The Strait To Sequel

Over the weekend, someone went begging to the other major powers to help him out of a disaster of his own making (from Sam Metz, Will Weissert, Julia Frankel, and Cara Anna at AP News):

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has demanded about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar during the Iran war.

The president declined to name the countries heavily reliant on Middle East crude that the administration is negotiating with to join a coalition to police the waterway where about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil normally flows.

“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory,” Trump said about the strait, claiming the shipping channel is not something the United States needs because of its own access to oil. Trump spoke while answering reporters’ questions as he flew back to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One.

The gist is that after weeks of crowing how victorious he's been blowing up Iran, his handlers have finally gotten him to understand that angering Iran to the point of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz was a really bad idea.

If you're wondering if any of those nations have answered back by now, I think Germany has spelled out what the response is going to be like (via Ellen Mitchell at The Hill):

Germany’s defense minister on Monday rebuffed calls from U.S. President Trump to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, telling reporters “this is not our war.”

Trump has called on allies, including those in NATO, for military ​support to keep the vital shipping route open. Iran has effectively closed the strait for the past two weeks in response to the U.S.-Israeli war on Tehran, using missiles, drones and mines to attack oil tankers trying to get through.

“What does … Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to ​do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?” Boris Pistorius ⁠said in Berlin, as reported by Reuters. “This is not our war, we have not started it.”

Ever the bully, trump never understood that a bully's victims will not come to that bully's aid when he's getting punched in the face. Having mocked and belittled and threatened our NATO allies - and pretty much 80 percent of the rest of the planet - trump has no peace offering to give them. 

This isn't post-9/11, when most of Western civilization came to our nation's aid to stamp out Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan (and more reluctantly invade Iraq over WMD lies and deception). trump and his lackeys - Rubio and whomever hasn't been fired from the State Department yet - may want other nations to sacrifice their own people and resources to rescue trump from this debacle, but they don't have the genuine skills of diplomacy - compromise, long-term planning, honesty, commitment to shared objectives - to recover from this.

The world may be facing economic turmoil if oil prices keep going up, but all of the other nations seem willing to suffer the pain momentarily if it means trump and the chickenhawk Far Right get humiliated and broken by their own idiocy and hubris.

An entire Far Right ideology of toxic masculinity is getting punched in the face right now. It's the only good news we have in all this death and fire.

Addendum: I hope this BlueSky skeet stays up. Thank you Dr. SkySkull!

Europeans when being asked to unblock the strait of Hormuz

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— Dr. SkySkull (@drskyskull.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 2:43 PM

The Strait Story

Let's get straight to the point: trump and his pro-war lackeys had no idea what they were really doing starting a war with Iran (via Phillips Payson O'Brien at The Atlantic): 

Astonishingly, President Trump and his aides were caught unprepared when Iran, under air assault from the United States and Israel, retaliated by targeting shipping in the Persian Gulf region and specifically through the Strait of Hormuz. Military planners have pointed out for decades that the waterway—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes—is highly vulnerable to Iranian assault. But the Trump administration acknowledged in classified briefings, CNN reported last night, that it did not make provisions for a closure because officials assumed that such a move would hurt Iran more than the United States.

In its failure to anticipate Iran’s reaction, the administration ignored a dynamic that former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a first-term Trump appointee, was fond of pointing out: Once hostilities begin, “the enemy gets a vote.” U.S. leaders have drastically underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to survive, adjust, and strike back. Just two weeks into a war that began at a time of the president’s choosing, the U.S. appears uncertain about what to do next.

You can see the lack of intellectual and operational awareness with trump and everyone in his chain of command - Secretary of Voguing Pete Hegseth especially - when it comes to war planning just by noticing the map of the Strait of Hormuz.

via Wikipedia Commons

It's the geographic bottleneck of politics. I've got no training in military strategy or tactics, and even *I* can tell that narrow gap is a major hinderance to any naval operations. No shipping can slip through that 12 mile gap without detection, and Iran is in a prime position to threaten every oil tanker trying to get out of the Persian Gulf.

They've done this before, by the way. The "Tanker War" during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s saw Iraq try to tempt Iran to blockade the Strait in order to draw the United States into their fight. Iran tried to avoid that by targeting Iraqi tankers only, delaying any American intervention until 1987 when the Iraqis accidentally struck the USS Stark, giving Reagan's government the excuse to go after Iran (which unfortunately also led to the tragic downing of an Iranian airliner Flight 655).

So considering anyone with a basic understanding of geography, and anyone with a memory of recent history - the 1980s weren't THAT long ago - you'd think there would be enough people even among the neocons and war chickenhawks in the current White House who would have at least done some planning into securing control of the Strait to ensure the flow of trade (oil) would continue unabated.

That - alas - would require someone in trump's administration to be genuinely competent at this point.

trump and Hegseth and every other person involved in this mismanaged war effort simply didn't think or even care to think where the long-term consequences of their actions would lead (as if they ever did).

You can tell they operated on the ass-umption that their "decapitation strikes" - taking out the Ayatollah and any Iranian military chain of command - would lead to the immediate collapse of Iran's government and willingness to fight. That it would lead to the Iranian citizenry - already in decades of protesting the harsh regime of hardliner Shia clerics - rising up in mass protest to overthrow whatever was left to leave a power vacuum to trump's (and Netanyahu's) liking.

It never occurred to trump's circle that Iran's military and leadership have been planning for this kind of situation for decades: Having witnessed the tactics of our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, believing they've been in an existential fight against American hegemony since 1979 actually since 1953 when the CIA installed the Shah, and moving into more modern warfare methods such as drone bombs and cyberattacks (some of which the US military haven't adapted against yet). 

It hasn't occurred to our government's leadership - not just trump but let's face it most of our Presidents since the Second World War - even with the evidence after Afghanistan / Iraq / hell, Vietnam that bombing a population into submission doesn't work. The Iranian people may be tired and frustrated and willing to rise up against the Ayatollah including the new guy replacing his dead dad, but they're not going to do it while trump and his underlings are bombing schools, museums, and desalination plants.

I've often criticized Duyba's failed war effort in Iraq, pointing out that he and his people may have had a Plan A for going in and forcing regime change, but they had no Plan B when their attempt to install a puppet leader fell through. Considering what trump and Hegseth and the rest of the clowns are doing with Iran, there doesn't even seem to be a Plan A with them.

So, to the 77 million of you who voted for this shitgibbon to return to power: WE WARNED YOU. GODDAMN YOU, WE WARNED YOU and you were too butt-hurt about libruls and diversity to realize the damage you were bringing back.

