CSotD: A Mild Bit of Constructive Criticism
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Dear Leader has announced another set of tariffs, which he claims will likely be modified once he has concluded trade deals with the nations involved, which is most of them, or possibly more than all of them, since he once said “There’s 200 countries. You can’t talk to all of them.’’
You certainly can’t, because there are only 195, which may be why his initial list of tariffs included one on the Heard and McDonald islands, which are inhabited only by penguins and seals. And while you can talk to seals and penguins, you’d likely find the conversation a trifle one-sided.
Bennett’s cartoon is slightly off, because Trump has actually made some sort of trade deal with both the UK and Vietnam, so he’s not entirely alone on that cake. On the other hand, he vowed “90 deals in 90 days” and he’s 10 days overdue, so has extended the deadline to August 1, which will be 122 days.
Walters accuses him of having delivered yet another nothingburger, and, really, this dismal failure falls into the familiar pattern of “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on the people who voted you back into office.”
But certainly shame on anyone who took his tariff list seriously in the first place, and especially any business reporters who didn’t know that trade deals typically take a year or two of negotiations — not 90 days — to come together.
Trump, certainly, has to know this, since in his first administration, he oversaw the replacement of NAFTA with the USMCA trade deal, which he was thrilled with then but has now renounced.
It doesn’t tell us much about his ability to negotiate trade deals, but it does bring to mind the reports, including in the book A Warning, that, in his first administration, Trump staffers would sneak executive orders off his desk to keep him from signing them, since he came up with absurd ideas but, fortunately, wouldn’t remember them later.
Apparently his current staff is considerably more loyal.
The Republican Congress is also marvelously loyal, and approved Dear Leader’s major legislation which adds $3.3 trillion to the deficit Republicans used to warn us against, will cut millions of people off from medical care and will decimate rural hospitals.
But, as Sheneman points out, maybe it won’t matter, since he also appointed a specialist in pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and had a crew of wet-behind-the-ears nincompoops recommend cuts in medical research.
The issue seems to have two elements:
One is that, having grown up in the lap of luxury and been bailed out of difficulties by a rich and indulgent father, Donald Trump has no idea of how the other 99% lives, nor was he ever gifted with a sense of empathy, his blindness to decent behavior being a major reason his mother shipped him off to military school while allowing his siblings to grow up at home.
The other, which is related to that lack of empathy, is that he seems to take opposition personally and feels anyone who disagrees with him is not just stupid but is intentionally trying to pull one over on him.
His response is to lash out at those who don’t see things his way, and also to come up with Brilliant Plans like his new line of perfumes, which are as over-priced as his steaks, wines, airlines, NFTs, sneakers and presidency.
But while most of his Brilliant Plans have just cost people money, his heartless approach to health care is projected to cost several million people their lives. This is not simply a result of closing hospitals and clinics, but of registration requirements that will keep people from signing up, as well as costs that will discourage them from seeking treatment in time to catch minor problems before they progress to becoming fatal.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Bibi Netanyahu nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize is jaw-dropping, but anybody can nominate anybody else. You could nominate Pol Pot or Augusto Pinochet, if they were still alive, and I’m not certain that the prize couldn’t be awarded posthumously.
But I’d bet it wouldn’t go to them or to either of the architects of whatever’s happening in Gaza, which non-citizens dare not call genocide.
And whatever happened in Texas has absolutely nothing to do with climate change because there is no climate change, which is officially a hoax.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain or the First Dog on the Moon.
Brodner is hardly the only one blaming the deaths in Texas on cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA, but the source he quotes offers a clarification that greatly matters, because flash floods can, indeed, spring up and accelerate very quickly, even with plenty of observation, but the lack of electronic infrastructure in the area predictably made last-minute warnings problematic if not entirely impossible.
Extension of access and of high-speed Internet to rural areas was one of the cuts recommended by DOGE, while the simple expedient of sirens and other old-school warning systems was rejected by local politicians.
As Handelsman points out, we pledge a lot of improvements that we’ll definitely do someday, but not yet.
Besides, how can you plan for a 100 year event? (Smith apparently didn’t get the memo about there no longer being any such thing as climate change.)
And neither did the Guadalupe River, which just keeps rolling, it keeps on rolling along.
You know how many people have died so far in Texas, but can you remember how many died in Louisiana?
It’s like that “person, man, woman, camera, tv” thing. You’re only supposed to remember it for a couple of minutes, while you’re being tested.
Speaking of things you’re supposed to forget and things that never happened but that you’re expected to remember anyway, Milbrath passes the test of mental acuity.
And Dear Leader is sure that he can resolve the issue with a Jedi mind trick, the frightening thing being that he probably can.
Tan suits don’t make it, and IYKYK.
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