NATIONAL DENTISTS DAY UPDATES

Cruelly, It Is Also National Oreo Cookie Day AND National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day …

-You probably didn’t watch Tuesday night’s Congressional Drone that Vice President Trump urped, and most people didn’t. Ratings were a sad 36.6 million viewers – the smallest ratings for such a Trump speech ever – and it is noted because the person who cares and cares deeply about that is him. And his ‘performance’ reflected it, being the longest such speech this side of William Henry Harrison in a storm that was full of volumes of lies (squealfarting for five minutes about coding in the Social Security database tartar-sauce-for-brains thinks means 150-year-olds collect Social Security, debunked numerous times already but YOLO!), pathetic begging (taking a few minutes to whine about why the Democrats who did show up didn’t clap like the MAGA hyenas did), inane blustering (yadda yadda Greenland), and cruel manipulation (bringing a cancer survivor on stage while not telling the mostly-older audience who did watch that cancer funding is on the chopping block thanks to President Musk’s incel punks). You almost missed nothing…

-… except the one moment, and one image, that became the takeaway: 77-year-old Rep. Al Green (D-TX), standing amidst all the sea of suited White men and pointing his brass-handled cane at Trump to interrupt with the truth that NO, he did NOT have “an overwhelming mandate” and “the biggest victory in American history,” especially to try to zero out Medicaid (which has NOT yet happened but is on the table as MAGAts in the House and Senate work to reconcile their ‘budget bills’) – and, behind Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson standing to have Green expelled from the chamber and, THIS JUST IN, censured for his insolence (funny how he never did that for MAGA Harridans Lauren “I Made Kid Rock Break Up With His Fiance!” Boebert and Marjorie Taylor “I Like My MAGA F*ckToy Botoxed Up – I’ll Do It Too!”

-Green when they did that against Joe Biden). Green for his part was ready to accept whatever punishment the Trump toadys doled out, and it left Democrats again aching for every Democrat, especially the ones in DC, to do the same. By most accounts they did not, of course, and while many younger Dems led a walkout with black T-shirts with the message NO KINGS LIVE HERE to be read by MAGAts who can, the rest had a mix of women’s march pink and little round black placards saying FALSE (and which were roundly and deservedly mocked Monday night by Stephen Colbert, who held up his own little sign saying TRY DOING SOMETHING.

-That “doing something” thing became a little harder on Tuesday for Democrats when Sylvester Turner, the former Mayor of Houston, TX, whose first term had (of course) just started, suffered a “medical emergency” and passed away at the age of 70. The death gives Johnson a desperately-needed additional vote (he only had two to spare), and while Turner’s seat will most assuredly stay Democratic, evil goon Texas Governor Greg “Once I Get My Wheelchair Up This Ramp I Will Have it Blown to Smithereens So No Democrat Can Ever Use It Again” Abbott can wait until November to call for the special election – and the soonest he could call it is early May. With Abbott a rock-ribbed Trump ball sac licker partner in hating brown people ally and the prospect of the somehow-even-more-corrupt-than-Abbott (and fellow mega-MAGAt) Attorney General Ken Paxton lazy-eyeing John Cornyn’s Senate seat next year, do not hold your breath for when Turner’s replacement will be in DC.

-One major reason most folks did not notice or care about Trump’s appearance besides the blindingly obvious of most people either not voting for him or now regretting the vote, is that the list of those who now regret their vote is expanding thanks to the asinine tariffs being assessed against Canada, Mexico, and China. With the Dow freefalling over 1500 points since the announcement and literally everyone but Trump screaming about the devastation they will cause, once again there was backtracking – at least when it comes to the auto industry.

-Because of the way automakers shuttle around parts and assembly plants between the three countries, US/Canada/Mexico is for all practical purposes an interdependent mega-country – so 25% tariffs across all three countries led to a typical situation presented on Fox Bid-ness of an auto dealer in Pennsylvania lamenting a sale of an $80,000 Ford pickup truck that fell through because of the tariffs, which added $20,000 to the sticker price literally overnight. The unexpected anger led Maria Bartiromo to melt down in an attempt to defend Dear Leader, and likely because Trump watches Fox incessantly, suddenly the Big Three automakers met with the White House and carved out a 30-day exemption to the tariffs, which at the very least hopefully brought the price of that truck down for that dealer to close the sale this week.

-But the precedent of tariff carve-outs has been made, with the only question being whether there was a little grease added to the deal heading towards Trump’s wallet, and whether other industries will follow (one possible industry: the whiskey industry, as the distillers of Jack Daniels issued a letter lamenting their product being removed throughout Canada and the effects of that being “worse than any tariff”). This also presents more chaos, as exemptions mean some industries don’t suffer but we don’t know which until they unzip Trump to try to get their exemptions, and economies don’t like chaos AT ALL – meaning all of them could evaporate tomorrow depending on how many Fish Delight Sandwiches get shoved into Trump’s buttmouth.

-AND LOOK AT THIS – another one month tariff exemption for Mexico has just been announced by the White House! Guess all those rumors about Melania and Justin Trudeau may have some validity (unless other exemptions are announced later today, always possible with these dim bulbs) ...