And now a lot of things will get worse: The price of gas obviously, economic instability here and abroad, the likelihood of troop deployments and thousands of American families watching their loved ones go into harm's way - for arguably no reason at all this time save for the vanity and cruelty of trump and his lackeys - are just the immediate pain points we'll feel. We'll be feeling all of this months or even years down the road.

Gods help us. AGAIN.

In trumpworld, the Tariffs Will Increase Until Morale Improves

Update: thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Just a reminder, save your sanity by avoiding tonight's SOTU and rely on the poor souls who will annotate it on Bluesky for us.

For all the storm and fury over donald trump's obsession for raising tariffs, there was eventually a reckoning this week when the Supreme Court finally realized they needed to tell trump "No, you CAN'T raise tariffs without congressional approval." (via Scott Horsley at NPR):

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Trump overstepped his authority when he ordered tariffs on imports from nearly every country in the world, using a 1970s emergency statute...

The federal government has been collecting about $30 billion in tariffs every month — or about four times as much as it took in before Trump returned to the White House.

Trump has raised tariff rates to their highest level in nearly a century, but import taxes are still a small share of overall government revenue — just over 5% in January...

A working paper from Harvard University professor and former International Monetary Fund economist Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago estimates that nearly all the cost of Trump's tariffs are being paid by U.S. importers, not foreign suppliers as Trump has claimed.

In some cases, importers have absorbed that cost, settling for lower profits. In others, they've passed the additional cost on to customers in the form of higher prices...

Trump promised that imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression would spark a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. But factories have been in a slump for most of the last year, shedding 108,000 jobs in 2025.

No doubt Trump's taxes on foreign imports have allowed some U.S. factories to raise their prices. But the vast majority of factory managers, many of whom rely on foreign components, say tariffs have been a drag on their business.

"Morale is very low across manufacturing in general," one unnamed factory manager told the Institute for Supply Management in December...

So of course, trump being trump he decided to double down on his tariffs obsession (via Kristen Wright, also NPR): 

President Trump on Saturday said he plans to raise global tariffs from 10% to 15%.

"...I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been "ripping" the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level," the president posted on Truth Social.

The announcement was made a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the president's sweeping use of emergency powers to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The 6-3 ruling is a major blow to Trump's economic policy agenda.

Trump said his decision to raise taxes on imports to 15% is based on "a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday."

trump is, of course, lying out of his ass about "thorough, detailed, and complete review" of a ruling within 24 hours of getting it dumped on his head. Given the ineptitude of trump's entire administration, there's rarely been ANYthing other than messy, disorganized, poorly reasoned responses.

trump is pushing ahead on his tariffs for - again - various reasons, mostly tied to his raging narcissism. Above all is how trump can never admit he is wrong, or losing in any way. he will double down on his mistakes and his flawed logic whenever possible, and blame the people who stopped him for being "crooked" or wrong (when they're not).

he's still convinced - and not through egotistical stubbornness, but genuine belief - that trade wars work, that tariffs are effective sources of revenue (when it's only five percent of total revenue, that can't be anywhere near correct), and that tariffs give him more control over everyone else. trump wants the power to wield tariffs and the threat of such over foreign nations and local businesses alike, as extortions and shakedowns. 

trump believes he doesn't need to work with Congress in any way - look at how he refused to coordinate with even his fellow Republicans during the first time - and his abuse of the laws regarding trade and tariffs is a big sign of that disregard.

The tariff trump is looking to impose now can well face more legal actions from businesses and groups threatened by how rash and destructive these decisions are. But that more dragging out in courts, meaning the costs of trump's tariffs are going to prolong the economic malaise building under his misrule.

trump doesn't care. he's going to keep lying and keep bullying about how great everything is, until he's convinced we adore him the way he wants.

Which is never going to happen. So the beatings tariffs will continue on...

Between The Rock and The Dumb Place

With all of the unsettling things donald trump is doing to our international trade, our global standing, our farmers, and our tourism industry, it's the deeply insane shit he's posting on social media that distracts just a bit. But there may be something darker in trump's latest brain-fart to re-open the infamous Alcatraz prison as a holding place for the worst criminals the most defiant opponents (via Bill Chappell at NPR):

President Trump says he is ordering federal agencies to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz — the notorious maximum security prison that closed more than 60 years ago.

"I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America's most ruthless and violent Offenders," Trump said in a post on Truth Social...

Trump's message suggests he wants to restore Alcatraz to its original dual purpose. The twin goals for building the original prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, were "to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons, and to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious" about stopping rampant crime in the 1920s and 1930s..."

Trump did not provide details about a timeline for reopening the prison. And the National Park Service did not reply to NPR's request for comment about the president's new plan for Alcatraz before this story published.

But enacting Trump's proposal would come with a steep price tag, both for constructing and operating a new prison facility on an island whose most plentiful natural resource is sandstone.

Alcatraz was shuttered "because the institution was too expensive to continue operating," according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It said operating the island prison was nearly three times more expensive than any other federal prison at the time.

"This isolation meant that everything (food, supplies, water, fuel...) had to be brought to Alcatraz by boat," the bureau says. "For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week."

I remembered my travel to San Francisco for a librarian convention in June 2001 (right before 9/11, before air travel required 108 checkpoints and hoops to jump through) and saved the photos here and there on my computers. I made a visit out to the place in-between convention meetings and such.

Welcome to The Rock! - Sean Connery

I'm a librarian. OF COURSE I TOOK A PICTURE OF
ALCATRAZ'S LIBRARY!

I was 31 at the time. I had more hair back then.

(I'm not including the photos of my foray to Colma to pay my respects to Emperor Norton. Then again, Norton would be a far wiser and saner leader for America at this point)

I remember what the tour guide said about Alcatraz as a prison: The costs of shipping everything across the bay made it impractical, they couldn't install pipelines for water or fuel, and they had no way to add facilities like desalination plants. It also didn't help that by sitting in the middle of a saltwater bay, they dealt with serious corrosion of the steel and concrete that made it harder to maintain as a prison (this is what Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers took advantage of). I saw someone post on Bluesky how back in 1963 it cost the government three times what a normal prison cost, and held fewer prisoners. We're making more money out of Alcatraz as a tourist attraction than as a prison.

So why is trump suddenly fixated on converting an abandoned prison that would cost wasteful hundreds of millions of dollars to restore? (Other than trump being a brain-dead idiot that is)

We need to look closely at trump's Truth Social rant (well, to read someone else's screenshot, let's not login to that place shall we). Here's a screenshot from Bluesky via John Brooks  :

Yes, I agree, 8 years of you is indeed far too long

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— John Brooks (@johnbrooks.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 8:42 PM

Beneath the opening rants of using the prison to house "the dregs of society," and threatening to throw "violent offenders" into Alcatraz, trump is including "judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came to our country illegally." One of these things is not like the others... 

