NATIONAL FIND A RAINBOW DAY UPDATES
And If You Can’t Find One, Grab a Burrito Since It’s Also National Burrito Day
-How did you spend Liberation Day yesterday? If you are not someone who so worships Donald Trump that you actually celebrated, you probably have not stopped FREAKING OUT about it – and you should not, because Trump carried out on his threat to impose tariffs, and did so in such a widespread and widespreadingly imbecilic way the normally staid CNBC watched with jaw agape, calling the entire plan “worse than the worst-case scenario.”
-Let’s start with the basics: a 10% tariff on almost every single country on Earth, including “countries” that barely fit the description, such as two Antarctic islands mostly inhabited by penguins and an island near the Arctic Circle in which 18 scientists work but are not acutal citizens. Those all got the 10% assessment for any goods and services coming into the United States.
-But then it really starts to get dumb …
-After that 10%, a formula was created by whoever came up with the scheme and sold to Trump (whether that was the barely-out-of-college coders tagging along with Elon Musk or AI is apparently up for debate, with both floated as legitimate possibilities) in which the amount of goods imported into the U.S. from all those countries were subtracted by all the goods and services exported by the U.S., and that amount became the baseline for the “trade deficits” that Trump garglespewed as the world “raping” the U.S. on trade (and yes, that word was used in that context) and then assessed additional tariffs – up to 57% for Cambodia, for example.
-Putting aside the fact that a trade deficit is simply not calculated that way by anyone who knows a lick about tariffs (and if you saw FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, you know more about how tariffs actually work than anyone in the current White House), note that the U.S. figure did NOT include services imported to the U.S. in its figures – and had they been (as they should have), most countries in the European Union would not have had any “deficits” by this still-shockingly-wrong formula used to create the out-of-his-soiled-undies figures used by Trump.
-Add to all of this the fact that unilateral tariff increase destroys any number of agreements, contracts, treaties, and diplomacy built over decades of painstaking care and toil, it opens up the U.S. to massive retaliatory tariffs – the Mother of All Trade Wars, which Vice President Trump has always insisted “are easy to win” – and the stage is set for a cycle of inflation and self-induced economic slamming on of brakes to an economy The Economist called “the envy of the world” in October when Joe Biden was President. And, as I bet you can guess or have heard, there were a few Very Special Countries that did not get tariffed, led by the one and only Russia – but also including such charming countries as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and oddly, Cuba (perhaps as a plantain to Marco Rubio?). But the inanities of all of these tariffs are just wild.
-So, amid a very tinny-sounding “Hail To The Chief,” Trump staggerfootdragged himself to the Rose Garden (which he has said will be turned into an outdoor plaza to get rid of those annoying roses) and proceeded to announce all of this in a voice alternately woozy and jacked from something, while also prattling rhapsodically about “such an old-fashioned term but beautiful … groceries” and also insisting that the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs of 1930 helped END The Great Depression when the utter and total opposite is true, and signed the one and only truth in the land now thing his advisors stuck under his nose, whatever the Hell it was since he never really knows anything he is signing executive order to fully impose all these tariffs this Saturday.
-Now, at this point you may be thinking, “Well I didn’t sleep through American History class, and I am pretty sure Presidents can’t just throw tariffs on anything they want without Congress giving their approval – am I remembering that right?” YES, yes you are. Congress has the power of the purse and are generally the only ones that can create and impose tariffs, although a newish law says a President can declare some kind of national emergency to seize at least temporary power to do so (and Trump did, declaring war on fentanyl or something). Indeed, last night the Senate, with four Republicans joining Democrats (including Rand Paul, who in this bass-ackwards world is one of the people that is taking sense about these STUPIDSTUPID tariffs), voted to end the first cycle of tariffs declared by Trump against Canada and Mexico. That would be good since that bill now goes to the House …
-… except, it has to go to this House, the one run by Trump-Humping Speaker Mike Johnson, who in and of himself would never cross Dear Leader for any reason whatsoever (although most reasons connected to Project 2025) and would thus not be likely to bring the Senate bill up, or do anything to retake Constitutional powers they should otherwise have. But it’s even a little worse than that …
-You see, anticipating just such a move, Johnson stole a procedural trick Nancy Pelosi used to prevent Johnson and his minions from ending COVID relief to flow to the states in 2021-22 and has essentially declared only he can declare a legislative day over. If Johnson then never declares a Congressional day over, then it is impossible for any new legislation to be introduced without his seeing the legislation pop up on that app he claims to share with his son to monitor how often he views pornography approval – and so Congress can’t cancel these tariffs easily. (And even if they did, guess who can veto the bill – NO NOT ELON MUSK, watch yourselves in the back!).