-The shifting of alliances spurred by Trump’s ongoing fealty to his father, Vladimir Putin (if you haven’t, look up the AI-generated ad that the Lincoln Project dropped today – think of them what you will but at least their media draws some blood), and Ukraine continues. While Trump’s ‘temporary ban’ on financial and materiel aid to the country has expanded to include no longer sharing military intelligence with the country, reaching out to Ukrainian opposition candidates to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and most viciously exploring pulling support for the 240,000 Ukrainians given asylum by President Biden), Europe continues to step up. France is leading much of the effort, promising to replace American military intelligence and Apartheid Boy’s satellite internet access with their own, and there are also moves within the European Union to suspend Hungary and Trump/Putin-humping Viktor Orban because of his continued road-blocking of added EU support to Ukraine.

-At this point, it appears that at a minimum, military progress by either country will continue to be stymied as a diplomatic war erupts between a “peace agreement” that Trump and Putin would try to impose without Ukraine and the EU, again led by France, insisting that the country THAT WAS INVADED be part of any kind of actual peace treaty – and how that may then give Putin Trump the means to try to pull the United States out of NATO. Lots to watch here …

-SLAVA UKRAINI!

-Back to Monday’s blather, where in one of the rare examples of discipline exacted by Team Trump, only two mentions were made of Real President Musk. That may have been a good thing, because in one of the two cutaway shots on Musk he sat with the kind of marble-eyed empty stare that anyone around anyone who has ever been doing serious amounts of drugs recognized (and in the other, Musk started bobbing his head in another pretty clear bout of tripping).

-The question of how many drugs Musk may be on is clearly being asked more and more within the DC gossip-sphere, with The Atlantic going in detail this week into what happens when someone starts using ketamine recreationally, as Musk has openly admitted to in interviews with, among others, Don Lemon and Ronan Farrow (the answer: erratic and impulsive behavior as well as a sense of superiority – OH YA DON’T SAY?!). That he has openly also bragged about a lack of sleep while “hunting down” non-existent Federal budget-saving (and that’s by the admission of the commission itself) (because IT IS NOT A DEPARTMENT) and several appearances where his mumblings have been as coherent as his Vice President, and, well, it’s a mess that’s continuing to get messier.

-OK, good news time – and there is, particularly involving Target Stores, one of the central objects of last Friday’s first-ever attempt at an economic boycott to build the non-violent critical mass (3.5% of the population, about 11 million in the US) that can overturn a despotic regime. Ever since they announced the end of their DEI programs, they have been the focus of a boycott that appers to be having an effect. Figures quoted in social media posts of hundreds of billions of dollars are wrong – Target isn’t THAT big – but a 3% decline in sales in February shortly after the announcement of the end of the policies is making that liberal pinko commie rag Forbes Magazine worry. A 40-day boycott of the company that dovetails with Lent is now underway, so keep not shopping at Target – and for the next week, you can add Amazon to that list, as a seven-day boycott of that anti-DEI pro-Trump-suck-up company launches tomorrow.

-The next time you get an update from me you will have lost an hour of sleep as we Spring Forward to begin Daylight Savings Time. And it makes me really, really uncomfortable to type this next statement, but … (shudder) … Trump is on the record to get rid of DST forever, and that is one – ONE – ONLY ONE – idea of his I will … I will … (AAUGH!) … agree with him about.

-I need to wrap this update and bathe myself in bleach now … so let’s get to our history for this date, shall we?

-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1836, Mexico captured The Alamo. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery was announced. In 1964, Cassius Clay legally changed his name to Muhammad Ali. In 1981, Walter Cronkite retired as anchor of the CBS Evening News. In 2001, Napster began complying with a court order blocking online transfers of computer files with copywritten material in them. In 2020, the South by Southwest music festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, days before a worldwide shutdown began.

-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: Toronto (1834), LA TRAVIATA (1853), Aspirin (1899), Real Madrid (1902), Ghana (1957), “Let It Be” (1970), a woman as White House bureau chief (Helen Thomas, 1974).

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Michaelangelo (the artist, not the TMNJ), Cyrano de Bergerac, Casimir Pulaski, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Dayton, Ring Lardner, Lefty Grove, Bob Wills, Lou Costello, Will Eisner, Wes Montgomery, Ed McMahon, Andrej Wajda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lorin Maazel, Hal Needham, Sylvia Robinson, Valentina Tereshkova, Cookie Rojas, Willie Stargell, Kiri Te Kanawa, Mary Wilson, David Gilmour, Dick Fosbury, Kiki Dee, Rob Reiner, Jackie Zeman, Eddie Deezen, D.L. Hughley, Connie Britton, Shaquille O’Neal, Tyler the Creator, and Angel Reese.

-REST IN PEACE/REST IN POWER: Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Artemus Ward, Louisa May Alcott, Gottlieb Daimler, John Philip Sousa, Anton Cermak, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Margaret Dumont, Nelson Eddy, Pearl S. Buck, Georgia O’Keefe, King Floyd, Kirby Puckett, Ernest Gallo, Roberrt Sherman, Robert Osborne, Henri Richard, and McCoy Tyner.

-FEED THE WORMS: Former House speaker who was too into interns Tom Foley, and swindlers Ivan Boesky and Sam Bankman-Fried entered Earth on this date. Horrible writer and even worse philosopher Ayn Rand and Nancy Reagan bought it on this date.

-Alan Greenspan, Marion Barry and Tom Arnold were born on this date. You decide if they get Happy Birthdays or if they Feed the Worms.

-YOUR MUSICAL INTERLUDE FOR THE DATE: In honor of the release of the Periodic Table in 1869, as presented by one of the true musical geniuses of our age …