Don't forgot, right now trump is locked into a legal fight with federal judges who are refusing to bend to trump's agenda to ship without due process a number of criminal migrants but also too many honest legal migrants that trump's ICE thugs are rounding up under false pretenses and unproven allegations. We're close to the point where these judges are going to hold trump's DOJ lawyers in full contempt of their courts, and we're already in a constitutional crisis over trump's refusal to respect the Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Rule of Law.

Obviously frustrated with these legal barriers to his ambition to rule without restraint, trump is breaking out the bullying threats by telling everyone he's willing to jail these judges if they keep protecting the rights of those trump and his wingnut ilk condemned (without proof) as "criminals". But why threaten to send these judges to places like Leavenworth or Florence Supermax - places most Americans might not recognize - when he can threaten them with Alcatraz, one of the most infamous prisons in modern history (it defines a whole Trope, after all)? Everyone knows Alcatraz, even if they've never been to San Francisco to see it in person (and you can see it - once the bay fog lifts - pretty clearly along the bay shore).

All trump thinks they need to do is splash the prison with a new coat of paint, install some modern cots, put his name in large gold letters outside the main gate, and viola! Instant place of intimidation to his foes and allies alike.

And like all things trump thinks about, he honestly didn't think this through. The judges are going to ignore his threats because they're more concerned about upholding the Rule of Law (without that, judges lose all power and they know it). trump's already threatening migrants - especially the legal residents and their children - so yet another prison threat is no different than threatening them with shipping to El Salvador. And arguing to open such an expensive location for what is clearly an ego-driven fantasy undercuts every claim trump makes that he's "cutting costs" and saving us money.

We could laugh away trump's obsession with re-opening such a relic, but don't laugh away the underlying threat to it all. trump wants to break the judges against him, he wants to destroy every aspect of the Rule of Law.

In this, we need to stand firm. Like a Rock.

(yes, simile intended)

O Canada! (Thank God)

God exists, and She's Canadian (yes this is a Gen X Dogma reference).

Canada held their national elections this Monday, facing down a potential conservative flip the way most other western liberal nations were facing in the post-COVID reactionary world. However, thanks to one unavoidable factor - donald MOTHERFUCKING trump, out here hitting their nation with high tariffs and taunting them with threats to make them "the 51st state" - affecting the overall mood of the Canadian electorate, the results are favoring the liberal party under new-ish leadership to continue their fight against trump's bullying ways.

Ed Kilgore over at New York's Intelligencer site took note of how trump screwed it up for himself and his wingnut conservative allies in the Great White North (paywalled):

...The bookmark at the end of the month was Monday’s national election in Canada, which Donald Trump worked hard to make a referendum on his various threats to our most important trading partner’s economy, independence, and even integrity. Elections are rarely defined by a single issue, but there’s not much doubt north of the border that Trump personally turned a certain victory for his Conservative counterparts into a stunning win for the left-for-dead Liberals. The ruling party made mobilizing the country against Trump’s various provocations the successful formula (personal edit: search for #ElbowsUp, kids!) for a fourth consecutive national win under the leadership of recently appointed prime minister Mark Carney, who is sort of the Kamala Harris of Canada, given long-time leader Justin Trudeau’s handoff to him in January.

Despite clear signals he was putting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an impossible spot, Trump never let up, issuing this especially provocative bit of advice to Canadians on Truth Social on Election Day itself:

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!

Trump was essentially offering to displace the entire Canadian election system and extinguish that country’s sovereignty in exchange for his benevolent rule from Washington.

So Trump has produced a revived government in Ottawa with a distinct mandate to fight him tooth and nail. But that’s not the only way he was a loser on Monday. It’s not at all unusual for politicians to rally domestic support by picking a fight with other countries; it’s a jingoistic political tale as old as time. In this case, there is zero evidence (outside the hardest core of MAGA loyalists) that Americans have rallied to Trump’s Canada-bashing cause. Au contraire, as they might say in Quebec. An April 22 Washington Post–ABC–Ipsos poll showed Americans opposing a takeover of Canada by an astounding 86 percent to 13 percent. Even Republicans opposed it, 71 percent to 27 percent. Yes, many of them viewed this “idea” as a classic example of Trump just trolling the world. But if that’s what it was (and he has denied he’s trolling at all), he’s taken the joke far beyond the point where anyone in Canada is laughing, making himself a bit of a laughing stock in the process...

Somewhere in trump's aging, dementia-addled brain, he's gotten the notion that he can coax, bully, and/or harass the entire nation of Canada into succumbing to his will and joining the United States as one huge state (never mind the geographic, logistical, political, and cultural nightmares that would all cause). He clearly flunked out of 19th Century U.S. history, which would have taught him that Canada resisted even American military invasions during the War of 1812. Hell, that resistance developed their own rise of nationalism and pride in having defended themselves against our arrogance. They view the Battle of Queenston Heights the way Americans view Yorktown, or Gettysburg, or D-Day.

For trump to keep insisting that "it'll be better" for them to surrender to trump's annexation pleas is a huge ongoing insult to Canada. If he's doing it to intentionally troll them, to get them to roll over in his tariff negotiation tactics, he horribly miscalculated. He's made it so that anything even indirectly related to trumpism such as the conservatives in Canada - who probably made hourly phone calls to their American buddies begging them to get trump to shut up for even a day - got the Elbows Up treatment. It's telling that the leader of the national Conservatives Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat, a humiliation even UK Tories leader Sunak never endured (via Promit Mukherjee at Reuters):

Canada's main opposition leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat in Monday's general election, results from Elections Canada showed, as the Conservatives were beaten by the incumbent Liberal Party.

Poilievre, 45, failed to retain his seat in the Ontario district of Carleton, losing it to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy...

Poilievre, a career politician, looked set to become Canada's next prime minister at the start of the year as he pitched himself as a change from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had led the Liberals since 2015.

Poilievre rode an anti-Trudeau wave and his sharp one-liners resonated with the public.

But as U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and often mused about making it his country's 51st state, opinions shifted in favor of Carney over Poilievre...

Poilievre tried to deflect any anti-trumpism by loudly decrying trump's tariffs and calling on national pride, but his own rhetoric style and decades of attacking liberalism made Poilievre the one target Canadians could punish. They couldn't punch trump - safe behind our border - but they could punch him.

Granted, the Conservatives did gain seats - there is a terrifying trend of young men voting far right in Canada as much as here in the U.S. - but they failed to win the plurality, giving Liberals the opportunity to form another coalition. Poilievre may lose his spot as party leader now that he's ousted from office, but now it's a question of the next party leader and how Far Right they'll be (and how susceptible they'll be to trumpian Far Right ideology takeover).