-Now, you may also think, “But Republicans had a bad day on Tuesday – won’t this make them really unpopular?” On THAT, you are CORRECT! Republicans DID have a TERRIBLE day on Tuesday, led by the double-digit defeat of the Musk/Trump anointee (and $25 million expenditure) for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Brad Schmiel Schmozzel Hossenfeffer Incorporated (and I promise that’s the last time I’ll use that joke), at the hands of Democratic incumbent Susan Crawford.
-There were also local races in rock-ribbed Republican strongholds in the Chicago suburbs that went very poorly (a Trump ally lost his Mayorship in the city of Aurora, and the normally-dependable DuPage County saw a record number of Democrats elected in county-wide and local races). Even the two races “won” by MAGA in Florida saw precipitous drops in support from just this past November, all signaling a plunging of support for Trump and MAGA – all before the tariffs were announced yesterday.
-This also does not take into account the straight-line plunge in the Dow Jones, which lost over 1600 points (the third-worst in history, and FUN FACT: the seven worst days of the NYSE have ALL occurred under Trump!) and started to fall literally as Trump slurblarted the imposition of the tariffs yesterday. Trump does not like to be associated with a plunging stock market, so there is some hope the freefalling stock market may make him reverse some of the tariffs (which he did at the start of the last two months), although at the end of the market day he blabyapped something about the tariffs being “an operation” that was necessary on the economy, then reportedly prepared to return to Mar-a-Lago for yet another weekend of golfing.
-There is another thing Trump has always hate hate HATED, and that is being associated with losers. I know, I know, he need only look in the mirror and all that, but he also adores assessing blame so he never blames himself for anything – and after Tuesday, it may be dawning on him that the Presumptive President, Elon Musk, may actually be a LA-HOO-SER that needs to be jettisoned. The failure of flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court means at least two House seats will be in danger of going blue in 2026, combined with the toxicity of the Musk brand, everything that appears to be starting to happen to implode the economy, the always-inflated Trump ego, and the clear emotional and physical effects all of this is having on E, may move the timeline of when the leader of DOGE is no longer in the picture.
-Whether that would ultimately make all the anger that Musk is clearly absorbing for Trump transfer directly to Trump at long last would remain to be seen, but Musk has been very hard to find since Tuesday evening, so this bears watching amid the economic mess being made.
-This left Democrats in a very strange position given their 2025: with a little bit of forward momentum. Election Night came on the heels of Cory Booker’s record-breaking filibuster, which Booker used to maximum effect to talk for over 25 straight hours about the Trump threat to democracy and how to fight it, and from the clear planning that Booker’s staff took in giving him solid information to allow him to sustain the filibuster with little filler to questions about how Booker was able to stay standing without having to take a bathroom break (the answer: he fasted since Friday and started delivering the speech while dehydrated, thereby allowing water to be absorbed without the need to urinate) to the production on various social media platforms (including over 400 million impressions and likes on TikTok alone), Booker managed to dominate press coverage as he approached the filibuster record.
-That the man whose record Booker broke was ultra-segregationist Strom Thurmond added a superb cherry on top of the effort – and while there were still carping critics on the left who bitched about the nomination who he filibustered still being approved (big penis toilet designer Matthew Whitaker for NATO Commission) and demands that Booker keep to his word to do more to protest Trump (a genuinely legit criticism), no less an authority than GOP mega-pollster Frank Luntz worried that the Booker filibuster may turn out to be a turning point in opposing Trump and, ultimately, rolling back and repairing/replacing the damage Trump is and will do.
