claims to cut fraud and abuse,
"own the libs", or fight the supposed DEI/CRT/BLM agenda.

(BTW, we know that all of those terms as used by people in
the current administration are just the newest iteration
of the hard-R N-word, do not be fooled by acronyms.)

7/12

Zombie SSA recipients, Gulf of America, budget cuts to NPR,
CPB, farm and other subsidies, and the like are Base Fuel.

The results of these cuts are are either "we owned the libs"
or "we saved your <program of interest>, remember us at election time."

8/12

These often tend to enrich the executive coterie and donor base.
They keep the MAGA base engaged, and keep the opposition enraged.
We will see in 2026 whether that works, on balance,

9/12

Shiny Ball includes things like taking over Greenland,
or Canada, sending troops to Mexico, posting images
of TFG as the Pope, or reopening Alcatraz.

10/12

Ridiculous, outrageous, impractical on their face.
But very attractive to most media, who can easily
produce plenty of stories about things that will not
ever happen, thus sucking up American's limited
attention budget.

11/12

We could quibble over names and groupings, and there is some overlap
between these categories, just accept that, and don't spend all your
time watching the Shiny Balls. There will be many Shiny Balls in the
air for the next year or two, at least.

12/12

There are many things more important than Shiny Balls.

2025 will be a year of protest and winning litigation.
2026 must be a year of organization and winning elections.