For the Center-Left in Canada, there is relief. For the Center-Left in America, there is a sliver of hope.

For the ongoing trade and border wars trump is threatening to escalate...

The Folly of trump's Nativism and Me-First World-View as the Trade Wars Escalate

trump is still obsessed with tariffs, even after all the economic chaos he's inflicted over the last three months.

Unhinged

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 20, 2025 at 4:07 PM

trump remains convinced tariffs are a winning move, that the "billions in revenue" getting raised by him - by the by, none of the ports were taking in tariffs because their systems are still screwed up - will fill our coffers even as Elon Musk and his DOGE minions empty them to their own pockets, and that - as always - he's the big business genius while every other financial expert/banker/CEO are screaming how tariffs won't work and are gutting their profits.

trump is still crowing how his "trade deficit" announcements are forcing nations to deal with him, even as there's every evidence that our major trading partners are about to drop very big hammers on us (hat-tip to Comrade Misfit who shared this CNBC report from Lori Ann RaCocco):

U.S. importers are being notified of an increase in canceled sailings by freight ships out of China as ocean carriers try to balance the pullback in orders resulting from President Trump’s tariffs and the escalation of tensions in the trade war.

A total of 80 blank, or canceled, sailings out of China have been recorded by freight company HLS Group. It wrote in a recent note to clients that with the trade war between China and the U.S. leading to a demand plummet, carriers have started to suspend or adjust transpacific services...

The impact of the diminished freight container traffic to North America will be significant for many links in the economy and supply chain, including the ports and logistics companies moving the freight. If each sailing was carrying 8,000 to 10,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), that would equal a decline in freight traffic of between 640,000-800,000 containers, and lead to decreased crane operations at the ports, lower fees that could be collected, and declines in container pick-ups and transports by trucks, rails, and to warehouses for storage...

“We have no way of knowing how significant this drop in orders will be on vessel schedules,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. “There are no models to extrapolate this. What I can tell you is the majority of containers on the vessels servicing the Asia to U.S. trade routes is China. We won’t go to zero containers, but we will see a decrease in containers and as a result, in the future, we will see a massive raft of blank sailings announced...”

This is the first wave of a cascade effect, where the lack of shipments from China will disrupt our nation's supply chain from ports losing businesses to trucks / planes / trains / shipping companies losing money from dropped demand to deliver incoming materials across the nation. We won't see it now but in a month, maybe two months: fewer goods reaching our shelves at Wal-Mart or warehouses for Amazon. Fewer cars, and fewer car parts to manufacture here in the U.S. Fewer people working our supply chains, increasing unemployment and accelerating a growing economic recession. Among other losses to our nation's well-being.

And still trump thinks this is all glorious, that tariffs work.

I've written before why trump believes in tariffs, that he seems to think they generate revenues far greater than they really do. There are several other reasons he's obsessed: 

trump believes he's a world-class negotiator and that tariffs allow him to break and make deals to serve his whims. This is partly a vanity program; driven by pride and arrogance, blended with the stupidity and ignorance about how global economics really work (what the hell did he fail to learn at UPenn Wharton College of Business???).

trump really doesn't understand how trade deficits - which he based his blanket tariff orders a few weeks ago - work, and how little they affected our nation's economic strengths. Just because we were operating massive trade deficits with smaller (Third World) nations didn't mean those nations were defrauding the United States in any way: In a lot of cases it was because those nations didn't have enough revenues to buy things from our nation that would have meant any value to them. We traded with Madagascar for their vanilla but they had no reason to buy our soy or our motorcycles, not at the scale that would have balanced the books. And yet, the United States kept running one of the largest (based on GDP and sheer financial wealth) economies on the planet. Trade deficits didn't hurt us at all. Trade boycotts due to these tariffs, however, that will hurt...

But what's proving to be the biggest reason - other than trump's overall stupidity - is trump's Nativist / America-First world-view blinding him to how vital trade can be. trump wants to push his Narrative of "Make America Great Again" and to him that means cutting the United States off from the rest of the planet (with the exception of trump's BFFs Putin and Russia). Shutting down our foreign aid, closing off half of our State Department's foreign relations, pushing a harsh border enforcement to drive away foreign students AND tourists AND anybody else - and no lie, including penguins - all of this comes from trump's belief that America is a "superior" nation under attack by lesser mortals looking to defraud or destroy us.

It's a world-view no different than the one shared with trump's idol, the person he's admired for years. Yeah, that guy, he loved inflicting tariffs as soon as he came to power in Germany (via Timothy W. Ryback at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan, in a 32-page position paper designed for ready implementation were Hitler to suddenly find himself in power. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition...”

Any of that anti-foreigner rhetoric sound familiar?

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

You could say the same about Biden's economic recovery post-pandemic, which the mainstream media underplayed while obsessing over the price of eggs. trump's chaotic decision-making undid a lot of that, much like what happened in Germany:

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. “Within four years the German farmer must be saved from destitution,” Hitler said in his first national radio address as chancellor. “Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome.” Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. By this point, he had broken even with the tariff cheerleader Feder, and had abandoned most of the action items for developing a nationalist and socialist economy. These items had included increased taxation of the wealthy; state supervision of large corporations; and the prohibition of “new department stores, low-priced shops, and chain stores.”

As chancellor, Hitler left his own plans for the German economy intentionally vague. His chief priority, as he told his ministers, was to secure an outright majority in the March 5 Reichstag elections. Hitler calculated that he needed between 18 million and 19 million votes. “There is no economic program that could meet with the approval of such a large mass of voters,” Hitler told party leaders.

But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor...

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors...

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

“Our exports have shrunk significantly,” Foreign Minister Neurath informed Hitler in one cabinet meeting, “and our relations to our neighboring countries are threatening to deteriorate.” Neurath noted that informal contacts with Dutch interlocutors had been “bruskly broken off.” Trade relations with Sweden and Denmark were similarly strained, as were those with France and Yugoslavia. Finance Minister Krosigk anticipated that the agricultural sector would require an additional 100 million reichsmarks in deficit spending...

The costs of those tariffs arrived in the form of harsher sanctions and cutoffs, forcing the government to spend more than expected to aid farmers (and likely other industries). But none of that mattered to Hitler, who pushed forward on his agenda to seize authoritarian control of Germany outright, and basically building up a war machine with the armies to begin annexation and invasion of neighboring countries, triggering a world war by 1939.