-We hate to flip back to Trump again, but there was late-breaking scandal news that should have been better than it was. With the Signal messaging scandal still out there and still expanding with reports that Middle East advisor and apparent Signal scandal epicenter Michael Waltz had at least 20 other should-have-been-private discussions on the easily-hackable-for-professionals app going, news that three National Security Council workers resigned today might have made you think they were connected to Waltz – buuuut nnOOOOOooo, there was no connection to Waltz as both Trump and Trump Spokesblonde Karoline Leavitt insisted that the Signal scandal was “over.”
-So what about these NSC staffers that resigned? Turns out they resigned because Trump was told the three were not loyal enough to Trump – and to make it even more vile, the person who had a private meeting with the recommendations that Trump took was none other than Laura Loomer. You may recall from the 2024 campaign that Loomer, previously known for her ultra-bigoted racist and anti-Muslim podcasts and (as is true of way too many women that loom around Trump and Mar-a-Lago) plastic surgery, was banned from traveling with Trump after being seen accompanying him at 9/11 memorial events last year and fears in the Trump campaign of the 31-year-old being a bit to close to Trump – EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUU! Anyway, she’s apparently back now that he’s President again and EEEEEEEUUUUUUUU!
-We’re going to call that today’s Petty Atrocity of the day and not push the entendre any further.
-But we’ll end with ideas for things to do this weekend, especially this Saturday, where the largest-scale political protests to date are readying themselves. The marches are being organized by over 1,000 national, state-wide and local groups from Indivisible to the SEIU trade union, and the theme and title of the action – HANDS OFF! – discusses the actions to be demanded of leaders, primarily involving protections of the social safety nets and the over 275,000 federal workers Musk and his coding punks have tried to fire (look for tomorrow’s unemployment number to spike – if the numbers are properly reported). To find an event to join go to handsoff2025.com and remember to keep things peaceful since the presumption has been since the George Floyd protests that Trump, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and the rest have been hungering to turn armed police or reporters on street protestors – so don’t give them an excuse and let’s build to that 3.5% of the population peacefully resisting tyranny to overturn the despots and replace them with real small-d democratic reformers.
-We’ll see how well the Hands Off! Protests go after the economic tumult while Trump putts and Musk mopes with his meds on Sunday. Until then …
-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1922, Joseph Stalin became Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, paving the way for taking over the party. In 1968, Martin Luther King delivered his last sermon, now known as “The Mountaintop Speech.” In 1996, Ted Kacynski was arrested and charged with being The Unabomber (which he was).
-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: The Pony Express (1860), The Marshall Plan (1948), TV GUIDE (1953), PLANET OF THE APES (1968), Minneapolis’ First Avenue music club (1970), mobile telephones (1973), the Sex Pistols (1976), the Panama Papers (2016).
-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Washington Irving, Dooley Wilson, Leslie Howard, George Jessel, Henry Luce, Sally Rand, Doris Day, Marlon Brando, Gus Grissom, Earl Lloyd, Helmut Kohl, Max Frankel, Jane Goodall, Jerry Krause, Jan Berry, Marsha Mason, Wayne Newton, Richard Manuel, Tony Orlando, Bernie Parent, Dee Murray, Lyle Alzado, Richard Thompson, Russ Francis, David Hyde Pierce, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Rubin, Bo Orlando, Sebastian Bach, Ben Mendelsohn, Picabo Street, Jennie Garth, Adam Scott, Thomas Hamilton, Cobie Smulders, Amanda Bynes, and Rachel Bloom.
-REST IN PEACE/REST IN POWER: Johannes Brahms, Richard D’Oyly Carte, Conrad Veidt, Kurt Weill, Warren Oates, Sara Vaughan, Graham Greene, Pinky Lee, Betty Furness, Carl Stokes, Ron Brown, Rob Pilatus, Lionel Bart, Big Daddy Kinsey, Ruth Prawler Jhabvala, Sarah Brady, Tom Dempsey, and Gene Shue.
-FEED THE WORMS: Boss Tweed and Nigel Farange entered Earth on this date. Jesse James bought it on this date. Bruno Hauptmann was executed on this date.
-Alec Baldwin was born on this date. You decide if he gets a Happy Birthday or if he Feeds the Worms.
-TODAY’S MUSICAL INTERLUDE: Happy Birthday to Social Distortion lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Mike Ness!