If anyone else can notice the trends here - the tariffs leading to trade wars leading to military aggression and straight-up wars of blood and carnage - you can see where trump is taking the United States. We're not going back to some glorious isolationist nativist homeland that never existed outside of the fevered fantasies of a white patriarchal class: We're turning ourselves into a pariah state no different than Iran or North Korea, and about to escalate matters with our neighboring trade partners in Mexico and Canada with our unjustified version of an Anschluss. 

"This is NOT going to end well" is a fcking understatement tonight.

An Anecdote Involving Air Conditioning

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to save up your pennies, kiddos, 'cause trump's tariff rollercoaster ain't done yet.

Last week, I needed to replace my air conditioner.

The unit was as old as the duplex, built in the mid-1990s. I bought the place - with my parents help, as I was still recovering from long unemployment - in 2014 with the understanding that things were 20-plus years old and at some point will age out and die on me.

The AC compressor had been a problem for years, barely generating enough air to cover the two-bedroom place. The far ends of the house - which happened to be the master bed and bath - wasn't getting much air at all the last five-six years. The AC repair guy told me the last two annual checkups that the compressor was doomed sooner rather than later. This winter, it finally doomed.

The repair guy came out and checked, and showed me the points of failure in the compressor that meant getting a replacement. Problem is, the whole unit was thirty years old, and replacement parts - even compressors - were no longer available. The whole thing needed switching out.

And the cost was going to be around $7500.

Any homeowner will tell you things can get expensive - have been even before the housing booms of the 1980s and 1990s, and the housing market crash of 2007-08. It was still something above my annual income, and it was something I had to get further help from the parents, who were understanding because they knew I lived alone and had no other options other than an equity loan that would cost me a lot more later down the road. They had already helped to clear my mortgage, so replacing the AC was something they could help.

Also, this is the middle of Florida, heading into April and the goddamn heat wave that is April through November anymore (fuck you deniers, climate change is REAL). Air conditioning should not be a privilege, it should be a constitutional right in this state.

So I put in the repair order, the AC guys came out with a three-person crew, they worked on it early Thursday morning well into noon, finishing an hour early, and got the system turned on and pumping clear air. I checked: the new compressor is strong enough to get air to the back rooms of my duplex. At last.

While showing me that new compressor, pointing out what I need to look at in case there are any issues during the limited warranty period for it, the three AC guys all complimented me on spending $7500 on the whole thing.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," the lead guy responded. "Next week, our company has to raise the price on these units by 20 percent."

Basic math told me 20 percent (.2) of $7500 (and change) was $1500 (and change) meaning a cost spike to $9000 (and change). THAT would have even made my parents give pause and suggest I just live with the ceiling fans on full blast for the rest of my life. 

I had to ask this. "Is this because of the trump tariffs?"

All three of the repair guys - where at least one of them had to have voted for that shitgibbon trump in 2024 - said "Yup!" while shaking their heads in discomfort if not alarm.

And this was just as trump unleashed his "liberation" Retribution tariffs on every country and territory on the maps - save for his buddies in Russia - to where we've started trade wars with the entire planet - again, save for Russia - even the islands populated solely by penguins (no, I am not making that up).

I could go into the illogic of trump - and his handlers' - math regarding how his tariffs are "fixing" any trade deficits we have with penguins and most of humanity, and I would argue that trade deficits we've had since the 1970s aren't damaging our economy the way trump claims. Hell, it's not trade deficits that have caused recessions, it had been reckless deregulation of financial markets; the upending of our housing markets; and a global pandemic that our political leaders - especially trump himself - barely took serious.

But I'm sticking to this anecdote as an example - that I'm certain is repeating across many households  this weekend - that right now, the American economy as we know it - our industrial capacity, our supply chains, our ability to provide goods and services, our ability to get reliable air conditioning - is doomed by trump's irrational and aggressive push for high tariffs.

The U.S. economy is not ready for any of this. And all the other damage trump and his lackeys are inflicting on us - the dismantling of our federal agencies, the theft of revenues, the growing job losses - is turning this all into the early stages of an economic depression. It won't even be a recession long enough to ease the coming fall off the cliffs.

Gods help us.

trump Off The Rails But Will The Beltway Even NOTICE?

Something weird has happened to this Darkest Timeline to where the only way to describe the craziness is simply copy/paste the AP News headline:

I felt it was necessary to include a photo of his hand gesture

I haven't dared check to see how the New York Times tried to "sanewash" - yes, that is a word now, and ironically it was aimed at liberals back in 2020 - trump's increasing public displays of dementia and idiocy.

Remember how angry I was at the mainstream media for how they went after Joe Biden's increasing signs of aging and mental fatigue? trump had been showing similar signs, with public displays of meandering thought, failure to keep names straight, open angry outbursts that were one N-Word drop away from becoming blatant five-alarm fires: And yet the major news outlets - the Times especially - were going out of their way to clean up trump's ramblings to make him appear functional and coherent (via Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review):

As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

The threat being a dementia-riddled trump in the White House will act even worse than how trump behaved between 2017 to 2021, and rely even more on handlers and lackeys who will get free rein to commit their own atrocities with trump's rambling racist seal of approval.

But these were signs cropping even back then - Recall how trump tried to redraw literal maps to cover for his brain farts - and it should have been the mainstream media's duty to highlight trump's growing dementia and failures to prove himself capable of leadership.

The presidency is not a horse race: It's not about who wins or who loses. It's about who LEADS the nation, and that requires a level of coherence and competency to ensure a majority of Americans - and most of the free world - are safe and secure in their persons and livelihoods.

trump's inability to even pretend - allowing his mind to ramble off in directions it really shouldn't go - should be a massive warning sign to Americans - especially those of us who are voting - that he and his Republican allies can't be trusted with high office.

For the LOVE OF GOD, America. trump's brain is toast. Do NOT vote for him.

Bad Numbers and Bad Vibes and a Bad Choice

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money/
Watch him or he'll rob you blind...
-- John Fogerty, "Vanz Kant Danz"
(and I'm not the only one who thought of this song when JD Vance got picked for trump's Veep)

It's taken me awhile to write about donald trump's Vice Presidential selection of Senator JD Vance for his 2024 ticket, but in the few weeks that Vance has been on that ticket it's become hilariously - and horrifyingly - clear that picking Vance was a bad idea.

Given trump's previous history with his Veep - trying to bully Pence into throwing the election results in 2020 to the point of sending an insurrectionist mob at him - it was a bit sad to see other Republican figures audition themselves on Fox Not-News for the 2024 ticket, but there was nothing you could do dissuade them. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug (seriously, North Dakota?) Burgum, all of them made their daily talking head shows to argue their own submission to trump's will; but none of them pandered - attacking Ukraine, praising Russia, showcasing misogyny - like Vance did.

Thing is, when trump picked Vance - or had others pick him, depending on the story - he didn't do a good enough job of finding out if Vance would boost the ticket or not.

For all I've said about the need for Vice Presidents, as long as that office is part of the electoral process it matters that you choose wisely. A Presidential candidate choosing his/her campaign partner is signaling to voters what he/she values as skills for those who will work in their potential administration. If you're a domestic policy guru, tagging someone with foreign policy cred helps win over the voting base (definitely the punditry) that you'll balance out your agenda. If you're a Moderate from the Midwest, it helps to get a more die-hard candidate from another region (South, Pacific, Northeast) to appease the other party factions (and vice versa). And no matter what, you have to make sure the VP choice has their own charisma or credibility (just not too much to outshine the boss) to win over the mainstream media.

In short: Your Veep pick sets the tone.

What trump and his handlers found out real quick post-convention was that Vance - for all that he's known at the state and federal level of politics- is tone-deaf. And more unpopular than anyone - other than several polling services who were firing off emergency flares - realized.

Let's hear it from Nicholas Liu at Salon:

Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, is making history as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, but not in the way that the Trump campaign had hoped. According to a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance has an approval rating of -6 points, making him the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.

The average rating for a running mate after a party convention has been +19 points.

"Frankly, I don't really understand the pick, and apparently neither do the American voters," CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday's OutFront with Erin Burnett. Vance, he said, is "dragging Trump down..."

With Trump struggling to appeal to moderate women, the former president may rue choosing a man who ran for Senate on a hardline anti-abortion stance, criticized childcare subsidies as "class war against normal people" and suggested that married women would be selfish for divorcing their abusive husbands, saying in 2021 that "one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace" was "making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear...”

Even Vance's purported appeal among white working-class voters appears overstated. He won Ohio in his 2022 Senate election by 6 points; by comparison, Trump won by 8 points in 2020 and Gov. Mike DeWine carried the state in 2022 by 25 points. Among white voters without a college degree, Vance, with a 31-point lead over Democrat Tim Ryan, also lagged behind Trump and DeWine, who won by 36 and 45 points respectively...

I've talked before about how at the state level, a candidate can overcome personal faults to win election all because the partisan nature of local elections make it too easy to win no matter what. Ohio could have run a dead dog for the Senate back in 2022, and that poor mutt could have beaten Tim Ryan by double digits. Vance arguably eked by at 6 percent.

And trump picked a guy with negative popularity at the national level, something that hadn't happened since 1980 (was that Bush the Elder?). For a campaign that's supposed to be tracking every favorable poll to feed trump's vanity, how did they mess that up?

Think back to some of the, ahem, more questionable Veep picks we've seen. 

Sarah Palin? She had a positive boost - and genuinely gave McCain and the GOP a healthy poll bounce - coming out of the convention before her appearances and interviews quickly exposed her as a near-illiterate self-absorbed fool before the November election. Joe Lieberman? In terms of polling and voter turnout, Lieberman mattered little to how Gore performed: However, Lieberman's more conservative stances turned off the more progressive Dem voters which hurt the eventual turnout (the same might be said for Hillary's VP pick Kaine). Dan Quayle? The jokes about him started flying the moment he was tabbed, but even then he brought enough positives to the table that his polling wasn't as bad as Vance.

In each of their cases, there were valid reasons at the time for their picks that did help balance the ticket - geographically, demographically, ideologically - even as those picks ended up hurting or negating the overall effort. The same can't be said for Vance: He mimics trump's ideology to a horrifying tee, and he doesn't appeal to the youth demographics of Millennials or Generation X. He only fulfills a geographic necessity by being from a Midwest (Rust Belt) state, and that will get negated by whomever Kamala picks as her running mate (especially if it's a Rust Belt figure like Walz, Beshear, or Shapiro).

Vance is standing on the national stage with little in the way of genuine charisma or likeability. One of the new breed of Culture War Republicans who attack often and impress rarely, he's demonstrated a shocking ability to alienate people in a heartbeat even among his own Far Right audiences. His anti-immigrant and "DEI" stances - and eagerness to attack a biracial opponent like Kamala Harris - are hard to reconcile with the fact Vance married an Indian (Asian) American woman (where Kamala is Jamaican-Indian (Asian) with a similar background). And Vance's views on women? "Misogynistic" is the nicest word you can say about that.

As Paige Oamek at the New Republic notes in her article title, "Everyone Hates JD":

Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.

Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.

It's like watching the rushing numbers by UMass' football team get worse every drive they play against Georgia's defense.

During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.

“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.

Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator...

When I noted earlier how intraparty dynamics would give Vance a chance to survive in Ohio, now that he's a candidate on the national level that state-level partisanship won't be able to help him (this is what Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and Rick Perry and other milquetoast candidates found out long ago).

Vance is so unlikeable he's vulnerable to that most dreaded of political attacks, the Whisper Campaign. 

Someone off in the far corners of social media posted a joke rumor - completely unfounded and without direct evidence - that JD Vance wrote a scene in his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy - by the way the "memoir" turned out to be exaggeration at best and deplorable at worst - having sex with a couch. The joke spread quickly on Twitter to where the AP Newswire had to publish a report calling the story "false"... but then retracted that report because of the slight possibility that Vance could have engaged in that act anyway the editors claimed it wasn't vetted properly.

As Zachary Folk covered at the Daily Beast (paywalled):

The anonymous poster who started the viral—but false—rumor that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance had sex with a couch said he came up with the smear while shopping at a grocery store. The viral post’s author, who only identified himself as “Rick,” gave his first interview to Business Insider on Tuesday, telling the publication the joke came from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.” The viral tweet has since attracted the attention of late night hosts, Fox News talking heads, and even Vice President Harris’ campaign. Rick said he has since protected his account and changed his Twitter handle to avoid unwanted attention. He also said he did not intend to spread misinformation, but instead simply wanted mock the Republican candidate...

Since then, while the mainstream media tried to keep away from it everyone else went all-in on the "couchfucker" mockery. Why is this joke proving so harmful to Vance?

Because being this unlikeable already didn't provide Vance with enough popular support to laugh off or shrug away the insult. Just looking at Vance - his physical appearance is just on the wrong side of being creepy, his hateful demeanor that just advertises "messed-up psychology," the general vibe of being weird - makes it more believable to the general population that this is a guy who would do something tawdry with your living room sofa.

Any stand-up comedian - or wannabe who did the Open Mic nights in South Florida back in the 1990s, ahem - can tell you this: When the majority of people are laughing at you instead of with you, you're screwed.

Rumors are now swirling that trump has soured on Vance already (don't forget, trump is a Bad Boss who will kick you to the street curb once he thinks you're no longer useful) while other party leaders are discussing how to remove Vance from the ticket. Problem is, replacing a ticket partner at this stage of the election is dicey at best (and that's just the paperwork you need to refill). The last time a Vice Presidential candidate got replaced mid-campaign was Eagleton back in 1972, and all that did was confirm that McGovern's campaign was in utter chaos and led to one of the biggest Electoral College defeats in history (that fact gets diminished with how Nixon's campaign unleashed massive sabotage and trickery against the Democrats when the facts of Watergate went public). 

trump can't afford to dump Vance even at this early stage of the final leg of the 2024 election cycle. trump can't afford to keep Vance because the way things are going JD is going to make Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.

This needs to be a warning to the American voting public at large: trump has no idea how to pick competent people to work for him. The Republicans don't have any competent or quality candidates to choose from anymore. For the LOVE OF GOD, don't vote trump/Vance this 2024, or for any other Republican hack ready and willing to destroy everything America stands for.

And in the meantime, ScotchGard your ottomans!

Why Bother Your Evening?

There is a Presidential debate tonight on CNN and none of us are obligated to watch. 

Considering what happened during the previous election cycle - involving the same two candidates - when donald trump attempted to violate every norm and civility in the most crass manner, I'm not about to expect him to improve his behavior. Even with the supposed safeguards in place for this televised spectacle - the moderator can cut off microphones this time - we're going to get trump gaslighting - there are no fact-checkers at this debate - and bullying his way through another night of pandering towards his own base.

It's not helping any that trump's Republican allies and spokespeople have been running around the last week or so accusing President Biden of being drugged up on "smart" or "debate enhancement drugs" and demanding drug tests on Biden as a means to embarrass him (and provide cover for trump if he underwhelms/collapses during the event).

After all, if there were such a "performance enhancing drug" to improve your mental acuity, trump's own people would be injecting it into trump the last six months or so to hide the growing public signs that he's suffering dementia and cognitive failure.

This is all performative circus, designed to stir up fervor for the mainstream media outlets to cover the horserace nature of campaigns and fill their own narratives. The partisan landscape dividing the Republican and Democratic voting bases are already decided (since 2020!): the Undecided voters at this point tend to be tuned out anyway, and won't pay attention until the last month or so (hence the constant attempts at October Surprises to undermine each other).

At best, we're going to see Biden pitch to the media that he's built back a strong economy generating more jobs at better wages, and punching at trump for being a convicted felon. trump's narrative is going to be that things were better under him, that the border security is in shambles, and making none-too-subtle threats for his Proud Boy supporters to "prep for another uprising".

The only thing worth watching for is if trump physically collapses from his own inability to stand upright as his neurology short circuits.

Me? I'm trying to get into this Martha Wells' Murderbot book series. Wish me luck.

Weekend at donnie's II: Electric Waterloo

Today's "What The Hell Happened THIS Time" combines the craziness of Florida with the criminality of trump. You're not gonna believe this story about how the IT computer server room at trump's Mar-A-Lago got wiped out (via By Katelyn Polantz, Jeremy Herb, and Kaitlan Collins at CNN):

An employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

(blank stare)

(facepalm)

(headdesk)

While it’s unclear if the room was intentionally flooded or if it happened by mistake, the incident occurred amid a series of events that federal prosecutors found suspicious.

YA THINK?!

My first response when I read the report was "WHO THE FUCK PUTS A COMPUTER SERVER ROOM ANYWHERE NEAR A BODY OF WATER?" and my second response was "WHO THE FUCK REROUTES THE WATER HOSES INTO A COMPUTER SERVER ROOM?"

Okay, considering that I've heard there's a basement or underground part of Mar-A-Lago - which still doesn't make sense to me considering IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE ATLANTIC OCEAN JUST WAITING TO SINK WITH THE NEXT HURRICANE - who the bloody hell IN SOUTH FLORIDA would put that kind of equipment BELOW GROUND where such water-borne accidents could cause serious damage?

In all my time working in libraries in Florida, in buildings that have multiple floors, we've always put the server equipment on the upper floors to avoid any kind of flooding damage in the first place. If it was a single-story library, the server closet was always furthest from the water main/bathroom pipes as we could afford.

I am seriously questioning the architectural layout of any trump-owned facility. I want to see the goddamn floor plans to see just how close the server room was to the goddamn pool.

At least one witness has been asked by prosecutors about the flooded server room as part of the federal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the sources.

The incident, which has not been previously reported, came roughly two months after the FBI retrieved hundreds of classified documents from the Florida residence and as prosecutors obtained surveillance footage to track how White House records were moved around the resort. Prosecutors have been examining any effort to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation after Trump received a subpoena in May 2022 for classified documents.

Prosecutors have heard testimony that the IT equipment in the room was not damaged in the flood, according to one source.

Yet the flooded room as well as conversations and actions by Trump’s employees while the criminal investigation bore down on the club has caught the attention of prosecutors. The circumstances may factor into a possible obstruction conspiracy case, multiple sources tell CNN, as investigators try to determine whether the events of last year around Mar-a-Lago indicate that Trump or a small group of people working for him, took steps to try to interfere with the Justice Department’s evidence-gathering.

"The Dog Ate My Video Surveillance" excuse isn't going to help you, trump.

In the meantime, trump keeps pretending that Bernie is still alive, uh trump keeps screaming on social media that he's innocent of any wrong-doing.

I hope the indictments come this week and I hope the charges are so serious the judge refuses to grant you bail. Bastard.

The Braggadocio of a Con Artist Moron (w/ Update)

I don't know when or who originated the phrase "LORDY THERE ARE TAPES" but by now it's clearly referring to donald trump and his ongoing cons where he's caught on audio or film bragging about the crimes he's pulling (via Digby quoting from CNN): 

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said...

As Digby notes:

I guess this recording is seen as proof that Trump’s daft insistence that he declassified everything in his mind is bogus because he told these people that it was classified and he couldn’t share it. Needless to say, Trump would just say that he was lying about the document still being classified in order to protect the country but it doesn’t look good.

As I was writing this blog post, it turned out that David A. Graham at The Atlantic also titled his article "LORDY THERE ARE TAPES" and this is where I found out it was James Comey who originated the phrase when Congress questioned him about trump firing him back in 2017. So that little mystery solved, while Graham spells out how troubling this is for trump:

In the ongoing classified-documents scandal, though, the tapes seem to exist. CNN and The New York Times report that Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s removal of secret records to Mar-a-Lago, has obtained a recording in which the former president discussed his possession of a sensitive document. According to the outlets, Trump indicates that he knows it’s classified and is aware he cannot share it.

The content of the tape is important for any prosecution of Trump, which would have to prove he knew that what he was doing was wrong. But the circumstances of the recording are also revealing about how Trump operates, and the way he seems to understand bad press as a graver threat than criminal prosecution...

I would argue otherwise, but let's give Graham his points:

Given that mishandling of classified materials by former officials is apparently common, Smith appears to also be focusing on whether Trump attempted to hide the documents from the federal government once they were requested and then subpoenaed. Reports indicate that Trump had boxes moved to hide them and lied to his attorneys about the material, and an aide allegedly inquired about how long surveillance video was maintained. (Lordy, maybe there are lots of tapes.)

Aside from the egregious violation of the Stringer Bell rule—or perhaps just the Richard Nixon rule—that recording evidence of one’s own criminality represents, the tape would demonstrate yet again Trump’s reckless disregard for the law. Consider the circumstances for the recording. In July 2021, two writers working with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on his autobiography interviewed Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. Meadows was not present...

Trump was, as usual, in a score-settling mood. A recent New Yorker report had claimed that in the final days of his administration, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had taken steps to prevent Trump from ordering a strike on Iran. The story was opaque on its sourcing, but it narrated events from Milley’s own perspective. Trump, who likes to portray himself as a dovish, isolationist opponent of warmongering generals, was furious. At the meeting with the two writers, Trump brandished a report that he claimed was Milley’s plan for an assault on Iran, and said that the general had repeatedly urged him to mount an attack...

But Trump was reluctant to show the memoir writers the actual document, according to the reports, because he knew it was still classified and they did not have security clearances. He may not have always been so fastidious. Smith is reportedly also investigating whether Trump showed several visitors a classified map.

The recording that Smith has obtained was reportedly made not by the writers but by Margo Martin, a Trump aide who “​​routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year,” according to the Times. The former president was apparently worried about being misrepresented or misquoted...

Because Lord knows a liar on the scale of trump himself hates to get misquoted. It is interesting to note that trump is claiming the classified documents absolve him of any warmongering towards Iran, but then refuses to let others confirm what was in those documents. trump is either lying about the contents of those docs, or was honestly exposing classified materials to people who didn't have proper clearance. Either way, he's fucked.

(As a side note, one of the reasons there were recorders in the Oval Office was because Kennedy and LBJ both wanted verbal evidence of the things the CIA and other agencies were telling them, because there had been a breakdown of trust after the Bay of Pigs. Also, for their memoirs. Nixon ironically had the system removed when he stepped into office in 1969 but re-installed it later for those reasons. I digress.)  

This is Graham's view of trump's actions:

To summarize: Trump’s fear of damaging press—whether in the Milley reports or the Meadows book—was so much greater than his fear of criminal accountability that he ended up making an incriminating recording that could be a key piece of his own prosecution.

This is where I disagree. trump wasn't and isn't afraid of bad press. In his mind, all press is good, because it gets him the attention he craves, and he bulldozes through every terrifying report of his damaging behavior without a care. Look at how he handled the Access Hollywood revelations, look at how he ignores every red flag thrown up about his terrible business record, look at how he mocks anyone who questions what he does.

donald trump did what he did because he was convinced - remains convinced, even as criminal investigations tighten around him like chains - he was and still is above the law. As a celebrity, as a business CEO billionaire (although that is questionable), as the President of the United States Loser of the Popular Vote Twice. 

This is why he screams on social media about "WITCH HUNTS" that are honest criminal investigations into the federal and state laws he's violated. This is why he excuses away every bullying phone conversation he has with other people to lie or cheat for him as "perfect in every way." This is why he whines like a five-year-old about how everyone else is "unfair" to him whenever he's held accountable.

This is why donald trump brags about breaking laws, because he believes nobody can force him to answer for the crimes he's done.

And why not think like that? After all, there's been reports since the 1980s about trump pulling unethical if not illegal stunts with his business plans and property holdings. At any time over the decades, the legal authorities - the FBI, the IRS, the state attorneys, the Manhattan DA's office, the SEC, anybody - could have dug into the allegations of money laundering and tax evasion that were out there. But none of them did. They were too busy going after Martha Stewart, who went to jail for less than anything trump's ever done.

All these years of getting away with his fraudulent schemes - the failed casinos, the sham university, the products with TRUMP stamped over them that few people really bought - gave trump the delusion he was untouchable. And given his needs - to be adored (not loved), to be feared, to be worshipped - this always leads trump to happily and openly brag about what he's done. Everybody else can be guilty, but not him: trump deems himself perfect in every way.

This is why trump's defense in the Carroll sexual assault trial failed: His own deposition had him claiming that what he did was allowed, that celebrities - that men of power like himself - had the privilege to do whatever they - meaning himself - liked.

trump couldn't let go of all those Presidential records he had because he knew they gave him power, that they were symbols of his office. This is why he keeps claiming "those documents are MINE" as though they were personal belongings instead of government documents. It's why trump held onto classified materials he knew were still classified, because he could show them off to others and brag while doing so.

One of the things to ALWAYS remember about trump, more than his sins of lying, his wrath, his lust, his greed: trump's PRIDE must always dictate that he pose himself as greater than he is. trump must always brag about things - not only lie about things that never happen, but crow about the things that did - in order to make himself look good. Always.

Just remember the full Biblical warning about Pride: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

trump is all about the haughty and the pride. Here comes his fall.

Update 6/2: The media now reports that trump's own lawyers - required by that warrant to turn over such things - cannot find the classified documents that trump bragged about having. This means one of three things.

1) trump never really had a military plan by Gen. Milley to attack Iran, and he was just lying to the witnesses in order to impress them. This is actually the easiest thing for trump, because all this means is he lied - again! - to a mainstream media that has always forgiven his gaslighting.

2) trump still has those documents secured somewhere his lawyers were barred from searching, meaning he is openly defying a warrant to hand over such materials. His lawyers will be in trouble, even trump could be in trouble before Special Counsel Smith even drops indictments on him. One possible response will be the courts issuing Smith's team a blanket warrant to search EVERY property where trump could be hiding that document - and any others that the National Archives are certain haven't been recovered.

3) trump gave up those documents to someone else. This is the nightmare scenario: trump may have sold those documents to a third party - say, a foreign nation that has a vested interest in what the U.S. may do to Iran - to profit himself at the expense of U.S. intelligence services. It doesn't even matter if trump gave those plans to an allied nation: any information from those docs could be parsed for evidence of how our intel agencies acquired their intel, exposing field agents and reliable sources to potential harm if our "allies" don't like the idea of people among them working for us. THIS is straight-up espionage, the level of crime we haven't seen since Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. 

We are looking at a former President Loser of the Popular Vote Twice being charged with some of the highest crimes in the law books.